By Lisa Gutierrez
The Kansas City Star
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) Congressional Candidate Cori Bush is clapping back at internet trolls who are trying to body shame her for the size of her hips.
The Kansas City Star
Cori Bush is running for Congress in Missouri against a long-time incumbent in St. Louis.
Yet some people are talking about the size of her hips.
“Her hips are to big,” one man recently wrote on Twitter — and yes, he spelled it like that.
So in social media posts on Sunday, the Democratic candidate hip-checked the “trolls” for their body-shaming ways, earning praise for saying she never sees “comments like this about men.”
“As a candidate I’ve heard my hips are too big, and not just from trolls,” Bush tweeted, adding photos of herself wearing four different outfits.
“‘Wear dark pants.” Well, I look like women in my district, who I serve. If elected, ALL OF THIS goes to Congress. Hips can’t legislate but maybe they should! NO BODY SHAMING #WomenInPolitics! #thesehips Deal.”
First off, tweeted one of the women who applauded Bush’s tweet, “hips have nothing to do with legislation. Second, you look amazing.”
“Take your hips to Congress,” tweeted another woman.
Bush is “running on a platform of ‘jobs, justice, and Medicare for all,’ ” writes the Riverfront Times in St. Louis. She faces three other Democrats in the August 7 primary, including longtime Rep. Lacy Clay (D) in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District.
“She’s a pastor. She’s a nurse. She’s a civil rights activist. And now she’s cemented her place as a modern feminist hero,” the Times writes.
The Cut, a website for women’s news, last week named Bush one of “four more progressive women’s campaigns to watch” after Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat ten-term incumbent Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th Congressional District.
An endorsement from comedian Chelsea Handler on Saturday appears to have put “Pastor Cori” on a supersonic radar, and that’s where some of the negative comments about her appearance began popping up.
“I like this woman. Missouri’s 1st. @CoriBush,” Handler tweeted.
According to the Huffington Post, Bush also talked about body image issues during her unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate in 2016.
At a rally against social injustice she said, “for some reason, my round hips and my dark skin says that I must make less money than my counterparts and I don’t understand that.”
