Not including pregnancy, and related weight gain, who was our heaviest FL?
I’ll be following this thread quite enthusiastically!
I’ve been wondering what kind of website I could put up that’s not been covered three million times already. . .“White House Chubbys”, rank them by weight, guess their dress size, etc.
Think of the possibilities. Discussion boards, email groups, perhaps even trading cards. A regular cottage industry.
aahala, could be fun! You’re right, nobody ever wonders these things.
I don’t know that you’re going to get a definitive answer to this question. You have the definitional problem of “heaviest” vs. “fattest”, since a tall woman will naturally weigh more. But either way, for obvious reasons, there are no published statistics on FL size or weight, and bulky Nineteenth Century fashions make it difficult to judge from a photograph or (worse yet) portrait. Some Nineteenth Century presidents were widowers, which would presumably exclude their wives from this contest, and others had wives who were invalids by the time they took office and were seldom photographed.
Having said all that, I’d nominate Mary Todd Lincoln and Julia Dent Grant as strong candidates for the corpulency prize. Neither one, however, was really humongous. We’ve never had an FL anywhere near as huge as William Howard Taft. First ladies of the televsion era tend even more toward the slender. Barbara Bush, who is by no means obese, would have to be the largest of the post-WWII crowd.
Probably the best way to get a more definitive answer would be to take a stroll through the gowns at the Smithsonian.
Good excuse to go to DC and actually spend time there!
I’ve been googleing to come up with some full size photos of the FL in order to select a candidate.
It’s like pulling teeth, which could be another yet seen site. Dental records of the Presidents.