A new book about the 2008 campaign rehashes the feminist insults of 2008: Hillary Clinton as nutcracker and bitch. Rush Limbaugh’s crack about whether Americans "want to watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis." Sarah Palin as "slutty flight attendant," she-devil, and pit bull with lipstick. What was supposed to be the year of the woman turned into its opposite, argues Anne Kornblut in Notes From the Cracked Ceiling—a year that “revived old stereotypes, divided the women’s movement, drove apart mothers and daughters, and set back the cause of equality in the political sphere by decades.”
The whole dismal picture made even Kathleen Parker, not a retiring fleur, fret last week about whether we will ever have a woman president and whether American politics is permanently sexist. Well, is it so? The constant rehashing of cracks by Limbaugh and David Letterman don’t convince me. By the end of the book I am convinced that, at worst, America is short on original metaphors for women. Let’s call it “dullist”—the absence of creative thoughts or insults. It may be true that women in public life are, as many have suggested, stuck in a prison of opposites: bitch or ditz, brain or womb. But that merely proves that our insular, gossipy political culture, and certain media dolts who are obsessed with it, are not especially deep thinkers.
Kornblut’s reporting reinforces the idea that Hillary and Palin are not good test cases for the feminist thesis because they are so particular. In Hillary’s case, the book backs up the point my colleague Meghan O’Rourke made in 2008 about Hillary’s feminist dilemma: “Her problem wasn't that she was a feminist. Her problem was that she wasn't feminist enough.” Early on, Mark Penn wrote Clinton a memo warning that the voters “do not want someone who would be the first mama, especially in this kind of world.” Clinton heeded the warning. “I am not running because I’m a woman,” she repeated over and over. Patti Solis Doyle admits to Kornblut that the campaign never embraced “the idea of the first woman president as a strategy.” Even the most memorable line of her entire campaign—the “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling” almost never happened. Aides told Kornblut that Clinton had tremendous ambivalence about the phrase, fought hard to keep it out, and only relented at the last minute.
Palin, meanwhile, gained as much from feminist stereotypes as she lost. For every lipstick joke and fake porn image there was a testimony to her supermom qualities and unique combination of brawn and beauty. Some women criticized her for working with young children, but many more admired her for hustling. Kornblut quotes the statistic that 41 percent of women do not think mothers with young children should work. But more than half of women with young children do work, which means they identified with her dilemma more than criticized it. Plus, as Kornblut points out, Palin’s candidacy forced conservatives into defending the growing presence of working mothers, which counts as some kind of feminist progress. If Palin did suffer from stereotypes—trailer trash, Wasilla hillbilly—they were ones that applied equally well to her husband, Todd.
Hanna Rosin Double X co- editor, reporter, prefer my friends live.
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Comments
They same was asked about a minority not to long ago
By: ronfranksjr | Fri, 03/19/2010 - 23:27
The problem with exceotion of PR and hipe, no women that fits to be president steeped to the plate! Hillary has proven to be a loud mouth disaster in her in her pursuits abroad. having her in the white house after playing a major role in the current failing administration is to far fetched. its like playing in an online casinos usa.
Huh, never?
By: perennial | Mon, 02/01/2010 - 20:20
30+ years ago I opined to flabbergasted feminist male and female friends that there would most certainly be a black male president before there was a female president. What's so hard to understand about sexism? (And racism, for that matter.) Whenever I run across 'when will women ...' questions, it feels as though we're back in the 1960s, waiting for a consciousness raising group to form. When it comes to gender progress in the U.S., every morning is Groundhog Day. This country is running on empty and religion is still strangling the body politic. Congratulations America, only France is more ridiculous in deciding who should pass, enact and enforce federal legislation based on genitalia. We are a very dumb people, just plain donkey dumb. The saddest element of it all is how a culture of terrified males has terrorized a majority of females into believing that no woman is competent to perform any substantive function, other than biologic that involves sex and procreation. And what's up with indoctrinating the next generation: anyone else notice that corporate manufacturers are back to 'blue is for boys, pink is for girls'? Argh! Some girls get it, thank goodness. After several years of biting my tongue, my girly-girl lace and dolls and everything pink is sooo dreamy daughter hit 6 1/2 and announced that she'd finally had enough, that blue and green even yellow, too, were her new favorite colors - anything but pink. You go girl. Now, if only her elders can make the same breakthrough before we hit another century.
Read your Constitutional amendments!
By: Maggi | Tue, 01/26/2010 - 21:28
History repeats itself. Black men got the vote before women; all good things in all good time.
Hillary much more credible now.
By: max-tex | Tue, 01/19/2010 - 15:43
There is no way I would have voted for her before the last race.
Given the grit, grace under pressure, and intelligence she showed in the last race, I could vote for her now. I still think there are 35% of people who absolutely will not vote for Hillary so it would be very difficult for her to win.
Palin was not qualified to be president.
There will be a female president. Probably within 50 years.
Gear count
By: pampl | Tue, 01/19/2010 - 14:46
"Are the media gossips and dolts equally stuck in two gears when it comes to insulting men? To that, I have to answer no. There are indeed more variations on the male insult, and Game Change covers most of them: Bill Clinton is petty and embarrassingly flirtatious. John Edwards is dishonest, egomaniacal, and vain."
I'll buy your overall point but I don't think Clinton's a good example as his caricature looks a lot pretty ditzy. Maybe I read too much into these things, but whenever I've seen his lecherousness mentioned it's carried the implication of stupidity or at least a lack of seriousness.
Edwards' negative image was a lot like Palin's (self-righteous, two-faced, blowing gobs of money on preening, using family as campaign props, ...) but Edwards got less flack for being dumb. I don't think it's easy to say how much of that was because Palin was a woman or how much was because Palin was Palin.
Palin and Clinton
By: Foobs | Tue, 01/19/2010 - 14:15
Palin's problem was that she was a lightweight. John Edwards could (partially) compensate for being a lightweight by having a so resume. Obama could compensate for a short resume by not being a lightweight. Palin couldn't. On top of that, because she was so much of an unknown, that created a huge rush to learn something about her in the media that made accuracy difficult. That isn't fair to her, but it was inevitable.
Hillary Clinton's problem was that she isn't a very good politician. Maybe those qualities shouldn't matter, but they do. Bill Clinton was a great politician. Obama is a great politician. Hillary Clinton isn't. As such, she was never able to use her strengthsd and minimize her weaknesses well. As for her using the history of trying to become the first woman president, there were two problems. First, the lack of political skill. Second, it is hard to talk about the history of being the first female president against the history of the first African American president.
It is always problematic to make generalizations from peculiar instances, and Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton are both (in their own way) pretty peculiar.