Can you be too fat to be President?

There’s a new wrinkle in the 2012 presidential race: The idea that you can be too fat to be president.

The issue has gotten a lot of attention in recent weeks alongside discussion that New Jersey governor Chris Christie could be a viable candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. As speculation grows that he could enter the race, pundits are writing about his weight, and asserting that Christie is too fat to be president.

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni did his best Sunday to challenge the weight prejudice directed against Christie (who doesn’t talk about how much he weighs, but has referred to his long-running “struggle” with his weight).

We treat weight as if it is simply a matter of willpower, and equate thinness with virtue and weight with gluttony and slothfulness. Despite all the evidence that weight is much more complex than simple willpower, and is affected by many factors, including genetics, we continue to denigrate the overweight and to value thinness above all else. We act as if being thin is a sign of self-control, and being fat is a sign of no self-discipline. Bruni -- a former food critic for the Times and the author of Born Round, an excellent memoir revolving around eating -- writes that his thinness in college didn’t reflect self-control: “It reflected bulimia and laxatives,” he says.

Ironically, this focus on Christie’s weight occurred during the first Weight Stigma Awareness Week, an effort by the Binge Eating Disorder Association to make people aware of the stigma and discrimination that the overweight face. It’s a reminder of the importance of not making judgments about behavior based on weight.