Off the Sidelines

by Kirsten Gillibrand

  I lost ten pounds in those five days, which I felt very virtuous about, until I gained it all back the following week. I can’t say I looked any different in my graduation dress, and in the end I had made a bad bargain. With that fast, I stopped eating according to common sense and began buying into the idea that if I looked hard enough, I could find a magic formula that would make me thinner.

  In college, I stayed focused on sports and didn’t think twice about ordering a pizza at 11:00 P.M. to fuel late-night studying. I did see a nutritionist once during freshman year, because I was determined not to gain the “freshman fifteen.” But I played sports two or three hours a day, so I really had nothing to worry about.

  My dad loved coming to my games. He made it to most of my tennis matches in high school, and he followed my squash matches through college. He also noticed my insecurities about my weight and zeroed in on them. If we were out to dinner, he would say, “Don’t eat the bread.” When I’d call home on Sunday nights from Dartmouth, he’d ask some version of the same three questions: “How’s school?” “How’s squash [or some other extracurricular activity]?” “How’s your weight?” I would blow off that last question with a simple “Great.” I didn’t like the scrutiny, but, looking back, I can see that I invited it in a way. I recently read all the letters I sent home from my sophomore summer in China, and interspersed between chronicles of hiking along the Great Wall and drinking toad venom as a remedy for food poisoning, I mentioned at least twice that I was losing weight. I even announced that while visiting a professor’s home for a special dinner, I tried his scale and learned I’d lost eight or nine pounds. “I’m sure it’s broken, but still—can you believe it?” I wrote. “Soy Bean Milk—the New Way to Diet—maybe I’ll write a book someday.”

  No wonder he asked.

  For law school, I moved from the mountain town of Hanover, New Hampshire, to car-crazy, body-obsessed Los Angeles, where I started spending all my free time running the four-mile loop around the UCLA campus and playing tennis with whomever I could find. I weighed only 125 pounds (ultimately my ideal “wedding weight”), but I wanted to be thinner—just five pounds would be enough. This was clearly desirable, or at least that’s what Los Angeles culture led me to believe, because whenever I opened up a section of the Los Angeles Times, I’d see ads for gyms, plastic surgery, and diet plans. I wish I could say that I was self-aware enough to have resisted the message, but I was very impressionable. Instead, I tried the then-fashionable approach of eating a nonfat diet, which worked somewhat but didn’t get my weight down to where I wanted it to be. Next, my roommate and I both signed up for a packaged diet meal plan, which also worked a bit but was too gross to stick with for long. So I went back to basics and refocused on being athletic.

  Decades of research show that girls who participate in sports have higher self-esteem, less depression, more pride in their physical and social selves, and better health. A 2013 study from Ernst & Young even found that 67 percent of women in executive positions participated in sports as working adults. I knew athletics were central to my self-confidence and comfort with my body, but I was still susceptible to outside opinions. One evening, as I was slow-dancing with a boyfriend at a wedding, he said, “Is that your stomach?” Ouch. That was a blow to my ego and the death knell for our four-year relationship. At the time I was studying for the bar exam, running four miles a day, and he was making cracks about my belly (which, even at my tiniest, I’ve always had)? I was embarrassed. Then I was pissed. How could someone who supposedly loved me say something so superficial and mean? What was he going to say when I was pregnant, old, or fat?

  A couple of years later, as a young associate, I went on a very strict diet: just vegetables, small amounts of fruit, no refined carbs, a little lean protein. I also didn’t eat until I was hungry, which was at 2:00 P.M., due to all the coffee and diet soda I was consuming back then. Not the healthiest plan, but it worked ridiculously well. I lost twenty pounds over several months and had to take all my clothes in at least two sizes.

  One night around that time, a few partners took a dozen or so associates, including me, out to an elegant dinner. We all needed the reward and acknowledgment for the grueling hours we’d been working. But when one of the partners rose and started speaking about my contributions, he spent all of thirty seconds praising my hard work and three times as long discussing my new haircut and how great I looked. Make no mistake: I appreciate a compliment as much as the next person, and if he had told me privately, I wouldn’t have cared. But in front of my colleagues I felt undermined, thinking, “After all that work, you’re talking about my hair—are you kidding me?!” I’d applied all of my intellect to that case, worked day and night, put in tons of travel, canceled vacations. Now, instead of recognizing my leadership, smarts, or dedication, he was praising my appearance. This would never have happened to a man. No partner would have raised her glass and said, “Wow, Joe, you must be working out really hard. Looking good!”

