I was introduced to politics and sexism the same year. I was 10, and Hillary Clinton was vying for the New York Senate seat. For the first time, the state of New York would have its first woman senator. The little girls in my fifth grade class, bouncing with vivacity, saw themselves as little Hillary Clintons, eager to shatter the glass ceiling years before they would encounter it.
But as Rick Wilson, a chief strategist during the race, noted so many years ago, Clinton depends on the sympathies of the public and on gendered role playing. They would be the “national scold,” the “smartest woman in America,” the “schoolmarm” and the “martyr,” Wilson wrote.
For young women, female politicians can’t just be good politicians. The identity Hollywood asks us to assume to be attractive is one thing, but the role Washington asks us to assume to become successful leaders is another. At least in American politics, the Freudian Madonna-whore complex has never been an issue, but another one has. Women politicians are either feminine or they’re not.
As Susan Douglas writes in “Why Women Hate Hillary,” Clinton has campaigned on the belief that “leaders must be ruthless, macho empire builders.” Clinton is criticized by both men and women for being too masculine and “more like a man in her demeanor and politics.” Evidently, there’s a right way to run as a woman and a wrong way. Female politicians must assume roles that become complete satires of traditional female roles or roles that completely counter them. Clinton is a case of the latter.
It appears that in order to climb the ladder of success, Clinton adopted a quasi masculinity. Women not only have to be better than their male counterparts, but they must be masculine as well to have any shot at dodging sexist criticism. And when Clinton cried during a decisive moment of the 2008 presidential election, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, did not hesitate to deride her as a “heroine of a Lifetime movie,” suggesting she “cry her way to the White House.”
And then there’s Sarah Palin, who readily embraces her role as mother, latching onto the GOPs credence as the party of family values. “The difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull,” per the former Alaskan governor, is lipstick. Sarah Palin, a conservative rock star, is exactly the kind of female politician the GOP wants her to be: uncompromising, maternal and pretty.
My goal is not to compare Sarah Palin to Hillary Clinton. It is to show two polarized identities that originate from the same unavoidable sexism. Female politicians always have some role to play and the public is only too eager to gauge their political aptitude on the grounds of femininity.
Twelve years after Clinton’s Senate race, I will never forget what a speaker at a women’s studies lecture told me: cleavage and credibility are not compatible concepts. As I walk down the Language and Literature building in red heels, proud of the clacks I hear, I can’t help but wonder if they mean anything and if I am trying to prove something to someone with them.
Do I simply like how they look, or do they make me feel more authoritative, confident, and powerful? Sometimes I also suspect that I’ve become over analytical, seeing inequalities where none exist.
But then I remember: What has anyone ever said about a man’s shoes?
Reach the columnist at Ctruong1@asu.edu
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