Meghan McCain
Well, we’ve talked about Malia Obama, we may as well talk about Meghan McCain! Thanks to Eliza for sending me this link; the controversy has also been covered by Lesley at Fatshionista and Rachel at The F Word.
Lesley:
The backstory to this is that Meghan McCain, daughter of Republican Presidential nominee John McCain, recently posted to her blog on The Daily Beast with some disparaging comments about Ann Coulter, and how McCain believes Coulter is harming the Republican party… McCain’s post led to her being a guest on the Rachel Maddow show last week. Which, subsequently, led Republican radio-show host Laura Ingraham to mock McCain on her show, not for being wrong or stupid or a plague on the Republican party, but for being – wait for it – “plus-sized”.
Rachel quoting McCain:
The question remains: Why, after all this time and all the progress feminists have made, is weight still such an issue? And in Laura’s case, why in the world would a woman raise it? Today, taking shots at a woman’s weight has become one of the last frontiers in socially accepted prejudice.
At this point, I have more respect for Ann Coulter than I do for Laura Ingraham because at least Coulter didn’t come back at me with heartless, substance-less attacks about my weight. All I can do is try to be a positive role model for women of my generation and, I hope, help show that no matter what industry you are in, what size you are has nothing to do with your worth.
CNN quoting McCain:
What do young women think when I speak my mind about politics and I want to have a political discussion about the ideological future of the Republican Party, and the answer is, ‘She’s fat, she shouldn’t have an opinion.’ What kind of message are we sending young women? It infuriates me,” she said.
Well hooray for Meghan McCain; her response may not be perfect, but at least she’s infuriated. And in a world where being fat never got in the way of Rush Limbaugh being allowed to speak his mind and being hailed as an inon of the Republican party in the process, it’s perhaps not the fatism here that bothers me as much as the blatant sexism.
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Advocacy, Celebrities, Fatism, Feminism, Politics
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As I said in my several sputtering e-mails to mo pie about this, I am conflicted about Meghan McCain and this entire situation. I must have been living under a rock and blocking out anything McCain family-related that I wasn’t absolutely forced to know during the campaign, because I never knew she existed, let alone had a long-running blog. I liked parts of her response (the infuriated parts, mostly) and strongly disliked parts of it (her defense, “It’s ridiculous even to have this conversation because I am not overweight in the least and have a natural body weight,” whatever the hell “natural body weight” means). And I’m trying to understand if Laura Ingraham was actually dissing McCain for being “plus-sized” or slamming society for deeming her “plus-sized” / treating “plus-sized” as a negative. The whole thing is confusing to me, which makes me wonder if I’m overthinking it or just a big moron!
I think the strongest part of her message, the bit quoted by CNN, will make an impression. I find it encouraging that a 24 year-old woman has the balls to stand up to people that other folks in her party are too afraid of.
Eliza, I, too, have been living under that rock for a long time, but having heard audio of Ingraham’s comments, I can assure you they boiled down to ‘Meghan is fat and talks like a Valley Girl, so she doesn’t get to have an opinion.’ It was all about attacking the messenger rather than the message.
Were McCain’s response points everything we in the FA movement would have liked them to be? No. She pulled the ‘last acceptable prejudice’ trope which…really, it just isn’t so. OTOH, she didn’t go to ‘but I’m not fat’ first, and it was not the sum total of her response.
In fact, she continued to raise her original point about political extremism, noted that the question itself was never dealt with in Ingraham’s rebuttal, and stated flat out that her argument had nothing whatsoever to do with her waistline…and wouldn’t have anything to do with that no matter what she did or didn’t weigh.
She then went on to note that body shaming in lieu of intellectual debate has been pulled on women in both major parties and she’s sick of that.
All in all, I was pretty impressed with McCain’s statement.
Laura Ingraham is the LAST person who should be criticizing anyone else’s appearance or manner of speaking. I’ll stop there, or I’m as bad as she is.
McCain did well enough just to make the point that she should be judged by what she says, not what she looks like. This is 2009 and it’s ridiculous that women STILL have to make this point. What’s really sad is that women are often women’s worst enemies.
devil, it’s not really that women are other women’s worst enemies so much as it is for some women the game is rigged such that the only way to advancement is to put down or oppress other women.
Laura Ingraham is trying to appeal to other conservatives (I imagine) and the only way she can get attention from the boy’s club is to distance herself from other women. Laura gets rewarded with the thin veneer of inclusion for her behavior without really understanding that the behavior hurts all women herself included.
This is also the explanation for Ann Coulter and Phyllis Schlafly and a bunch of other conservative women who seem to publicly hate their own gender.
Is she fat? Wow.. I just saw her on tv yesterday and I just thought she was gorgeous, I didn’t even notice. Her mom’s a fox too! Rawr! :)
Laura sounds like an ass. I read this on the f word and also saw the glamour magazine thing on her. Meghan is gorgeous…and she sounds pretty cool too.
At the risk of getting ridden out of here on a rail, I watch Bill O’Reilly, and I like it. But he did something sh*tty yesterday and it was disappointing. He has been inviting Meghan on his show for a while and she said she would like to appear on the show but then this thing with Ingraham happened and yesterday O’Reilly gave Laura the whole show! So i guess now when Meghan doesn’t want to go on the show they can act all smug like Meghan lied about wanting to appear on the show. Dirty pool, O’Reilly.
Ingraham was lashing out because there was a Republican with the last name McCain who actually had some thoughtful opinions that aren’t in lock-step with the water-carriers like Ingraham, Coulter, Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly & Beck.
She was probably upset, too, that Meghan McCain has a proportional head-to-body ratio, whereas Laura’s enormous “melon” looks like it’s going to snap off the under-nourished frame it’s perched upon:
http://lonestartimes.com/images/2007/10/laughinglaura.JPG
Punchy stated: “O’Reilly gave Laura the whole show!”
Laura Ingraham has been the fill-in person for a while now when O’Reilly is gone (and she’s a regular pundit on the show)… way before the non-story regarding Meghan McCain happened. So, sorry, no “dirty pool” on the part of O’Reilly.
And really, Meghan just sounds deperate for some attention. Sure she’s entitled to her opinion, but that doesn’t mean she has anything thoughtful to bring to the table (IMHO of course).
Well, let me be the first to post after Ms. McCain’s posted pic on twitter showing off her “girls”. I thought that she wanted to be judged by the way she thinks and not by the way she looks! Stupid girl. Hypocite! She has a long way to go before she becomes a real woman, fat, skinny or otherwise. Intelligent women don’t need to stoop to trying to be a sex object in order to receive attention. She needs to go do what other rich girls do who don’t have a real job. She needs to hook up with Paris for advice on that. No doubt she will be in Playboy very soon. How ’bout a sex tape?? Daddy must be bursting with pride!