“Nancy Pelosi was applauded on social media this week for using the same body-shaming tactics against President Trump that he has previously employed against opponents.” — KQED, 5/19/20
Since the pandemic began, I’ve watched our president ignore the experts, encourage people to drink bleach, and fail to make even the most basic plan to ensure our country survives this crisis. Like many of you, I’ve come away with only one thought: would it kill this guy just to lose a couple pounds?
Sure, I don’t love that our Commander-in-Beef is openly encouraging armed right-wing conspiracy theorists and bigots to march on state capitals for the right to return to their neighborhood TGIFridays. And maybe it is troubling that our porker of a president is also encouraging the citizens of his country to take an unproven medication that might make their hearts explode. But everybody knows there’s only one thing that it makes sense to REALLY hate about President Trump: He is slightly larger than other people!
I mean, it just boils my blood to know that the amoral corrupt jackass insisting that we allow thousands of vulnerable people to die in order to keep the economy moving is fat.
This is how it’s always been with Trump. I can forgive the rampant corruption, the credible allegations of sexual assault, and the racist rhetoric directed at sitting members of congress. What I cannot forgive is that double chin. Whew boy! I’ll bet he won’t put on a face mask because it gets in the way of eating his McDonald’s hamburgers!
(Seriously, the jokes just write themselves. Air Force One? More like Air Force TON! You know, a ton? Because he’s very fat? I’ll keep workshopping that one. But I assure you, these jokes are very fresh and funny, and totally worth it.)
This should not be a divisive issue. We’re all just people at the end of the day: people who hate other, fatter people. Whether you vote red or blue, I think you’ll agree that when you see a president sign an order that prevents LGBTQ individuals from having equal access to medical care in the middle of an unprecedented public health crisis, you’ll feel better if the hand that holds the pen is as slender as our current plan to deal with the coronavirus.
(Drive-through testing sites? More like McDonald’s drive-through hamburgers! Pow! Take that, President Cheeto!)
You get it, right? It’s not that I hate fat people. It’s more like I don’t think of fat people as people at all.
And sure, I’ve heard here and there that focusing on the president’s weight to criticize him does not make a substantive point about his many failings, and just contributes to stigmatizing fat people. Some have even argued that since Trump commonly uses weight as an insult himself, it seems ironic that people who dislike him would stoop to his rhetorical level just to score some cheap hee-haws at the expense of a marginalized population of people who have repeatedly publicly begged us all to stop doing this.
But I’m not being cruel. It’s just that for me, there is no cognitive dissonance between living my values and giggling like a child at the size of someone else’s body. And if you ask me why that is, I will become absolutely furious, because I’m a good person and — HEY, LOOK OVER THERE AT PRESIDENT FAT-ASS! HONK HONK, WIDE LOAD COMIN’ THROUGH!