Well, the wonderful folks at Name It Change It have another example of sexist media coverage of female politicians to add to their Media Guide to Gender Neutral Coverage of Women Candidates. The news sweeping the nation (shockingly, including our nation) this week was of Hillary Clinton’s scrunchie fashion faux pas that has her aides embarrassed. This is the US Secretary of State for crying out loud. Despite the fact that Hillary Clinton is one of the most powerful politicians on this side of the world, the Globe and Mail reports that her penchant for scrunchies has “lit up the Internet faster than a foreign-policy debate.” I for one wish we would just discuss foreign policy. This kind of sexist coverage is a lasting vestige of inequality for women, and as Name It Change It argues, is very successful at keeping women out of the political arena. Let’s just talk politics, shall we?
Archive for April, 2012
Let’s Talk Politics, Not Hair Accessories
Posted in Feminism in the News, Uncategorized, tagged media, politics, sexism on April 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »
“The male gaze is empowering for women” and other BS
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged male gaze, Margaret Wente, sexual harassment, Slutwalk on April 7, 2012| Leave a Comment »
In today’s chapter of “I can’t believe an otherwise respectable newspaper publishes this”, Margaret Wente (A Globe and Mail columnist who has irked the FLF on a number of occasions) has written a column about how gosh darn empowering being objectified by men is. The article includes this golden nugget of a thought: “The worst injustice of being a woman is not the indignity of objectification by men. It’s the asymmetry of aging.” Apparently, being pestered unpleasantly by men was not at all demeaning for Wente, but was in fact empowering. The column bemoans how no male will pester a woman over 50 like this. And of course, the obligatory shot at Slutwalk is also thrown in (apparently, according to Wente, Slutwalk is a movement where women ask to have it both ways – the right to dress like sex objects without being treated like sex objects. This seems to fundamentally miss the point about how a woman’s dress is not a license to rape).
Maybe I’m just too much of a “repressed Anglo-Saxon”, too deep into our “indoctrinated culture” that has pounded the “evils of sexual harassment’ into us for years, but I can’t say I agree with Wente.
What do the FLF readers think?
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