Following on from yesterday’s observations on beauty and politics, it seems that gender still counts, too, at least for the US political press. According to Jamison Foser Hilary Clinton is being subjected to some very sexist comments in the DC media. Interviewers routinely ask her if she could have got so far in politics without her husband, they question whether she is a convincing ‘mom’ and one describes her as a ‘poodle in a skirt’.
I am no fan of Senator Clinton. I would feel uncomfortable voting for someone who changes their views so ruthlessly in pursuit of power. But Foser’s list of the sexist crap that she is having to deal is startling to a British public that got over a lot of that 20 years ago thanks to Margaret Thatcher.
The French, too, seem to have a problem with la femme politique, as the ungallant attacks on the Left Presidential Candidate Segolene Royale have indicated. One opponent accused her of turning the election in to a ‘beauty pageant’. But the fact she is behind in the polls may have more to do with her gaffe-strewn campaign and vapid lack of policies than sexism – although always bear in mind that chauvenism is a French word.