This was another interesting thing I found today--on the yahoo.com website one of the news stories has this title:
"Is Sarah Palin a Liability?"
The answer?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20081022/pl_ynews/ynews_pl106
Interestingly enough, just the words used to describe this VP candidate are gendered. Has Joe Biden ever been a "liability?" What about Sarah Palin (other than the fact that women make men insecure) would be considered a liability in a race? The question is interesting as we consider the way society and the media view women.
Or how about this article which blames her for spending $150,000 on "Designer Clothes." Once again, a very gendered criticism.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081024/ap_on_el_pr/palin_clothing_20
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3 comments:
I think you're reading too much into this one. Sarah Palin may have been called a liability for reasons beside her gender.
let us consider, then, the attacks that Saturday Night Live have been making on Sarah Palin. Perhaps these are more gendered?
I invite you to watch the skit and then consider what it takes for a woman to enter a man's world and the kind of criticism that she confronts vs. what a man usually confronts on his own turf.
The relationship between nationalism and feminism is a complex one in which even women put other women down if they are seen to be usurping norms--and it is all based on preconceptions of women!
The following is an excerpt from a paper that I've recently written:
"When a woman decides to enter a man’s world, be patriotic, or nationalistic in an entirely different way than she is customarily seen, she is usurping cultural norms that are so ingrained that even other women criticize the move. Perfect examples of this are playing out right before us in the U.S. presidential election in terms of Hilary Clinton, and now more recently, Sarah Palin. Not only have they encountered roadblocks from male forces, but also from females. One excellent example of this includes the Saturday Night Live skits that have been done routinely since Sarah Palin was nominated as a Vice Presidential candidate. NBC’s website features a Saturday Night Live homepage on which these videos can be accessed. Satire is a way by which humor is used to poke fun of a particular person—in one telling skit Sarah Palin (Tina Fey) and Hillary Clinton (Amy Poehler) are seen as appearing together to give a nonpartisan message about sexism in the media. The humor in this skit is found in the issues that have been discusses thus far—women’s bodies, their sexuality, and their apparent “lack” of a brain.
The skit, done by two famous women, is telling in its characterization of Palin and Clinton. The skit makes fun of Palin’s stupidity as she bats her eyelashes and admits that she doesn’t know what the “Bush Doctrine” is. Clinton, on the other hand is seen as unfeminine, aggressive, and haughty. She announces that she was told she would be addressing the audience alone—showing her “independent” nature. In the aesthetic of the skit, the fact that we are laughing at such characterizations of women says something very profound about our culture and women’s relationship with nationalism and power. Power and women, the skit suggests, just don’t go together. Most people would not find it appropriate to laugh at a skit that plays on traditional racial prejudices, but sexist prejudices are not only played out on national television—but played out by women and found to be hilarious.
As the skit goes on, the focus on the body grows. Palin’s character warns the media to stop “photoshoping her head on sexy bikini pictures” and stop calling her by diminishing words such as “attractive and beautiful.” The reversal of seeing Palin’s body as a sexual symbol is paralleled as they degrade Clinton by having her say “stop calling me shrewd and a FLIRG” (a derogatory term that stands for first lady is really a guy, or gay). The focus of her apparent homosexuality is very base in its nature as she also protests to the use of the term “cankles” and even worse—and very offensive—“boner shrinker.” This bawdy term reflects Rousseau’s comment that women in power affront men’s sexualy. The end of the skit is even more telling as the “humor” plays upon Clinton’s perceived unfeminine nature in that she invites “the media to grow a pair—and if you can’t, I will lend you mine”.
Not only are these terms incredibly humiliating to both of the candidates but they perfectly illustrate the way women are attacked when they begin to enter the “public” realm. Their sexuality is attacked, because it is seen as an insult to men’s sexuality. Women in power are deemed as either too attractive to have a brain (because of brains and beauty cannot go together according to gender constructs) or the opposite, too “manly” to have any feminine qualities at all. The attacks to Palin’s IQ, then, turn out to be more about the fact that she is perceived to be attractive and less because she is perceived to be less than fit for office. The alibi of those doing the attacking, of course, is that she does lack certain credentials, and has made some serious mistakes in her interviews with the media. The Saturday Night Live skit, however, brings the issue of sexism to life in a way that is almost unreal. In a skit that is supposed to be denouncing sexism, the actors use many of the same gender constructs that have made the reality of women in power so difficult to attain come to life through the use of degrading humor. "
For these reasons and others, I wonder how much her gender really is a liability to the republican ticket...
Man, that makes me mad. The SNL skits making fun of the female candidates. Just like you said, Elise--because Palin is 'pretty,' she is portrayed as a dumb female, while Clinton, supposedly 'smarter' or more aggressive, is portrayed to completely lack femininity. I don't care if you have something against one of these two--not only is it an attack on these candidates, it's an attack on all women. It says that if you're pretty, you're dumb, and if you don't fall under the 'traditional' description of a submissive female, you're 'manly.'
It really is degrading, and shouldn't be something that is made fun of.
Does this not offend all women??
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