I Knew This Would Happen!!!

I'm about to get on my feminist soap box again, folks. 

John McCain recently selected his VP running mate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, a woman who (despite your political leanings, you must admit) has accomplished a great deal and established herself in the political community (my sister even studied her in her left-leaning Psych of Women class.) 

And yet, already, Sarah has been plastered all over tabloid magazines and trashy blogs as if she was Lindsay or Britney. I know that all the candidates have made appearances in these publications, but to my knowledge, few have been accompanied by such cheap sensational headlines like "Mother of Five: New Embarrassing Surprises," or "Sarah Palin: Babies, Lies, and Scandal." Not to mention the casual and lascivious remarks about her boobs, her "sexy" factor in general, or even the college photos of her looking like "white trash." (She looks like a normal college kid in a tee shirt to me!!!) The news about her daughter's teen pregnancy, and now her own apparent shotgun wedding, are more expected in a presidential race of course, but nevertheless still loaded with sexist implications.

First, this proves the point that attractive women will never be taken seriously and viewed as human, rather than a sex symbol, a bitch, or a trainwreck. Hillary Clinton knew this enough to minimize her own femininity, even going so far as to turn down a cover shot for the classy and iconic Vogue Magazine in an effort to distance herself from anything typically feminine. Palin was a smiley beauty queen. Let's face it... she's doomed.

Second, anything from a woman's past WILL haunt her more than anything from a man's past. People are scandalized by pictures of Palin basically wearing jammies in her college dorm room... wait till they find a picture of her in her swimsuit on spring break... OMG!!! I have a hard time thinking of any intelligent, upstanding girl from my generation who will successfully run for president unless she has avoided ever being photographed in a bikini, or even, say, a pink sundress. Why does a female leader have to look and act like a man? 

Not to mention, premarital affairs and pregnancy are death sentences, making a woman "trashy" and "loose." But of course, our male presidents and wannabe-presidents never had such indiscretions *insert sarcasm here*. And if they did, luckily for them they didn't have uteruses to broadcast this to the world. Women always bear the brunt and win the "slut" title, even though it takes two to tango. It's a shame that women have to de-feminize in order to keep a man respecting her... and to help him keep his pants on.

I think the fact that Palin has accomplished so much without the privilege of having done everything perfectly, without the elitism and the wealth, and with the burdens of young pregnancy, disabled children, etc, makes her even more impressive. The fact that she also practices what she preaches and actually lives by her standards instead of just forcing them on everyone else (whether you agree with her beliefs or not), is a positive attribute I can give to very few politicians at all. She doesn't even try to cover it up. (And I give Obama, who was the product of a teen pregnancy himself, major props for standing up for her and her family, and for pointing out that those types of issues do not reflect your parenting or presidential capability.)

Sadly, many men and women still associate females with sex, emotion, vulnerability, and scandal.  And they usually pay the higher price for all of the above than men do, whether it's reputation, babies, career--you name it.  CNN recently published an article about the culture's obsession with female "trainwrecks," and how we love to watch women go down... especially publicly.  Unfortunately, I feed into it too, reading the blogs and magazines that make their money off of women in trouble. But all it does is keep us in this rut where we will never be taken seriously as leaders, as professionals, or even as mothers. Everyone is seriously waiting for these women to fail, and hoping it happens in the most titillating way possible.

So far, it seems that Sarah Palin is their next victim.