Weight prejudice?

I've heard some very strange explanations for why some women who supported Hillary are saying they won't vote for Obama in November. Maureen Dowd offers the latest entry in the genre below:

clipped from www.nytimes.com Despite Obama’s wooing, some women aren’t warming. As Carol Marin wrote in The Chicago Sun-Times, The Lanky One is like an Alice Waters organic chicken — “sleek, elegant, beautifully prepared. Too cool” — when what many working-class women are craving is mac and cheese. In The Wall Street Journal, Amy Chozick wrote that Hillary supporters — who loved their heroine’s admission that she was on Weight Watchers — were put off by Obama’s svelte, zero-body-fat figure. “He needs to put some meat on his bones,” said Diana Koenig, a 42-year-old Texas housewife. Another Clinton voter sniffed on a Yahoo message board: “I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.”

The Carol Marin column cited by Dowd was similarly perplexing -- the woman she spoke to (and treated as representative of a large group of women) clearly was angry and hostile towards Obama, but it wasn't clear what fueled her sense of grievance. I heard a professional woman with advanced degrees declaring that neither she nor her parents were going to vote for Obama. Why? Because it was Hillary's turn, not his. I can't know what really is motivating this animus towards Obama, but "he's too thin" or "it's not his turn" sound like excuses kids give for not being nice to another kid on the playground. (Actually, my kids wouldn't be caught dead with such a lame excuse.)

Late in her column, Dowd may be hinting that race is at play in the reactions she's describing, but, if she is, it's obscure. She's too enamored of her extended parallel to Pride & Prejudice to make a clear suggestion that the problem is not Obama's character or actions, but his DNA. That's too bad. She might have made a contribution to a serious discussion about the complexities of race in this campaign (and this country). Instead, she paints a picture of these Hillary-supporters that makes us hope they'll spend future election days at weigh-ins rather than at the polling place.