Imagine sitting before a scrum of reporters while two men discuss your weight-loss goals.
They call you beautiful but videos of a polygamous home having sex togethertalk about how they hope you will look on camera: feminine and soft, weighing somewhere between 125 and 130 pounds.
SEE ALSO: Former Miss Universe Alicia Machado just became Donald Trump's nightmareIt would be hell for almost any woman, and Alicia Machado has attested to that fact. When the former Miss Universe gained weight after winning the crown in 1996, her employer and pageant owner at the time, Donald J. Trump, paraded her before reporters to detail a new fitness regimen and describe her passion for eating.
You May Also Like
Machado, now a U.S. citizen and Hillary Clinton supporter, has spent much of this week talking about how the Republican presidential nominee publicly and privately humiliated her 20 years ago.
Instead of ignoring and denying her claims, Trump appeared on Fox & Friends and said Machado was "the worst," claiming that she'd gained a "massive amount" of weight during her Miss Universe reign. Machado says she gained less than 20 pounds; Trump told the press two decades ago that number was 60 pounds.
By early Friday morning, Trump went on a Twitter tirade against Machado, calling her "disgusting" and claiming she'd appeared in a sex tape, which does not appear to exist. Hours later Machado released a statement calling Trump's remarks "cheap lies with bad intentions." Then Buzzfeedpublished a non-sexual scene from a Playboy soft core pornography video in which Trump appears.
The misogynist spectacle that unfolded on Twitter echoes the one he staged with Machado back on January 28, 1997. Though Trump smiled and joked through the press conference, the message was clear: he considered it his right to lift Machado up or tear her down.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Trump, however, had willing accomplices in the media. Young people who watch the CNN footage today might be appalled by how freely members of the media participated in fat-shaming Machado.
The opening of CNN's web story was also appalling.
"When Alicia Machado of Venezuela was named Miss Universe nine months ago, no one could accuse her of being the size of the universe," wrote Jeanne Moos, then a correspondent for the channel. "But as her universe expanded, so did she, putting on nearly 60 pounds."
At the press conference, reporters in the three-minute clip direct their questions to Trump while Machado nods and grins, occasionally letting her facial expression hint at anger and embarrassment.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
"What is your advice to Alicia," asks one reporter.
“Well I don’t think Alicia needs much advice,” Trump says. “I felt that Alicia was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. It was incredible. Alicia is like me and like a lot of other people. I love to eat, we all love to eat … and she had tremendous pressure put on her with the win and everything else … and some people when they have pressure don’t eat and some people when they have pressure eat to much, like me, like Alicia.”
Referencing his own eating habits seems like a generous move until the conversation turns to Machado's looks prior to and after winning. "When she won the contest, I had never seen anyone more beautiful," Trump says, before noting that she'll attend the pageant "a little heavier than when she won it."
When Trump proceeds to tell some of the reporters in attendance that they have "weight problems," only then do they voice some displeasure with the body-shaming he's peddling.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Contrast that picture with media coverage today. When the Clinton campaign published its video featuring Machado's story on Monday night, it quickly became the subject of outraged Facebook posts and tweets as well as negative coverage for the Trump campaign.
The headline of a lengthy Cosmo profile of Machado read, "Former Miss Universe Alicia Machado Won't Be Defined by Donald Trump's Fat-Shaming." A New York Times story called Machado "shamed and angry" in its headline. Maria Cardona, a Democratic political strategist and Clinton supporter, implored voters not to cast a ballot for a "fat-shaming misogynist" in an op-ed published by The Hill. Even Late Show host Stephen Colbert lambasted Trump for his comments.
"Twenty years ago there wouldn’t have been this kind of backlash."
Media commentary like this was once hard to find outside of the feminist press, says Jennifer Pozner, author of Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TVand executive director of Women In Media and News, an organization that works to increase the presence of women in the public debate.
"Twenty years ago there wouldn’t have been this kind of backlash," Pozner says.
In the 1990s, there was a robust discussion happening within activist and academic circles about the emotional, physical and psychological toll of beauty ideals. Seminal books like The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Womenand Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, for instance, were published in the first half of the decade.
Yet, Pozner says, the media ranks were hardly diverse. And even if a woman held a senior position in a newsroom, that wasn't license to challenge sexist assumptions that framed coverage.
"That was a quick way to get yourself a reputation as someone who 'whines', 'cries' and is a trouble maker," she says.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Now women have more visible roles in newsrooms and often welcome the opportunity to express critical opinions on gender dynamics in their reporting and via social media. Pozner credits this partially to the feminist blogosphere that flourished in the early aughts, injecting public debates with a dose of intersectional analysis of gender and equality.
Despite the progress, however, "gross standards" and "gross representations" of women are still part of in pop culture and sometimes journalism.
"It’s not that we’ve eradicated misogyny," she says.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Indeed, Trump's surrogates, including Newt Gingrich and CNN commentator Kayleigh McEnany both defended his comments about Machado's weight this week.
But the media's response to Machado's story this time indicates something important has changed in the way journalists cover gender. That may be of little consolation to Machado years later, but perhaps it gives young girls hope that casually shaming a woman's body is no longer a deed that goes unpunished.