Fallout from mockery of the president’s weight will endure long after he leaves office

From the house speaker calling Trump “morbidly obese” to a recent Lincoln Project ad, this superficial criticism is here to stay.

“I know this is a controversial thing to say now in today’s America, but being fat is a bad thing,” said Bill Maher in September 2019 on his show. “Fat shaming doesn’t need to end. It needs to make a comeback.” He was right about the controversy. Responding on his show, James Corden said, “Fat shaming is just bullying.” A molecular biologist added in The Conversation that “evidence shows that body-shaming and weight discrimination are misguided approaches, and often make the problem worse” and root factors underlying appetite and metabolism may be involuntary.

There was a time recently that “fat shaming” was criticized across the aisle. “I was publicly fat [shamed] early on in my career and it sent me to therapy,” tweeted Meghan McCain in January 2018. “Trust me, there are real life ramifications for fat shaming of any kind, it is never acceptable. We should be fostering a healthy culture that celebrates all women of all sizes.” Half a year prior, Chelsea Clinton tweeted, “Fat shaming isn’t a joke I find funny. Ever.”

Harvard’s public health school magazine called being fat “The Scarlet F,” and research suggests “fat shaming” makes people sicker and heavier and that teens who believe themselves overweight are likelier to attempt suicide. And in October 2016, President Donald Trump was taken to task in the New York Times for fat shaming a former Miss Universe winner. Of late, the tables have turned.

In an advertisement under the banner of “Nationalist Geographic,” the Lincoln Project tracks the endangered species “Impotus Americanus,” that is Trump. “This elderly specimen now weighs somewhat over 300 pounds due to its diet of fast food,” per the ad. “Impotus Americanus is one of the heaviest leaders in the animal kingdom, and is famously known to be an orange, ruddy color not found in nature.”

The Lincoln Project ad on YouTube.

In a May 18 CNN interview, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the president “morbidly obese.” (More on that claim, which appears unfactual, here.) She doubled down on those comments later in the week, stating that she was giving the president “a dose of his own medicine.”

The speaker’s insult and the Lincoln Project ad come against a broader backdrop, with extensive reporting noting obesity, particularly in younger patients, increases severe coronavirus likelihood. But long before the speaker’s remarks, political cartoons and caricatures of the president have depicted him as morbidly obese.

A few examples stand in for hundreds. In Bill Bramhall’s New York Daily News cartoon on May 10, the president is as wide as he is tall, and the attorney general’s girth is exaggerated, as the latter shoots Lady Justice (on 5th Avenue). Last November, “Star Wars” actor Mark Hamill tweeted an image of Donald Trump as Jabba the Hutt, and Mark Knight drew him and Boris Johnson in the Herald Sun (Australia) as obese babies.

Christopher Weyant’s drawing of Trump in the Boston Globe nearly fills the whole panel with his belly, and at least seven of the 12 drawings in a CNN story of this presidency in cartoons emphasize his girth.

“Trump’s ABC” by Ann Telnaes. Fantagraphics, 2018. Via Washington Post.

So is obesity fair game for public mockery when critics agree the object of their scorn acts in a manner that makes it open hunting season for all his foibles? Can obesity be thusly compartmentalized as a dangerous risk factor for many health problems—including coronavirus—for nearly the entire population, but when it comes to Trump, his weight may be safely mocked without inadvertently hinting that the artists hate fat people deep down and see obesity as cause for embarrassment and shame?

If there are societal rules about something like fat shaming, or mental health shaming, there shouldn’t be mixed messages just because one hates someone struggling with those challenges.

George Takei’s tweet from September 2016 straddles the line, as does one from a clinical psychologist, who shared a particularly unflattering picture of Trump. “I avoid photos like these because fat shaming is very wrong. But he has viciously attacked so many women for so long regarding the slightest imperfection in their appearance. So screw him,” the psychologist tweeted.

George Takei @GeorgeTakei

That fact that Trump is fat shaming anyone is just...

As a critic and museums reporter, I’ve had my eye on the political cartoons I mention above for quite some time. Let’s rewind and remember the 2008 Salon piece titled “When ‘Skinny’ Means ‘Black,’” referring to former President Barack Obama. If skinny was “a coded discussion of race” when the Wall Street Journal reported on Obama’s physique, perhaps there’s a Goldilocks principle here too. When there’s such a thing as too skinny, isn’t there also too fat?

From Honoré Daumier—who drew Louis Philippe as an obese pear—and Thomas Nast’s illustrations of corpulent Boss Tweeds to David Levine’s equal-opportunity ingenious, biting caricatures, some of recent history’s most brilliant skewers of public officials haven’t aged well in our era that increasingly interrogates appropriateness even in the domain of humor. That includes “fat shaming.”

(In an interview in Levine’s home 17 years ago, I asked if there was anyone too ugly to draw. His answer? Hillary Clinton. But it’s easy to imagine how Levine, who died in 2009, would depict Trump today judging from his svelte yet damning caricatures of 1988 and 2000.)

David Levine managed to skewer Trump pretty severely (with diaper pin) in 1988 without attacking his weight.

If cartoonists can’t turn to Trump’s “excellent physical health,” per a doctor’s note, as comic fodder, it’s easy to imagine a slippery slope where the funny is sacrificed on the altar of politeness. That would signal both a free speech violation and a tragic loss of an important arena where we can laugh—even at that which we fear. But it’s also a truism that insulters often tip their hands about some of their deepest beliefs and preferences when singling particular things out in those they mock.

It seems that many people with access to quality pens and printing presses hate this president so much (often with very sound reasons) that they reveal what they believe deep down about obesity: that it’s funny, shameful, disgusting, and indication of lack of self control and inner strength.

That’s a troubling hand to tip at a time when we are paying dearly on a global scale in both money and freedom of movement and assembly to protect those who are most vulnerable. Yes, that includes those who by no fault of their own have committed the “sin” of aging normally, or who were born with or developed any number of other risk factors. Whether obesity belongs on that list, evidently, is subject to some dispute.

The president’s critics have a wide range of potential materials at their disposal, which seems to grow exponentially by the minute. Mocking Trump’s weight may serve near-term aims, but critics will find this approach isn’t a precision-guided barb, which they can promptly retire after Trump leaves office. It’ll wreak further havoc for a long time to come.