Just the Same Old Body Shame

June 29, 2017

No bloody makeup or wig

This morning, the Donald, ever the entertainer, started our day by offering public critique of a woman’s appearance. The woman, Mika Brzezinski, is a TV journalist who’s been pretty critical of Trump’s political policies and style lately; so, perhaps, a Trump spitball should have been expected. And to be fair, the Donald didn’t limit his Twitter rant to Mika; he inclusively called her co-host, Joe Scarborough, a psycho. But the Donald aimed his big blast at Mika – accusing her of begging for his attention at Mar-a-Lago while bleeding from a face-lift.

“While bleeding from a face-lift” – WTF?

Yeah, I don’t know what that means either. Calling Joe a psycho is easy to understand, it falls comfortably within playground insult lexicon we’ve come to expect from the Donald. But the blood tinged imagery he uses on women is something else. He used it on Megyn Kelly last year, and got lots of attention. Is that what’s going on here – just attention whoring? Or is there some psycho-sexual complication in the Donald’s personality, where, when angry with women, he sees and, hence, articulates blood?

Or maybe he’s trying to leverage the cultural awkwardness surrounding the female/blood composite to force normalization of that imagery to make the language usage more feminine. Maybe Kellyanne’s right and the Donald’s a militant feminist. Seems doubtful.

Possibly I’m overthinking things again and what Trump intended was just old school body shaming – just Trump leading America towards greatness again by demonstrating how women use to be controlled now that we’re two-hundred-thirty-three post-election days into that direction. But, alluding to a past yet to come seems overly complex for the Donald. So, the mystery remains.

But mostly, the republic finds mysterious how an overweight, balding, homely old guy, who wears too much makeup, gets to body shame anyone. Clearly, we’re heading to a place where bloody irony replaces propriety. Talk about not looking so good!

In Peace and Justice,
osv