XX Factor: the blog

What Are Cookies Good For? Absolutely Nothing.

This weekend, both the Times and the Post published complimentary yet enormously frustrating profiles of Mark Sanford's wife Jenny. They portray her as a tough, sharp domestic goddess, without ever questioning what such a tough, smart woman is doing playing domestic goddess in the first place. Both pieces make clear that Sanford is a very intelligent, hard working, focused, “Old Testament woman with a 170 IQ,” who has been indispensable to her husband’s rise. A magna cum laude Georgetown graduate and a former vice president at the enormously reputable Lazard Freres & Co., Sanford walked away from her career to have a family and help her husband realize his political ambitions. Junk trade?

A typical Jenny Sanford anecdote goes like this: Mark Sanford apparently told his wife he wanted to run for Congress while she was still in the hospital, just having delivered their second child. Despite the fact that this news came out of nowhere, on a very busy day, she took it in stride. This—supportive and game, but never at the expense of her family—seems to be her M.O. “The Sanford house was in a perpetual state of constructive chaos, friends said. Jenny Sanford would be folding laundry and cooking dinner while on the telephone with campaign advisers about what the next television advertisement would say,” writes the Post. “She oversaw his staff, drafted speeches, set policy and raised money. She even baked oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for reporters and other guests.”

Guys, she bakes cookies! “So often when a woman is business minded, they’re not good at being a cookie baking soccer mom, but that’s the thing about Jenny,” a friend of Sanford’s told the Times. “You cannot stereotype her that way. She can be either one of those things and do it effortlessly.”

As these two pieces tell it, if Mrs. Sanford is not a woman who had it all, she was a woman who did it all. She did the thinking, and she did the babies. She managed the campaign, and she made snacks. “She was the bulldozer that cleared the path and got [Mark Sanford] there," and she was the woman who would “choose one of her son’s class plays over a presidential dinner anytime.”

Now, it’s not that this set of characteristics doesn’t have a certain appeal (and, not to cast too many partisan stones, a particularly Republican one at that), but in light of last week’s events, they also have a stark downside. Because she did the thinking and the babies, now she’s a very tough, very smart woman with a killer oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe who is best known, personally and professionally, for having a husband who likes to “spark” on women other than her. Turns out doing it all amounted to doing everything for everyone but herself. And that may be admirable, but, in light of her husband’s behavior and Mrs. Sanford’s seemingly real and impressive talents, it's some seriously misdirected energy.

Comments

Seriously misdirected energy? Not your call to make.

By: Mayah | Wed, 07/01/2009 - 20:36

I had some problem with the author's conclusion too. Things obviously worked out very badly for Jenny Sanford, but did she make a mistake? If her husband hadn't cheated and everything went well, would it still be a mistake?

Yes, deciding to take a supporting role can be risky, but any life choice can be risky. If that's what she wanted to spend her energy on and what made her happy, who is to say that it is wasted?

She is not her husband

By: Azure | Tue, 06/30/2009 - 20:45

By Paskin's analysis, Jenny's choices would be appropriate if Mark had been faithful, but now are "misguided" because he was unfaithful. Jenny should be judged separately from her husband, not based on her husband's actions.

If you want to criticize Jenny's choice to be an unpaid campaign manager, you should do it regardless of whether Mark was faithful. His adultery is out of her control.

The wrong Sanford for Governor?

By: pretendlawyer | Tue, 06/30/2009 - 13:48

Reading the article on Mrs. Sanford, with all that she did for her husband, I couldn't help but wonder why she was relegated to the background. Mrs. Sanford isn't a Laura Bush-type first spouse, one without apparent ambition for herself: it appears that Mrs. Sanford managed her husband's political career as well as the household. Why was she comfortable playing the supporting role, when she was so clearly uber-competent? Does it have something to do with women being more comfortable in the background? I don't have answers, but from all I've read about the Sanfords, I can't help but wonder if South Carolina would be better off with Mrs. Sanford in charge.

domestic goddesses

By: Starling | Wed, 07/01/2009 - 14:36

I have no quarrel with domestic goddesses--I'm related to a handful myself, and I can whip together a nice little four course meal for twelve with two hours lead time and enough Diet Coke. What bothers me is the branding of Jenny Sanford as a cross between Betty Crocker and Mary Poppins. If she is the huge mover and shaker in her husband's campaign that many have claimed, it is simply disingenuous to allow her friends to portray her as a sweet little homemaker, just helping the hubby in his job. Sure, she might be brilliant, they tell us, but it's Good Christian Wife and Mother brilliant. She's not in it for herself.

In a different woman, that might be believable. Judith Steinberg strikes me as one of these. Don't know the name? She's Howard Dean's wife, and she might have shown up on the campaign trail once, although I can't for the life of me remember where. There are plenty of political spouses who are genuinely uninterested or who take care of the home and family aspect while their politician plays the game. But these claims made by the woman who runs the campaigns, approves the ads and helps shape the policies--they're nonsense. And they're damaging nonsense, because they are setting the bar for Good Christian Wife and Mother frighteningly high, at the same time as more or less condemning the women who participate in politics out of genuine (heaven forbid!) interest, ambition, or desire to serve in a larger sphere.

I have no doubt that this is all an unconscious attempt on the part of Sanford's friends and allies to express what a good spouse she is, and contrast that with her husband's horrible behavior. Yet the exaggerated self-sacrifice and ritualized disclaimers of personal ambition diminish both Jenny Sanford the domestic goddess and Jenny Sanford the politicial one.

This says more about him than her

By: Pelander | Mon, 06/29/2009 - 16:52

I have plenty of very bright, talented friends -- both men and women -- who have dated, slept with and fallen in love with jerks. In fact, I haven't noticed much of a correlation between brains and good sense in choosing a partner.

Mark Sanford is charismatic enough to get elected the governor of South Carolina and keep a mistress in another continent. Just because Jenny fell for his charms too doesn't mean that she can't be the smart, capable woman portayed in the Times.

It's not the first time that an intelligent man or woman falls in love and devotes themselves to a selfish jerk, and it won't be the last.

amen, starling

By: lorikay4 | Mon, 06/29/2009 - 16:04

Thank you, starling, for your thoughtful deconstruction of the byzantine gender-role doublespeak unthinkingly embraced by the NY Times in this instance. Ugh.

confused

By: lightening | Mon, 06/29/2009 - 15:48

I am confused, is it not appropriate for a "tough, smart woman" to be a "domestic goddess"? Is that lifestyle choice not available for tough, smart women? That is what the opening paragraph of this article implies.

thank you thank you thank you

By: Starling | Wed, 07/01/2009 - 14:37

I read these articles with disbelief. Mrs. Sanford can bake cookies? Stop the presses, everyone! Seriously, give me any person who graduated from high school and two hours, and I can teach them how to bake cookies. Of course, the cookie-baking is code for "makes her children a priority high enough that cooking from scratch is more important to her than whatever else she could have done in that time"--for example, sleep, day-trade, visit lovers in Argentina, whatever.

This is not to knock people who actually love to bake, or people who stay home with the kids and have the time and inclination to do so. But "cookie-baking soccer mom" has become a way of saying that a woman has embraced the least problematic forms of her femininity in such a way that she is NO THREAT TO ANYONE. Because, sure, she can run the state budget, approve political ads, and mount a campaign from the maternity ward, but we all know that she doesn't WANT to attend those pesky presidential dinners. She's just a really good woman standing behind her man. So don't let that IQ scare you--she would never run for president like that uppity Clinton woman (famously, not a cookie baker.)

It's a familiar story, of course, but why do the Post and the Times repeat it with a straight face? Unless there's been some behind-the-scenes lobotomizing, Jenny Sanford is an ambitious woman with a good mind, and if that's the case, claims that she'd rather go to the school play than the dinner at the White House deserve some real skepticism. Especially given that she's apparently done a pretty damned good job of getting in on dinners at the governor's mansion. Pretending there's something wrong with a woman being smart and ambitious may indeed be Mrs. Sanford's political strategy, but it does all women a disservice to accept the implications of it without a protest.