Senior Sen. Inouye told Kirsten Gillibrand he liked his girls 'chubby,' report says
Male Senate colleagues felt free to comment on New York senator's post-baby weight, according to memoir
The senior senator who once told New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand not to lose "too much weight" because he liked his girls "chubby" was the late Hawaii Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, the New York Times reports.
In a memoir published earlier this month, Gillibrand revealed that some of her male colleagues in Congress felt free to comment about her weight.
“Don’t lose too much weight now," one "of my favorite older members of the Senate" told her, squeezing her waist. "I like my girls chubby!”
The 47-year-old did not reveal the names of her boorish colleagues in the book, but the Times reports that particular exchange was with Inouye.
Gillibrand's book, "Off the Sidelines," was released earlier in the month.
Inouye, who died in 2012, was the second-longest-serving senator in U.S. history and "a reliable supporter of women’s rights," the Times noted. But in 1992, he was accused by his hairdresser of forcing her to have sex with him.
For her part, Gillibrand told People she wasn't offended by the comments.
"It was all statements that were being made by men who were well into their 60s, 70s or 80s," Gillibrand said. "They had no clue that those are inappropriate things to say to a pregnant woman or a woman who just had a baby or to women in general."
