Does Weight Decide Elections?
By Sarah Wexler, Allure magazine
I hope New Jersey Governor Chris Christie never becomes our nation's President, because of his record of sketchy fraud settlements, offering no-bid contracts to friends, and ideas about paying teachers based on test scores. Yet there's another reason some say Christie could never win-because he's fat.
Related: Is Your Job Making You Fat?
In a recent TV interview, Marc Lamont Hill, a professor of Education and African American Studies at Columbia University, said Christie "doesn't have the body type to win...he's fat." Sure, looks matter: We've long heard that the taller candidate tends to win, and physical attractiveness goes a long way in gaining popularity (Exhibit A: John F. Kennedy; Exhibit B: Sarah Palin).
Related: The Best Way to Lose Weight?
But it seems that fat-bashing is the last publicly "acceptable" type of prejudice; if during the lead-up to the 2008 elections people said Hilary Clinton was unelectable because she was a woman, or Barack Obama because he was African-American, those judgments were more likely whispered privately than loudly proclaimed on TV, as Hill's was.
Isn't it hideously unfair, not to mention dumb, to push aside discussions of Christie's politics in order to focus on his pants size-or do a candidate's looks affect how you vote?
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Photo Credit: Getty Images
