The left’s relentless efforts to denigrate conservatives occasionally results in spectacular friendly fire.
“Thin, White and Right: The Ideal Christian Woman” reads a headline from The New York Times (NYT) published Wednesday. A bold and unexpected assertion from the NYT, to be sure, but hear them out.
The outlet dispatched opinion editor Meher Ahmad and columnist Jessica Grose to dissect “how skinny became a conservative calling card.”
Ahmad seeks to understand “why the right is obsessed with thinness and why that message is winning over women.” It’s a Gordian Knot which could probably be undone with a gentle tug.
The NYT is now referring to being a normal fit person as having a “MAGA body”
Essentially saying that being fat or disgusting is now associated with being left-wing. pic.twitter.com/fxHr6wHrGD
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) April 27, 2025
In short: “The right” is theoretically in pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty. Thinness is beautiful. Women want to be found beautiful. That desire is openly welcomed by most self-identified conservatives.
“And by contrast,” Grose says of the left’s reputation, “Liberals are TikTok activists with five shades of autism, panic attacks and a ring light.”
Female beauty is universal and particular.
In the latter category: foot binding, force-feeding induced obesity, duck lips. Such costly features signal resource abundance. Such features draw from universal beauty by exaggerating signs of health, fertility, and sexual dimorphism. (RELATED: The Biggest Victims Of Fat Supremacy Are Thin Women)
Even Ahmad admits “skinny” is somewhat universal, saying, “In a lot of ways, the desire to be thin is so ubiquitous — across time, across millennia and across the political spectrum.”
The BMI threshold for “thin” varies by onlooker. Start with, “not fat.” Not being fat is associated with less risk in pregnancy. Not being fat is associated with youth, which in turn, indicates fertility. Not being fat in a country with cheap and plentiful food indicates certain psychological traits which one might want their own children to inherit. Not to mention the benefits conferred by picking a mate with reasonable self-control and conscientiousness.
Ahmad questions if “these conservative influencers” are “unique in promoting thinness,” or if they’re “just part of the general environment right now, which is kind of OK with being unabashedly pro-skinny?”
“They’re just co-opting what’s already in the water … But healthy was always synonymous with thinness in the mainstream, and also it’s very white,” Grose says.
The National Museum of African American History & Culture wants to make you aware of certain signs of whiteness: Individualism, hard work, objectivity, the nuclear family, progress, respect for authority, delayed gratification, more. (via @RpwWilliams)https://t.co/k9X3u4Suas pic.twitter.com/gWYOeEh4vu
— Byron York (@ByronYork) July 15, 2020
Add “healthy” and “thin” to the list of white accolades published by The Smithsonian in 2020. Those included “rugged individualism,” “self-reliance,” “objective, rational linear thinking,” valuing hard work, and “delayed gratification.”
The left’s skill in racism approaches heights white supremacists only dream of achieving.
Proceed from the belief that thinness is “very white.” Surely, Ahmad and Grose have piled on the pounds in solidarity with the world’s marginalized? (RELATED: Outrage At Sydney Sweeney’s Blonde, Busty Looks Sums Up Why Lefties Are Losing The Culture War)
That does not appear to be the case.
Ahmad slips in a story from her time as a foreign correspondent in Pakistan, where she attended a Ramadan boot camp. This entailed exercising intensively and fasting during the daylight hours, “which by the way, in the process of which I lost like an unhealthy amount of weight in a very short amount of time … I also found that the appeal of religion itself in a lot of ways is that it gives you a moral set of guidelines to navigate a very complicated world.”
It’s the quintessential female digression. “Oh, and did I mention how skinny I was?” Ahmad frames the weight loss in sympathetic terms, but her tone is irrelevant to drawing attention to her incredible thinness.
Grose counters with her own allusions to being in shape.
NPR reported on the “cousin of diet culture” known as “healthism, which is the idea that we have to be healthy” — as if that was a bad thing. pic.twitter.com/Z6UidTD8xI
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 2, 2025
“I’ve written before about my obsession with Orangetheory and I often joke that I’m in a cult … It’s all a spectrum of behavior and I’m not sitting here acting like I am not completely ruined by diet culture,” she says. “I always think it’s just it’s too late for me. I read too many magazines in the ‘90s and I saw too many pictures of Kate Moss in Wellies at Glastonbury.”
It may be too late for Grose to overcome her proximity to the ideal female form, but the youth are the future. She should take heart in knowing young women are super fat.
Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatSandovalDC
