During a January 6 “Today” show segment, Jenna Bush Hager made waves when she revealed that her grandmother, Barbara Bush, told her she looked “chubby” in a bikini as a teenager. The TV personality later clarified her remarks, insisting that she “adored” her late relative, per Page Six. She also revealed that Bush apologized to her long ago, explaining that her own mother, Pauline Pierce, “said those types of things” to her often, comparing her to her sister, Martha. “Her mother always thought of her sister as the really beautiful one,” Bush Hager said, adding that Pierce would tell Bush, “‘Martha’s the pretty one. You’re the funny one.'” Despite her grandmother’s apology, though, Bush Hager didn’t “wear a bikini for years” — until 2022.
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Although the former first lady felt badly about her body image remarks to Bush Hager, she was known within the family for her blunt dress-downs. In Bush Hager’s 2017 memoir, “Sisters First,” she detailed a family tennis tournament in the 2010s, during which she celebrated successful shots by shimmying and hiking her skirt up, with her father cheering her on, per The Atlanta-Journal Constitution. When her grandmother got wind of this behavior, a formally typed letter arrived at her apartment addressed to both her dad and her. “Like a lawyer building her case, Ganny recited my every unsportsmanlike infraction,” Bush Hager wrote, recalling that Bush “was deeply disappointed with me.”
