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That woman, Mrs. Clinton Tuesday, Jan 30, 2007 By John Brummett Hillary Clinton told Iowans over the weekend that she's going to find out if Americans will elect a woman president. She predicted she'd have to endure more questions than the guys about clothes and hair. But I'm not sure she's the right person for the question, that the question is all that burning or that there is a significant gender bias in American political attitudes toward appearance. I feel a nagging need for a disclaimer: I am not intending to minimize the limitations on women of stereotypes and biases in the American culture and marketplace. I am attempting only to minimize the idea that any of that has much to do, at this point, anyway, with Hillary's run for president. Another disclaimer: If Hillary indeed becomes president, it will mean that she held up well on the campaign trail and turned her early advantages of money and celebrity into demonstrations of her own substance and achievements of her own credibility. And that will mean much for womankind. For example, Hillary presumed to run for the U.S. Senate in New York mostly because of opportunities gleaned from her choice of husband. That is to say that Hillary "Smith," Chicago native and former Little Rock lawyer, couldn't have done it. But she won re-election handily with considerable upstate Republican support, and that reflected her own independent ability and accomplishment. I suspect Americans got accustomed to a woman as world leader in the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher commanded our greatest ally and warned our own male president not to "go wobbly." Our last two American secretaries of state, fourth in line to the presidency and our emissaries to the world, have been women. I haven't heard men sitting around the coffee shop fretting about that. The current speaker of the House, third to the presidency, is a woman, and while it's true Republicans made congressional races nationally largely about the threat of her ascendancy, that was because she's a San Francisco liberal. They'd have used the same tactic had this been Joe Pelosi, San Francisco liberal. We know what San Francisco is code for and we know Republicans love to run against gays even as their daughters are childbearing lesbians. I do not recall how Thatcher or Albright dressed or wore their hair or anyone's making an issue of it. Yes, I've heard some gentlemen compliment Rice's legs. But I've heard women call John Edwards cute. Hillary's attire and hairstyle have been critiqued more intensely maybe not so much because they are a woman's, but because, over the years, they've been notable in a more general way. She was frumpy in her early Arkansas days, and remade herself. She changed her early White House hairstyle frequently. People tend to look at changes in physical appearance as signals of deeper inconsistency, for both genders. I'd remind you that people once talked about whether Ronald Reagan dyed his hair. When Mike Beebe came out for a gubernatorial debate looking different hairwise, I made something of it. They made fun of Dick Gephardt's scant eyebrows. A cartoon once had a bartender asking of John Kerry, "Why the long face?" Hillary as a role model for American women? What is that model, exactly? Is it to attach yourself to a charismatic, accomplished man, put up with his tomcatting and use his glow as your own professional springboard? Surely not. This is not about whether America is ready for a woman president. It's about whether America is ready for that woman, Mrs. Clinton. If she wins, though ... Imagine her repeating the oath of office as given to her by the chief justice, with our first gentleman, if we could call him that, standing to the side. She clearly would have evolved from that particular woman arising from the glow of that particular man to a powerful symbol for all womankind. And I doubt anyone would seriously charge that Bill would really be running things. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
