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?

[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

[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