  That night at the dinner, everyone laughed, and all the women exchanged knowing glances. We’d all been there at one time. I was uncomfortable and peeved, but I brushed it off. Everyone in that room knew me and my work well, so my reputation wouldn’t suffer. But had there been strangers or new colleagues present, I would have been concerned. Comments about appearance belittle women professionally. Sadly, that’s the culture we still live in. We need to start trying to change it by calling out undercutting remarks and educating our peers, but we also have to find a way to navigate the current reality. It’s a tricky balance. Having more women in leadership roles will certainly help. Back in my twenties and early thirties, I didn’t know how to deal with it.

  Around the time of that disconcerting work dinner, I met Jonathan. I had a great fitness routine going through our courtship, eating well plus running and lifting weights. But after I settled into married life, I was happier than I’d been in years, which for me translated into going out to dinner and drinking a bit more. I’ve always loved good food. My favorite nights out with Jonathan are still spent at a French bistro consuming steak, salad, and red wine. So before we tried to start a family, I decided, once again, that I should lose a few pounds. I cut out carbs, and the weight came off without a big hassle; three months later I was trim and pregnant. But we all know how this one goes: I was thirty-six years old and I’d messed up my metabolism. I gained a pound or two a week while carrying Theo, seventy in all.

  I was considering running for Congress during that pregnancy, so I spent a lot of time meeting new people to discuss my prospects, build relationships, and help other candidates. I think I shocked a few new acquaintances by being so large and pregnant, but I didn’t really care. I felt only slightly more self-conscious after Theo was born. Sure, I was thirty pounds heavier than I was pre-pregnancy, but I looked like someone who’d just recently had a baby—no shame in that. I was also consumed with trying to figure out how to handle being a mom while pushing forward into a political career. I had no spare energy to stress about my weight. I was just like any new mother: overwhelmed and absolutely certain I was never going to be in Vogue.

  But I was in for a rude awakening. A year and a half after Theo was born, when I decided to run for Congress, my looks, which I still wasn’t thinking much about, became fodder for attack. Good, bad, ugly—it didn’t matter. On the one hand, my opponent referred to me as “Just a pretty face!” And on the other, he used in his mailers the ugliest photographs he could find and even tinted my face green. In one picture he used from an outdoor press conference, my hair is blowing wildly, my expression is angry. Combined with the witchy skin tone, I presented the perfect embodiment of what many people fear: the crazed, power-hungry woman. I let this roll off me, certain that it would backfire, and it did. But it made me realize that in politics, beautiful and ugly are two sides of the same coin. People will use appearance to take women down, and they’ll direct their message toward the positive or the negative depending on what’s most expedient. A po
ll sponsored by Name It. Change It., a project of the Women’s Media Center and She Should Run, found that all kinds of comments on female candidates’ appearance hurt what voters think of them.

  In 2007, during my first term in Congress, Jonathan and I decided we wanted to have a second baby. It took a fight for us to get that out into the open, but once there, the desire to build a larger family trumped everything else in our lives, so I didn’t pause to question what it would be like to be pregnant in office, as the answer wasn’t going to impact our plans. Besides, there was almost nobody to ask. Only five women had been pregnant in Congress before.

  This time around, being pregnant was more complicated. I had been pre-gestational diabetic with Theo, and my doctor was concerned that I could be pre-diabetic again, so I preemptively went on a low-glycemic diet (no refined sugars, always consuming proteins with complex carbs at the same time) and started exercising every day. This was fantastic, as I’d lost touch with the tennis, soccer, and squash player in me and I hadn’t run regularly in years. For the first time as a working mother, I blocked out exercise time on my schedule and instructed my team to protect it. What a revelation! Granted, this was easy to implement and stick with, because I viewed taking care of my body while pregnant as protecting the health and wellbeing of my child. Before then, something always came first: a meeting, a phone call, anything related to family. I had a hard time saying no.

