Everyone loses because of fat stigma. Maybe especially Democrats.

[nancylebov]

The usual discussion of stigma against fat people is about what it costs them, and that's reasonable because it costs them a lot.

However, there's another side-- what stigma against fat people costs everyone. I've read a lot from women who put off their ambitions for both work and love until they lose weight, which may never happen. It wouldn't surprise me if the same pattern (starting at higher fat %s) occurs for men, it's just that I haven't heard about it.

How much accomplishment and love haven't happened because of people who don't try until they think their bodies would be approved of? And they aren't hallucinating the prejudice-- how many fat people get turned down just because they're fat?

So, to Trump, because everything seems to get related to Trump. Unless I'm missing something, Republicans are more willing to accept fat candidates than Democrats are. Is it possible that Democrats are throwing away more talent than they can afford to? (I'm not extremely sure of the premise here-- let me know about if there are fat Democratic politicians which would contradict my theory.)

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

Are there fat women republicans?

[nancylebov]

Not that I know of, but even if Republicans permit only their male candidates to be fat, that's still a larger talent pool to draw on.

[marahmarie]

Republicans are more willing to accept fat candidates than Democrats are

Are they? I haven't seen any research on this! And I have no hard data to draw on, but my guess is there are simply more fat candidates and the electorate is more fat on the Republican side, on average, therefore more accepting of fat candidates. Sort of a positive feedback loop.

While Rs might speak more harshly against it, because they speak more harshly against everything with known societal prejudices, on the whole - given their lower education, lower awareness of how to maintain good diet and physical health and so on - fat is probably just a thing they don't mind so much seeing reflected in their candidates.

What surprises me is that Democrats would have any known prejudice against fatness - I'm a lifelong D (voting their way for nigh on 25 years now) and can't recall it being a thing. I voted for Clinton who spent most of his two terms see-sawing about an ounce away from complete corpulence. Hillary, though not fat, was more "healthy" than thin; ditto Michelle.

Having a prejudice against fat could literally ruin any political party: I wonder where GB and the whole world would be right now if such a thing had kept Winston Churchill (a liberal) from winning elections, just as a for instance (though it maddens me I have to jump the pond to think of any country tolerant of it - North Korea and its current dictator, who I doubt got elected into office fairly, or at all, does not count).

[siderea]

The last fat democrat that leaps to mind was Tip O'Neil, who died just the other day in, uh, *looks it up* 1994.

OT: Can I give you a hard time about the use of "stigma" as a synonym for "prejudice"? I know that's becoming common, but that seems really unfortunate to me. A stigma is the trait itself against which there is prejudice, not the prejudice; in the original sense, which I think is important, there was no "stigma against" because the stigma is the thing the prejudice is against. From there greek, where it literally means "sign" or "mark". Fat is a stigma in our society; being fat is a stigmatized identity. It seems a shame to me to lose that usage since we don't have any alternative to express the concept "quality that marks a person out for prejudice", and in the slippage from referring to the target to referring to the targetting seems all sorts of opportunity for prejudicial mischief.

[supergee]

Blogging this, thanx

[eub]

Followed this link. Interesting point! I can't think of a prominent Democratic politician who's, say, more fat than Bill Clinton was, but I'm not very good at Republicans either. Christie,... does LePage make the cut?

If instead of political officeholders we look at celebrities who have well-known politics and are fat, I feel like that's roughly even.

I find Paul Krugman scatterplotted "obesity rate" against 2012 election margin, state by state, and that shows a correlation (presumably caused together by social factors).
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/heavy-politics/

[onyxlynx]

Technically, W.J.Clinton got grief about his weight (as did Mr. Gore).

Hubert Humphrey before 1968 was stout. Those are the only ones I can think of, though

[nancylebov]

Thanks. I wasn't sure I'd thought of all the fat Democratic politicians.

The next question is whether there really are more fat Republican politicians, or just a couple of notable recent examples.