Al Roker Was a Total Dick to Natalie Morales About Her Weight

By Madeleine Davies  |  August 15, 2013 | 4:50pm
Latest


Last night on Twitter, Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski posted a photo of herself on a scale, weighing in at 135.9 lbs., with the caption, “My weight. One year ago today I was 118 and felt fat. I feel good about this actually.”

Brzezinski’s struggles with body acceptance have been very public. She recently published a book — Obsessed: America’s Food Addiction — and My Own — in which she admits to a history of bulimia and dangerous eating habits. Tweeting her weight to her 100,00+ followers is a very big step for her (and her publicity team) and it’s a very big deal for women who have long been conditioned to guard how much we weigh, as if making the information public could potentially unravel the universe — like the key in Buffy or the Galaxy in Men in Black.

Anyway, props to Mika. That said, not everybody feels comfortable being that transparent with their weight and that’s okay. Your body is really no one else’s business unless you happen to be A.) sitting on them or B.) letting your ponytail brush against them on the subway.

Which is why Al Roker and — to a lesser extent — Willie Geist need to leave Natalie Morales the fuck alone and stop bullying her to reveal her weight like they did on The Today Show this morning. Morales, who was clearly uncomfortable as the pair wouldn’t stop harassing her, is allowed to keep her weight as private as she chooses, no matter how much it unreasonably bugs her co-hosts.

Interestingly/annoyingly, it’s the men who seem most entertained by Brzezinski’s weight reveal and Morales’ reluctance to do the same. (It’s not just Roker and Geist, either — Joe Scarborough has been yukking it up on Twitter all morning and the laughs in the Today studio are overwhelmingly male.)

“You don’t obsess about it, you let it go,” Roker said, chiding Morales. “You just say what it is and then it’s done. There’s no obsession.” Right, that’s totally how the world works, especially for women! And funnily, the only one who seems truly obsessed with weight in this conversation is Al. Look, Roker — you may be an open book when it comes to your body, but not everybody feels the same way so CHILL OUT.

Ok, now everybody reveal their weight in the comments. JK, I literally don’t care.

 
Join the discussion...