  Adding to the fun of blowing up in the public eye, the women’s congressional gym happened to be closed for renovations, so I had to work out in the men’s. Poor Congressman Collin Peterson was writing the farm bill that season, and not a day passed when someone wasn’t standing by him in a sweat-damp shirt, bending his ear. As for me over on the elliptical: Many of my older male colleagues didn’t know what to say but still felt compelled to offer advice, such as this gem: “Good thing you’re working out, because you wouldn’t want to get porky!” Thanks, asshole.

  Wherever I went, my male colleagues seemed to comment. I couldn’t ride an elevator in the Capitol without hearing, “Oh, my God, are you going to explode? Are you going to have that baby right now?!” The House chambers weren’t much better. I had my private Shangri-La in the Lindy Boggs Room, but in the cloakroom, where I’d taken Theo for hot dogs, I couldn’t even eat the only cookie I’d allowed myself all month without hearing, “You shouldn’t eat that.” Each night I’d regale Jonathan with something new. The prize comment came from a Southern congressman who said, as he held my arm, walking me down the center aisle of the House chamber, “You know, Kirsten, you’re even pretty when you’re fat.” I believed his intentions were sweet, even if he was being an idiot. I wanted to put out a bulletin saying, “Please keep your thoughts about my pregnant body to yourself.”

  After Henry was born, my sacred gym time vaporized in a cloud of obligations. I barely had time to get dressed and dry my hair. Then, on December 1, 2008, as I strolled through Disney World with my family, Hillary was appointed secretary of state, and my whole life kicked into yet a higher gear. I was sworn in on January 26, 2009. Having never lost all the baby weight from Theo and now carrying more from Henry, I set out, larger than I’d ever been in my non-pregnant life, to meet the entire state. Along the way, I received an education in what New Yorkers thought of plus-sized me. One day I met with a labor leader to get his advice on how best to introduce myself to the unions and win their support in the special election I’d have to win a year and a half later. He said, “When I first met you in 2006, you were beautiful—a breath of fresh air. To win this election, you need to be beautiful again.” I nearly choked.

  It took every bit of my self-control not to react visibly. I wanted to tell the guy to go screw himself, then leave the table and go home and cry. Instead, I changed the subject to something neutral, like what meetings I needed to set up with which leaders. But after his comment, I was barely listening. Later, Jess, who’d been with me, asked if I was okay. I told him I was fine, but the truth is that I wasn’t. I was worn down and depressed by the superficiality of it all, the endless discussions of what I looked like instead of what I thought.

  Still, that wasn’t the end of it. A month or so later I went out to dinner in New York City with a close friend who is savvy in politics. He tried to speak gingerly. “So …” he said, clearly reluctant to say what he was about to say. “How would you feel if your picture was on the front page of the New York Post looking like this?”

  I lost it right there, launching into a tirade of expletives that would have made my grandmother proud. “Fuck you. Fuck you. You’re a fucking asshole. You go and have two children.”

  “Oooookkaaay,” he said. I stormed off. We never spoke of it again.

  Hillary Clinton, who has experienced this for so many years, has reached a point where she’s risen above it. She recently defined herself on her Twitter bio as: “Wife, mom, lawyer, women & kids advocate, FLOAR, FLOTUS, US Senator, SecState, author, dog owner, hair icon, pantsuit aficionado, glass ceiling cracker, TBD …” In May 2012, she told Jill Dougherty of CNN, “I feel so relieved to be at the stage I’m at in my life right now, Jill, because if I want to wear my glasses, I’m wearing my glasses. If I want to pull my hair back, I’m pulling my hair back. And at some point it’s just not something that deserves a whole lot of time and attention, and if others want to worry about it, I’ll let them do the worrying for a change.”

