Thoughts on the 2016 Election: The Machado Effect

September 9, 2016

Welcome to this week’s surreal 2016 election obsession: Alicia Machado’s weight.  Is it ridiculous that we’re talking about a 20-year old beauty pageant in the Presidential race? Yes, and no.  What it is revealing is a bind women have put themselves in.

The basic thread of the controversy is that a past Miss Universe gained weight after she won the crown.  And Donald Trump said so.  And that makes him misogynist.

But here’s the thing: If you participate in a misogynist institution like the Miss Universe Pageant, which requires you to be thin and beautiful, then don’t complain when the Miss Universe Pageant expects you to be thin and beautiful.

Women can’t have it both ways, although we keep trying.  We storm through endless spinning classes and jars of wrinkle cream on the one hand and then feebly cling to “Love your body” Dove ads on the other.

The worst example of this over the past week was the editor of Cosmopolitan —Cosmopolitan — complaining about how awful it was that Donald Trump was fat-shaming Alicia Machado. Really? Maybe I’m missing something, not being a reader of Cosmo, but I’ve never seen anyone even slightly plump on its cover. 

Yes, I think it’s wrong to elect a President who says derogatory things about women in public.  Yes, the video of Donald Trump ambushing and publicly humiliating the young Ms. Machado at a gym 20 years ago shows this presidential candidate to be a despicable, pathetic, power-tripping egoist. 

But the bigger issue — for women — is that we continue to participate in misogyny and then cry about it.  And when you put yourself in that bind, you cannot move forward.  You get stuck in a circular argument that’s impossible to escape.

One woman who understands this is Hillary Clinton.  It’s ironic that she is in the position of calling Trump out for his behavior here, because Hillary herself has never publicly complained about the overtly sexist treatment she has received over the decades.  She just keeps going, with her self-possession intact. And that is the secret to getting out of the aforementioned bind.  If you want to be free, you have to define your own value, period.

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