Chelsea wants Bill to lose 15 lbs

[something.new.every.day]

Since this is a story from Bill Clinton to someone else, it's really hard to tell if she was being a BZ or not.

I don't think based on a anecdote from Bill Clinton about something Chelsea said to him that he clearly finds funny, we can deduce that Chelsea is a bridezilla. She may be, but it just seems like itching to paint someone in the worst light when there are other more charitable ways to view the whole thing.

This.

[BowledOverMaiden]

Really, who cares how Bill Clinton looks in some wedding photos.
He looks good to me at any weight.
Some people (not me) arn't fortunate enough to have their fathers attend their wedding, and I thought with his recent health scares, she should be lucky he is here to attend hers.

[magdalena]

Really, who cares how Bill Clinton looks in some wedding photos.
He looks good to me at any weight.
Some people (not me) arn't fortunate enough to have their fathers attend their wedding, and I thought with his recent health scares, she should be lucky he is here to attend hers.

I can totally see your point here and agree that weight has nothing to do with my rel@tionship with my parents.

But, some of us - and from the sound of that quote Chelsea and Bill might belong in that group - have a very teasing rel@tionship with their dads and can use that to encourage.
I know my parents and I all joked about getting thin so we'd be "fabulous as we should be" in the pictures. My MIL and I joke about feeding her son and husband our share of goodies, so we'd look thinner in comparison (we were both trying to eat better, and the men, well, that family seems to have this men-are-all-thin-and-HUNGRY-no-matter-what-they-eat gene). All very jokey, but something any one of us might have mentioned if someone had been interested enough to interview us about the wedding.

And all that aside, because I want to have my mom and dad there when I have kids one day, and hope to have them around so my kids can get to know them well, and heck, if it was up to me, they should meet their great-grandkids one day (I know, I'm more than pushing it, not being pregnant and parents being in their 60s, but I don't want to be realistic about that all too often), I want my dad to keep off the weight he lost in time for my wedding. I want my mom to keep up with the swimming and the walking and maybe get a bit slimmer again in the process. I want my MIL to clean out the candy cabinet again and get back to more home cooked meals. I love them, and care for them, and many a time, I tell them that by joking around with them.

[Winterlight]

I just figured she was teasing.

[referee]

I used this tactic to get my dad to have some much-needed dental work done.   He had not taken care of them for years; this was way beyond being an aesthetic issue.  As other posters have stated, trying to persuade someone to do something crucial to their long-term health falls on deaf ears until they are ready to make that move.  Sometimes appealing to one's vanity is a more persuasive means to an end. 

[Dindrane]

Given that the information we have from that story is really third hand at best, I wouldn't want to call Chelsea Clinton a bridezilla.  The article says she demanded her father lose the 15 pounds, but that doesn't mean she actually demanded that he do so in any sort of serious way.

Besides that - hasn't Bill Clinton already lost a bunch of weight?  I always end up noticing how much thinner he is than I'm used to seeing him whenever I catch him on a talk show or something.

[ginlyn32]

I think Mr. Clinton looks fine...he's thinner now than he was when he was Pres.

He's also had some health scares recently, so maybe she's just trying to get her dad to be more healthy, like pp suggested.

ginlyn

[Twik]

It doesn't sound like she told her father he couldn't attend if he didn't lose 15 pounds. The fact that *he* told the story as amusing indicates that, if she *did* say it, and he wasn't simply making a self-deprecating joke, it was intended as a fond joke, not a demand.

[TootsNYC]

For all we know, Chelsea was thinking about the tux or a haircut ("you gotta look good"), and Bill make a joke about weight (since he's focused on it), and she followed along w/ the quip.

[MommyPenguin]

My dad and I joke all the time like this.  He loves to go to the gym and tells me about his amazingly strong muscles.  I'll pretend to look behind him and be all, "Ooh, really?  Where are they?  Are they hiding?"  And he has this joke that he doesn't have to worry about his hair turning gray, it falls about before it can.  And he teases me about the pregnancy stomach.  My husband and I also joke about such things, like turning to the side and quoting the Genie from Aladdin: "Look at me from the side!  Do I look different to you?"  I think if Bill is telling people this in interviews, it's probably because he thought it was funny.

[Piratelvr1121]

I agree with pp's who feel it was more an incentive for him to get healthy than a shallow BZ comment.  She doesn't seem the type to me, but they do strike me as having a close, joking and teasing rel@tionship.   

Also, as pp's have already said, sometimes it takes that approach to get people to lose weight to be healthy, while on others it wouldn't, and Chelsea probably knows her dad well enough to know how to get through to him.