Article content continued

His remark was dumb and insensitive, though his observation was also valid: some people will think Hoffman’s weight undermines her credibility as health minister. This is, unfortunately, the laziest form of identity politics, wherein male politicians cannot talk about abortion because they don’t have fallopian tubes, and Barack Obama has no authority to lecture Americans about health insurance because he’s a smoker, and Justin Trudeau should not talk about the struggles of the middle class because he was born with a silver spoon. It’s a familiar type of ad hominem attack, one espoused both in the political arena and out, though it’s rarely as viscerally mean as the one aired by Lien, especially coming from someone on the inside. When they are discussed, they’re whispered, not posted.

The suggestion, however, that this had something to do with the fact that Hoffman is a woman — which was the focus of a CBC report Tuesday — is utter nonsense. For one, there’s the parallel case of Quebec’s Minister of Health Gaétan Barrette, who is overweight and also a doctor, and who was the subject of an online petition last year that called on him to lose weight, which drew more than 9,500 signatures.

Then there’s former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, whose fat was a recurring theme in both print and media during his first election campaign and after, when the Globe and Mail ran a piece called, “Rob Ford’s not popular despite being fat. He’s popular because of it,” and Now Magazine issued a cover with his head photoshopped onto a hairy, portly, naked form. In 2012, when he was supposed to be on a diet, Ford was caught on video entering a KFC, and the Toronto Star ran with the story as if Russian troops were just spotted for the first time in Ukraine. And the following month, when Ford got into a tousle with one of their reporters on his property, the paper ran an editorial cartoon with the caption, “Mayor Chases, Catches, And Eats Reporter.” If anything, there’s less of a taboo around talking about male politicians’ bodies, not more.