This past Monday the Name It, Change It campaign released their survey on exactly how physical descriptions and remarks affect female politicians.
Survey respondents were asked to rate which candidate they preferred after hearing a series of stories. In the first story, Jane Smith and Dan Jones are running for Congress. No physical description is given, and Jane maintains a slight lead at the fictional polls.
In a second version, Jane is given a neutral description, and then turns up 5 points behind Dan. Another version describes her as attractive, and suddenly she’s 13 points behind Dan. A final version describes her as unattractive and then she’s 15 points behind.
What this tells us is that any description whatsoever hurts her chances politically.
Even if calling attention to a woman’s physical appearance weren’t politically damaging to her, even if it weren’t unprofessional and totally unrelated to her political qualifications, it would still be wrong.
It doesn’t matter if a positive remark about her appearance comes from the president of the U.S. or a creepy guy on the street. Any remark about a woman’s appearance, whether approving or otherwise, is at its core objectifying.
It asserts the right of the speaker to pass judgment on a woman based on her body rather than her mind, something all women have to deal with on a near-constant basis throughout our lives in many ways.
Assuming that feminists simply can’t take a: joke, compliment, etc. is an easy cop-out and a purposeful blindness to modern gender issues.
In your article, you mention that Obama in fact did compliment her mind as well as her body, so the comment on her body is acceptable.
“Nevertheless, even with this logic staring them in the face, many radical (and I emphasize radical) feminists still choose to believe the paranoid delusion that anytime a man even so much as thinks about a woman’s looks, he is being a sexist pig.” -Tony Bara
(vol. 82 No. 21)
This point unfortunately doesn’t hold water when considering women’s place in politics in the broader realm. This incident wasn’t one innocent compliment that got taken the wrong way by “radical feminists.”
“By attacking men for chivalrously complimenting women, the radical feminists only make a mockery of themselves and hurt their cause. They propagate the false stereotype that all feminists are crazy Amazons in an eternal war against the male population.” -Tony Bara (vol. 82 No. 21)
The compliment itself was just one remark among so many that every female politician must overcome before she can even be taken seriously in her career.
Think about how much of an article written about any woman in politics focuses on her outfit choice, her hairstyle, whether her amount of cleavage or skirt length was appropriate.
It would be laughable to read any news piece about Obama that focuses on his tie more than his words.
You don’t have to be a radical; you don’t even have to be a feminist to see that this is true.
All you have to do is follow politics and read a newspaper occasionally.
Genevieve Buthod
Junior
Computer Studies/Philosophy