Lifestyle

Hillary Clinton Nails Response To Teen's Question About Body Image

by Valerie Williams
Image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Hillary Clinton responds to a teen girl’s question about body image

During a recent campaign event, Hillary Clinton answered a teenage girl’s question about body image in the way you’d expect from a future president. Her response is as far away as possible from her opponent, who thinks it’s acceptable to grab women “by the pussy,” and only further drives home that we need to elect her next month.

Not only for our sake, but for our children’s.

It was at a Family Town Hall in Haverford, Pennsylvania hosted by actress Elizabeth Banks that a young woman asked Clinton the following: “At my school, body image is a really big issue for girls my age,” explains Brennan Leach, 15. “I see with my own eyes the damage Donald Trump does when he talks about women and how they look.” She then asked if Clinton could help girls like her understand that “they are so much more than just what they look like?”

Clinton responded by first thanking Leach for her question. She told the teen she was proud of her for asking about this issue saying that Trump “has taken this concern to a new level of difficulty and meanness.” And that would be somewhat of an understatement.

Between the recent footage released of Trump boasting of his ability to sexually assault women because of his money and privilege to the countless incidents of the Republican candidate demeaning women in both his speech and his actions, the way he speaks of women’s bodies is beyond problematic. The most recent and high-profile example being his tweet-storm about 1996 Miss Universe Alicia Machado and her weight.

But Clinton was ready with the perfect answer telling Leach and everyone in the room that, “young women begin to get influenced at earlier and earlier ages” by expectations placed on their bodies and appearances.

After citing the Miss Universe example and suggesting that if Trump takes issue with an actual beauty queen’s appearance than no woman is “good enough,” she explains why we shouldn’t even listen to it. “We can’t take any of this seriously anymore. We need to laugh at it. We need to refute it. We need to ignore it. And we need to stand up to it.”

And the choir said, Amen.

Clinton then spoke of the fact that we won’t all be a Miss Universe, and that’s OK. She ends her response saying, “So let’s be the best we can be. Let’s be proud of who we are.”

Yes, let’s. And let’s fill our daughters with that idea instead of electing a president who views women as nothing more than the sum of their parts, once saying a woman without large breasts “could never be a 10.”

Jesus Christ.

The leader of the free world can’t be someone who so casually says such cruel and damaging things about women. Clinton also pointed to the online bullying many young girls experience, and it’s hard to imagine that problem getting better when the leader of the free world says the very kinds of things we tell our children not to.

Clinton’s answer to this teen’s question was dead-on. Let’s think about what our kids are hearing from the candidates when casting our votes. Because they’re definitely paying attention.

Here is the full video of the Haverford campaign event.