During last week’s presidential debate, Democratic nominee Hilary Clinton brought up the rude comments Donald Trump made regarding his former employee, and a former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado. Twenty years ago, Miss Machado, representing her homeland of Venezuela won the pageant the first year it had been bought by Mr. Trump. She spent the next year touring the world and running from the criticism of Donald Trump. She put on weight after the competition, and he took to the media to express his discuss with her new body. Her fluffier frame and Venezuelan heritage earned the names “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping” from Trump. He forced her to work out in front of the cameras in a relentless effort to have her drop the additional weight, even voicing that he wished they could take back her crown.
I’m not going to spend this article dissecting everything wrong about this situation. His rhetoric twenty years ago and today is so disgustingly disrespectful and misogynistic that it speaks for itself. What I’m writing about is how these words make me, a plus sized, biracial, college student feel.
Our republican presidential nominee bashed this woman and publicly embarrassed her after she gained weight, and proceeded to insist that her value as a beauty queen and human being had somehow decreased because she “likes to eat.” You know what, Mr. Trump? So do the rest of the women in the world – including the ones whose votes you so keenly need. Imagine what would happen to your candidacy if all the American women who qualified to you as “Miss Piggys” and “Miss Housekeepings” did not support you? How dare you equate this woman’s worth with the size of her waistline or her homeland. Her beauty is not affected by the fact that she comfortably gained a few pounds. Her intelligence, charm, wit, and winning personality were not affected by the scale increase – so why were you?
Hearing this debate and his verbal attacks on this woman transpire on the news and Twitter have been discouraging, to say the least. I wake up in the morning, and after years of struggling with MY waistline size, the number I read on the scale, and the numbers on the tag of my jeans I have learned that my beauty transcends my physical appearance. I tell myself that “Beauty is as beauty does”. A woman is so much more than what meets the eye. Her grace, eloquence, stature, and confidence exude beauty before you can even see her face. We currently exist in a society that elevates one standard of beauty and oppresses every other. If a woman gains weight , guess who is the first person to notice… THE WOMAN HERSELF! For him to believe that he had or has any right to be criticizing a woman’s body is beyond belief.
So, excuse me if I do not want someone in the highest of the land, to be a man who is so shallow that he continuously viciously attacks, degrades, and shames women – always on the basis of their looks. Never mind the number of degrees they’ve earned, the undying passion they have for the people they care about, their uncanny ability to multitask, the powerful grace they exude in even the toughest of situations, or all the other incredible things we have women to thank for.
That is why his comments then and reaction now is so terrifying. The fact that underneath all this craziness, I could actually live in a country where everything about me could be ignored and erased if my pants size is a double digit, my ethnicity isn't ideal, or if through the years I “balloon up” to a different weight. My years of struggling with self-acceptance and self-confidence could mean nothing if I am not pleasing to someone else’s eye?
