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Sarah Palin is Pretty -- Check Yes/No and Pass It On
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"Daria" 2 x 01 "Arts and Crass"
Since it turns out that I don't value my sanity all that highly, I've been watching election coverage on MSNBC almost non-stop, which is how I came to be aware of the latest non-controversy out of the GOP camp. I was on my way out the door when one of the talking heads held up the latest cover of Newsweek and said that there was an uproar in the McCain camp over the picture. I couldn't see a problem, but it was a magazine cover on tv, so I figured there was an issue with Sarah Palin's weirdly-shaped earring, or something.
I was intrigued enough to look up the "controversy" later on, though. Turns out the problem was the extreme close up, which is apparently always unflattering to women, or something. I looked at the picture again, and thought well, if that's true, good thing Palin can pull it off. I mean, the 2/3-of-her-face shot is weird, but I appreciate that the news weeklies are trying to do interesting things with their cover art, and whatever. She looks fine to me.
But then the whole thing started popping up on the feminist blogs I read. Palin "defenders" are seriously up in arms about this picture, because, so far as I understand, it wasn't airbrushed. They go on and on (and remember, these are people who are allegedly on her side) about her "'stache" (classy!) and her "gaping pores" and her otherwise "horrifying" visage.
(It brings a whole new meaning to that old adage "with friends like these . . . ")
I tell you what, the whole thing fills me with despair. Not only because I'm put in the untenable position of having to defend a vociferously anti-feminist pol against sexism, but because I'm raising a girl in this kind of toxic atmosphere.
My daughter is pretty. This isn't just motherly pride; her bone structure, coloring, and stature mean that she's likely to grow up into a beautiful woman, and all I can feel about that is dread. She's smart, she's athletic, and she has a magnetic, affectionate personality, but she is increasingly concerned about her looks. And in this historic election year, when there is the (increasingly unlikely, but still) possibility of this country having its first female Vice-President, she gets to hear all about how the overriding concern about this historic personage is how she looks. Men on both sides of the spectrum have been falling all over themselves to wax gross about Palin's (um, how to keep this family friendly? "Desirability," maybe? It doesn't convey the intentionally hateful nature of the usual word, but it'll have to do) , with plenty of left-leaning guys getting just as adamant about not finding her . . . um, desirable . . . at all. Because that's what really matters. Not her horrifyingly stone-age social policies, not her possible corruption, not even the fact that she is literally pro-puppy killing, but the extent to which she is a satisfactory object of . . . um, sexual fantisizing . . . for guy nation. She was the VP choice for approximately thirty seconds before enterprising entrepreneurs had "VPILF" t-shirts and Sarah Palin blow-up dolls on the market (and, again, lots of these folks are the ones on her side). Even Tom Brokaw (Tom freaking Brokaw! Elder statesman of reporters!) couldn't resist getting into the act and talking about how "hot" Palin is.
And now, this week, when she's been officially pronounced guilty of corruption and has been accused of stirring her base up into a frenzy of race- and religion-based hate against Obama, her campaign has taken valuable time to complain that her appearance is so unacceptably unattractive that it is biased and unfair to display it unaltered.
Gah.
So this is the reality of womanhood that my little girl is growing up into: in the year 2008, the first, last, and ever-present concern about a woman who is being considered as a leader of the country is how she looks. And even when she is as conventionally attractive as Sarah Palin, no woman will ever, ever be attractive enough, even when she's too pretty to be allowed any other attributes.
Good thing we're living in a post-feminist age, isn't it?
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