NYT condemns right for obsession with ‘thinness’

Unbeknownst to many, the New York Times has a podcast called “The Opinions,” which features columnists, staff writers, guest essayists, and editors diving into various issues and ideas.

In the latest episode titled “Why the Right Is Obsessed with Thinness,” Times opinion editor Meher Ahmad and opinion writer Jessica Grose discussed how being thin and fit is an unhealthy right-wing obsession.

BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales analyzes several audio clips from the interview.

In the first clip, Ahmad opens the podcast with the following preamble: “There’s been a resurgence in explicit ‘be thin’ messaging in culture. With the Ozempic boom, we see the body shaming of actresses like Sydney Sweeney and red carpets that were already filled with thin actresses becoming even thinner. On the right, there’s been a focus on body size that’s sort of been bundled up not just with health and wellness, but with religion, morals, and politics.”

“Being skinny is related to Christianity, I guess,” scoffs Sara.

In the second clip, Grose argues that conservatives are elevating thinness as a response to the body positivity movement.

“I think it’s a reaction to the body positivity movement, which I would say peaked about 10 years ago, and it was the idea that weight is not tied directly to health and that you can be healthy and not real thin. It was never predominant,” she says.

“That’s not what the body positivity movement has ever been,” Sara corrects.

“The leaders of the body positivity movement said things like, ‘Fat is fit, BMI is not a measure of wellness, healthy at every size, body size does not indicate health.”’

“We can have a debate on what people deem beautiful … but you can’t tell me that being morbidly obese is actually healthy, and yet, that is the lie that they tried to put on young women.”

In the third clip, Grose argues that conservative influencers aim to be attractive and physically fit because those endeavors align with conservative values, especially traditional gender roles: “It’s all traditional gender roles, right? I mean that litany of things … like marriage, babies, fitness, protein — it’s all one very narrow image, and anyone who is not conforming to that image is sort of outside the circle.”

“We do see fewer female leaders across the board, I would say Democrats and Republicans, and so the idea that women should be physically smaller goes along with the idea that they are not going to be the ones out front taking up space,” she added.

“It’s just so funny listening to them talk about, oh, conservative women, they just want to be physically smaller so they can take a backseat to all the powerful men. OK, well, I don’t know, I think that we’re doing OK as a whole here,” scoffs Sara, displaying a collage of beautiful conservative women who have large platforms and a lot of influence, including Alex Clark, Riley Gaines, Candace Owens, Lara Trump, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), and Nicole Shanahan, among others.

To hear more audio clips and more of Sara’s analysis, watch the episode above.

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