Stop Body Shaming Donald Trump
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The use of Donald Trump’s bodily characteristics to reinforce and indulge in feelings of disgust toward him is nothing new. But as he reported for booking at Fulton County Jail, social media exploded with speculation about whether his processing would finally reveal his accurate height and weight.
Would Trump still be able to present himself as taller and thinner than he really was, as he presumably had in the past? Or would officials force him to give us his real numbers?
After his processing, the Washington Post published a whole article about the height and weight documented at Trump’s booking, reinforcing the idea that the former president’s fatness was indeed worthy of national attention and perhaps the most important fact of the day.
The internet exploded with memes about what 6-foot-3 and 215 pounds would–or should–look like. Men rushed to post their heights and weights as proof that Trump lied.
“I’m 5-foot-10 and 215 pounds, but it’s all muscle,” one Facebook user wrote, adding a qualifier lest anyone make assumptions about his body composition.
Many posts compared Trump’s body to those of athletes that reported the same measurements.
Stormy Daniels jumped into the fray with her own assessments of men’s bodies.
In her book “Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia,” Sabrina Strings lays out the historical facts that show why we’re so obsessed with the ratio of height to weight–not just our own, but everyone else’s too.
When White Europeans wanted to justify colonizing and enslaving Black and Brown peoples, they needed ways to convince their fellow Whites that these “others” were less than human. Whites didn’t just denigrate Black and Brown cultures and skin color; they also established Western definitions of “correct” bodily proportions and facial features as the gold standard, framing all other bodies as primitive or defective. They…
