Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado claims that she has had to live with the agony of a traumatizing experience with Donald J. Trump, and what he did to her after she won the prestigious title in 1996.
Machado claims that Trump repeatedly shamed for gaining weight while he was an executive producer for the beauty pageant nearly 20 years ago, according to The New York Times. After her Miss Universe victory, when she was a teenager, Trump was insistent upon accompanying her to the gym, where dozens of cameramen and reporters would watch as she exercised.
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“I was sick – anorexia and bulimia for five years,” Machado recalled in an interview with The New York Times in May. “I was 18. My personality wasn’t created yet. I was just a girl.”
Hillary Clinton made sure to highlight this story in the first presidential debate on Monday night. “One of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest. He loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them,” Secretary Clinton stated.
“And he called this woman ‘Miss Piggy.’ Then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping,’ because she was Latina,” Clinton continued. “Donald, she has a name: Her name is Alicia Machado. She has become a U.S. Citizen, and you can bet she’s going to vote this November.”
On Tuesday morning, Trump acknowledged pressuring Machado to shed some weight. He said that it was her job to remain in peak physical shape as Miss Universe.
“She gained a massive amount of weight and it was a real problem,” Mr. Trump told Fox News.
Machado claims that the experience with the Republican Presidential nominee has had a long-term impact on her life. “Over the past 20 years,” she explained, “I’ve gone to a lot of psychologists to combat this.”
While the incident may have happened nearly 20 years ago, Machado says she can still feel the impact of the body shaming.
[H/T New York Times]
