At the end of last night’s first presidential debate, all my fellow Venezuelan friends could talk about was the moment when Hillary Clinton uttered the name Alicia Machado to Donald Trump. “One of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest,” Clinton said. “He called this woman Miss Piggy, then he called her Miss Housekeeping, because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name. Her name is Alicia Machado.”
For the majority of Americans, Machado’s name will not ring a bell. But almost every Venezuelan, myself included, remembers when the former Miss Venezuela won the title of Miss Universe in 1996. (After all, beauty pageants are somewhat of a national sport over there.) We also could never forget how humiliating it was to see Machado later fat-shamed in front of international press by Trump.
After earning her crown, Machado, who was 20 years old at the time, famously gained a few pounds. In several recent interviews, she revealed her weight gain caused Trump to start calling her Miss Piggy and an “eating machine.” “She weighed 118 pounds or 117 pounds and she went to 160 or 170,” he said during one press conference. “So this is somebody who likes to eat.”
Trump’s strategy for dealing with Machado’s weight gain was to parade her in front of 90 media outlets while they photographed and filmed her working out next to a trainer. “I was about to cry in that moment with all the cameras here,” Machado told The New York Times. “I said, ‘I don’t want to do this, Mr. Trump.’ He said, ‘I don’t care.’” A newspaper headline later dubbed the awkward PR stunt “Beauty Treated Like a Beast.” “It had turned into a circus,” Machado recalled in a Clinton ad that was released on Monday night after the debate. “The joke of the fat Miss Universe. A joke that caused me a lot of pain.”
Machado has since become an American citizen and recently shared on Instagram that she intends to vote for Clinton on November 8. “All my power and my support with my next president @hillaryclinton. Miss Housekeeping and Miss Piggy can vote @realdonaldtrump.” Touché, Alicia.
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