Oh, the New York Times has done it again — and this time, they’ve managed to turn an op-ed on “diet culture” into an accidental roast of their own side. On Wednesday, they ran a piece titled “Thin, White and Right: The Ideal Christian Woman” — a headline so spicy you could sprinkle it on chicken wings. Opinion editor Meher Ahmad and columnist Jessica Grose were dispatched to crack the supposed code of why “the right is obsessed with thinness” and why that message is “winning over women.”
Here’s the gist of their argument: conservatives embrace beauty, and in their eyes, thinness equals beauty. That, according to Ahmad and Grose, makes “skinny” a kind of cultural signifier for the right. They frame this like they’ve uncovered a secret, but really? It’s not that deep. As the piece itself begrudgingly admits, the desire to be thin has been “ubiquitous — across time, across millennia and across the political spectrum.” Translation: wanting to be in shape isn’t a GOP conspiracy; it’s a human thing.
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
Of course, Grose couldn’t resist taking a swing at her own side in the process, contrasting conservative women with “liberals [who] are TikTok activists with five shades of autism, panic attacks and a ring light.” Ouch. That line might sting more than any conservative critique.
The article goes on to treat thinness as a sort of “coded whiteness.” Grose declares that “healthy was always synonymous with thinness in the mainstream, and also it’s very white.” Add “healthy” and “thin” to the Smithsonian’s 2020 list of supposedly “white” attributes, right next to rugged individualism and delayed gratification. At this point, the left’s obsession with racializing basic human traits is approaching parody.
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
Ahmad even slips in a personal anecdote about a Ramadan “boot camp” she attended in Pakistan, where she exercised and fasted so rigorously that she dropped a significant amount of weight. Her takeaway? Religion offers moral guidelines for a complicated world — but not before she made sure to humble-brag about how skinny she got. Grose chimes in with her own nod to fitness, sharing her “obsession with Orangetheory” and lamenting how ‘90s diet culture “ruined” her.
So, what are we left with? A piece that sets out to expose some sinister conservative “thinness obsession” but mostly shows that even its authors are caught up in the very ideals they’re critiquing. It’s almost comedic: decry thinness as a right-wing tool, then slip in your own personal progress report on hitting your goal weight.
Then-PBS White House Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor characterized President Trump’s patriotic 2020 Mount Rushmore speech as a love letter to “white resentment” that promoted the “myth of America.” pic.twitter.com/lTobwlTl0s
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 2, 2025