Just over a month before the presidential election, the Trump campaign is doggedly focused on what size they believe women’s bodies should be.
Despite backlash in the press — a round of headlines this week pointed out that the current news cycle isn’t doing Donald Trump any favors with female voters — the GOP presidential nominee and his surrogates won’t stop talking about Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe winner who was publicly shamed for gaining weight after she won the crown in 1996.
It’s just the latest high-profile example of Trump making offensive comments about women’s weight, examples of which are littered throughout the past several decades.
Back in 1996, mainstream news outlets reported that Machado gained weight after “indulging a passion for pasta and cake.” Donald Trump required her to exercise publicly in front of the media in order to keep her crown.
And after Hillary Clinton took the opportunity during Monday’s presidential debate to reference Trump’s treatment of Machado, noting he once called her “Miss Piggy,” the campaign hasn’t been able to let it drop.
Tuesday morning, Trump kept talking about Machado’s weight during an appearance on Fox News, saying she “gained a massive amount of weight” and it was a “real problem” for the Miss Universe pageant. Wednesday evening, he discussed it again with Bill O’Reilly, saying he did the right thing by saving Machado’s job after she “put on so much weight” and she “knew what she was getting into” by entering a beauty contest.
Trump surrogates got in on the game, too. On Wednesday evening, Newt Gingrich defended Trump, telling a room full of people at a Log Cabin Republicans event that “you’re not supposed to gain 60 pounds during the year that you’re Miss Universe.”
It’s unclear what makes Trump and Gingrich qualified to discuss what constitutes an appropriate weight for individual women.
"you're fat" -these guys pic.twitter.com/0KlTT5mVSa
— the blowout (@theblowout) September 29, 2016
While BMI is a wholly imperfect measure of health, Trump’s current height and weight — which he revealed earlier this month on the Dr. Oz Show — technically mean the candidate could be considered clinically overweight.
Regardless, this hardly an isolated incident. Trump has a long history of making disparaging comments about women’s bodies.
Machado isn’t the only Miss Universe contestant who says Trump suggested she was fat. “He was calling some girls some pretty horrible names as well,” Jodie Seal, who competed as Miss Australia the same year that Machado took home the crown, told Inside Edition. “He said to me, ‘suck your stomach in. Suck your gut in.’ He always wanted us to be sexy.”
And, as the Washington Post detailed in a piece published on Wednesday, there are plenty of other examples that reveal Trump’s attitude toward women who apparently weigh more than he deems they should.
Trump called actress Rosie O’Donnell a “fat pig” and said she has a “fat, ugly face.” He said singer Jennifer Lopez has a “fat a — ” and said reality television star Kim Kardashian had “gotten a little large” during her pregnancy. He kept a “fat photo” of one employee whose weight fluctuated in a drawer and told an overweight executive, “you like your candy,” according to the employees. When a reporter complimented his wife, Melania, on her appearance shortly after giving birth, Donald Trump replied: “She’s lost almost all the baby weight.”
In addition to making comments comparing women to pigs and dogs, Trump has sent other signals that communicate he’s comfortable with dehumanizing women. Once, during an 2005 interview with Howard Stern, Trump rated celebrity women’s level of attractiveness on a scale of 0 to 10. When discussing Halle Berry, Trump considered her body parts as separate objects.
“I’ll tell you what. I think she’s got from the mid section to the shoulders — she’s a 10,” Trump said. “The face is a solid 8. And the legs are maybe a little bit less than that.”
Despite the negative reception so far, the Trump campaign appears to be ready to further this particular news cycle. NBC News reporter Anthony Terrell obtained Machado-related talking points that the Trump camp distributed to its surrogates. The talking points emphasize that “Mr. Trump has spent his career promoting women” and encourage surrogates to pivot to bringing up Monica Lewinsky instead.
This, too, is a page out of an old Trump playbook. The Trump campaign has frequently suggested that Hillary Clinton should be held accountable for her husband’s infidelities — playing into the tired sexist trope that women are somehow responsible for bad behavior perpetrated by the men they happen to be romantically connected to.
On Machado’s end, the story isn’t going away anytime soon, either. Right-wing outlets are currently rushing to smear her, calling her character into question because she looks like someone who once appeared in pornography.
On a press call with reporters earlier this week, Machado — who has spoken openly about relapsing into bulimia after Trump publicly shamed her — said that watching Trump run for president has been like “a bad dream.”
“I never imagined 20 years later I’d be in this position,” she said.