Maybe I'm super sensitive to weight issues these days, as I've already acknowledged, and I expect to have moments of body image disconnects when perusing Perez or Trent, but sometimes, I'm just reading something entirely innocuous and get blindsided. Take, for example, this great article on Chelsea Clinton in this month's issue of New York. I was reading, reading, reading and then, blammo! Knocked off my block with this paragraph:

"There were these girls around her--it was their mission to have Chelsea be their friend," noted a student who knew her. "The mean girls positioned themselves around Chelsea when everybody was deciding who to live with, and I remember they pushed this sweet girl out of the group. She ended up gaining 25 pounds."

Wait, what?

Clearly, the speaker is implying that being shunned somehow caused this "sweet girl" to gain weight, but really? Really? This appeal to our emotions, so that we really understand just how mean these mean girls were, for god's sake, because someone is now scarred for life in the worst way possible: she's carrying an additional 25 pounds of scorn on her sweet girl frame! "Gaining 25 pounds" is apparently somewhere above "crying herself to sleep for two weeks" but below "cutting her wrists vertically" on the mental anguish ladder. This is when we should all be clutching our pearls.Is it fair to blame the mean girls for her weight gain? I mean, unless they were swapping her toothpaste for minty Crisco, isn't turning weight gain into victimization removing the ownership of our own bodies? Can't this girl just be responsible for her own weight gain and move on?

There's a kind of double misogyny happening in that statement. Not only is the sweet girl in question so out of control with her own body that any fluctuations in it must clearly be the result of emotional eating (and not, say, the Freshman 15, a lifestyle change, a lack of exercise due to big course load, or maybe gaining weight to achieve a healthy BMI) and also that the other girls should have somehow saved her from this fate. I don't want to defend the so-called mean girls because damn, I know they exist, but man! Do you need a hug or something?

But maybe I'm being unfair and don't fully understand the connection between the two statements. Like, does exposure to Chelsea Clinton keep one slim and trim? Does Chelsea schedule Twinkie interventions with her closest friends? Does proximity to Chelsea Clinton somehow increase your metabolism? Wouldn't it be fun if the former first daughters all had some kind of healthy super power like that? Maybe being friends with Amy Carter means you don't have to wear sunscreen because you become immune to melanoma? And if you go swimming with Trish Nixon, you wouldn't have to wait 30 minutes after eating, you could just dive right in! And Jenna Bush's friends are all automatically protected from STDs and hangnails! Okay, maybe not.