  Listening to her has been a great help to me, as I imagine it has been to most female candidates. She has perspective on what we’re all going through, what she calls “the kind of almost schizophrenia you live in when you put yourself out there.” During a 2014 lecture at UCLA, she told a story about walking into a political meeting in Texas in 1972. “I had to walk down a center aisle and make my pitch about registering voters. Literally, out of my right ear I hear, ‘I really hate that dress she is wearing.’ And out of my left ear, I hear, ‘I like that dress she is wearing.’ ” Retelling the story, Hillary sounded at peace and self-aware. When I was first appointed to the Senate, I wasn’t there yet. The political operator’s and labor leader’s comments stung, in part because I knew I was too heavy for my own health. At that point, I wanted to be precisely where I was in my life—great job, supportive husband, two kids. But I had let my physical self go. I was fifty pounds heavier than I was before I had children. That was enough.

  Thankfully, around that time, my college roommate Elizabeth Thompson suggested that I start playing sports again. I bought a new tennis racquet, a new squash racquet, and new workout clothes, and I found tennis and squash coaches, figuring that investing a little would help make my resolve stick. I also got my daily workout back on my work calendar, in figurative indelible ink, telling my staff that the first hour of every day after I dropped my kids at school had to be for exercise, no debate about it. This turned out to be good for everybody. Exercise made me a more effective worker, a nicer boss, a calmer mom, and a happier spouse. I also hired a nutritionist and began to write down everything I ate. My health started moving in a positive direction again.

  Still, within a few months, I had the worst looks-related stumble I’d had in years. Sonia Sotomayor was to be confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I was going to introduce her. This was a major milestone for women, Latinos, and the Court, and I was especially delighted because I’d recommended Sonia to Senator Schumer and the president even before Justice David Souter’s seat opened up.

  Until that point, I’d been an orthodox adherent to the professional rules about how to dress. From first through fourth grades, I wore my Catholic school uniform (blue jumper, white blouse, navy blue sweater, navy blue or white socks, and navy blue shoes). At fifth grade, the uniform switched to a plaid skirt with the same blouse, sweater, socks, and shoes. My sister fought with my mom about wanting to alter her uniform and take inches off her hemline, but not me. As a lawyer, I erred on the side of safety again in nicely tailored but conservative suits. As a politician, I followed all the rules I’
d learned in campaign-training school, right down to no dangly earrings and nothing too shiny or complicated for TV appearances. (They wig out the camera.) I’m a person who doesn’t mind a uniform. As I see it, if people are talking about your clothes, hair, makeup, or body, they are not talking about your ideas, message, or priorities. Remember the news coverage anytime Hillary’s hair looked different or she wore something unexpected? No one reported on a word she said.

  A few months before Sonia’s confirmation, I went shopping at Macy’s. Normally, as you know, I’m a black, gray, or navy suit kind of person. Crazy for me is a royal blue. That day, I’d given myself only forty-five minutes to shop, and I had about ten left when I stumbled on some fancy suits, brightly colored and feminine, the kind you might wear to a wedding. They looked so pretty on the rack that I didn’t even try them on. I just found my size (16) and bought four—turquoise, green silk, pink with silver thread, and a cream-and-gold brocade. My mom and the ladies of upstate New York loved them, thrilled by the bright hues. “Finally! You’re wearing some color!” they said. “They bring out your eyes.”

  On the morning of the Sotomayor confirmation, I met up with President Obama and accompanied him to New York for a speech he was giving to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the NAACP. I wore a black suit—big surprise. (Actually, I made extra sure to wear black that day because black photographs well on me, and I was hoping for a picture of me with President Obama getting off Marine One, his helicopter.) This was the first time I’d traveled with the president. We talked about his speech and how historic it was for him. He asked me about my family.

  After landing back in D.C., I wanted to change into something celebratory for the confirmation hearing, so I ran home and put on one of my new special-occasion suits, the cream-and-gold brocade. Then I rushed over to the Senate chambers for the swearing-in, where I sat at a table next to Sonia, who was looking very stately and refined in her blue suit. The moment I started to introduce her and the cameras began snapping, I knew I’d made a serious wardrobe mistake. The white flashes were glinting off the brocade. I felt as sparkly and out of place as a Christmas tree in May. Who could possibly have paid any attention to my words? The New York Times confirmed this, posting on their blog, The Caucus, “Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, clad in a satin brocade suit that practically casts a glare around her on television …”