As many will remember Meghan McCain in one of her latest blogpost was quite critical of Ann Coulter and others of her agressive/ultraconservative type in the republican party
This naturally led to many counter-attacks from those conservatives. That of course is acceptable.
Laura Ingraham however reacted in a less acceptable and respectable way:
Instead of intellectually debating our ideological differences about the future of the Republican party, Ms. Ingraham resorted to making fun of my age and weight, in the fashion of the mean girls in high school. I responded on twitter by saying "To all the curvy girls out there, don’t let anyone make you feel bad about your body. I love my curves and you should love yours too."
Meghan then tells a little about how her weight influenced her adolescence.
I have been teased about my weight and body figure since I was in middle school, and I decided a very long time ago to embrace what God gave me and live my life positively, attempting to set an example for other girls who may suffer with body image issues.
We all know weight issues can be hard to deal with for teenage girls, and when your mother is a former beauty queen who still has much of a model body, I imagine it might be even more difficult. You will tend to compare yourself to your mother, as will others, and being bigger than your mother may not be what a young girl wants.
Meghan McCain however seems to have handled this very wisely and appears to be both physically and mentally strong and healthy.
She goes on to discussing what she calls image-oriented bullying of public women in our society, both female politicians (and their wives) and other women.
Cindy McCain of course was critized for being too skinny and Hillary Clinton got criticism for her style (allthough both of them got a lot of admiration also). Meghan herself got a lot of criticism for being too fat.
Meghan is also critical to the media who chose to report on Lauras comments (which would otherwise only be known to her handful of radio listeners and soon forgotten).
The focus of public women´s appearance is hardly to be avoided (and many will know that Meghan´s own father has contributed to this in one of the most ugly ways (ref.Chelsea Clinton, Janet Reno).
I think however when women like Meghan dare to speak out about this things (and it´s not always easy to speak about your own appearance and weight in public) they deserve our respect and solidarity. Of course, with her blogpost she draws even more attention to her weight/appearance, but sometimes things need to be said, and Meghan has nothing to be ashamed of and is lucky to be an attractive young woman.