I had a quibble with G.D.’s otherwise fantastic weekend round-up. Margaret Cho, who confessed her dirty dreams about a certain Republican vice-presidential nominee, wasn’t being sexist. In fact, if she had left out the last line, it could have been the most solidly feminist thing she could have done.
I understand the point, though it’s not one that Shakesville explicitly makes, which is part of the weakness of her post. The truth is women are portrayed as and treated as sexual objects in a way that men rarely are, and at the same time are not allowed to be sexual subjects, unless, they are, you know, a certain kind of woman. A woman who is pretty or sexy is too often dismissed as only that. Pity your co-workers or co-eds who are the lethal combination of smart, attractive, and sexually self-possessed.
But let’s all admit it, right now, together, so we can move on. Sarah Palin is attractive. There’s a reason she’s been photo-shopped so much. She looks like Tina Fey, and we all know how hot she is. Why can’t she be hot? Our male politicians get ahead when, and because, they are. JFK was a womanizer, and that just added to his allure, frankly. People openly mused about Bill Clinton’s sexiness (though, I have to admit, I never saw it). And I still remember the voice of an editor at a paper I used to work radiating from her office as she swooned with her assistant over pictures of Obama from an Hawaiian vacation or two ago, amazed at what a nice body he has.
It would be worse than dishonest to not be allowed to talk about Palin in that way. Cho doesn’t dismiss her as a flimsy candidate because she is attractive, but finds her attractive despite her flimsiness (I want in on the antimetabole fun, too!) I complained some months ago that a female politician would never been called charismatic, because charisma implies some sort of sex appeal. As a nation, we still don’t want the women that we look up to to be sexual. From teachers in modern cinema to wives and moms, women who are worth listening to must be chaste. To call them anything but would be to question their place in dignified society.
That’s been part of the problem with the Palin candidacy from the get. McCain has been branding some topics off limits, hiding behind ridiculous claims of sexism, as if Palin needs protecting.* Well, she doesn’t. Palin is a successful politician in part because she has been able to have a multi-dimensional personality, more so than Hillary Clinton. She is sexy, charismatic, sarcastic, and, before the McCain campaign came in, charmingly candid with the public. Her domestic life, a life that we can easily see involving food, crayons, spilled soup, sex, and yes, family feuds, is forever on display. How nice, in some ways, that a woman isn’t hiding her domesticity as if it were at odds with power.***
Palin can be sexy and still be like or disliked as a candidate for entirely separate, valid reasons. We can’t act as though woman+sex=sexism, always. Wasn’t that the point of our liberation? That we wouldn’t be categorized and judged because of our sexual appeal, sexual actions, sexual desires? We’ll never get to that point if some topics are always off limits with some women.
Which is why I think Cho deflected her whole point with the frigid comment. She can’t really be so sexy, can she? She is, after all, a female politician.
* As an aside, I heard the campaign complaining a lot about how liberal commentators asked whether she could balance a family and the veep job, but I never actually heard a liberal commentator do it. I’m not being facetious. If you actually heard a real commentator ask it, please link it below.
**The Clinton-Lewinsky affair “scandal,” let’s face it, was propelled by a fair amount of voyeurism.
***Although it does mean your family’s up for grabs, a bit.
