written after the last primary, 4 June 2008

It’s not easy being pink . . . .

“It’s not over til the woman in the pantsuit says it’s over.”

That line, or something like it, was sent to Senator Clinton a few weeks ago and she gleefully brandished it in front of a various microphones while declining to step aside. Clinton still hasn’t said it’s over, but things are looking bad for the woman in the pantsuit.

At coffee this morning – coffee every morning with a couple of dozen of my closest -- I listened to an RIT prof provide a cogent analysis of the American public’s resistance to powerful women. Short version? Think Susan Anthony and Frederick Dougalss. All politics is local, as Tip O’Neill said, and we’ve seen this paradigm before. No, this isn’t about Obama the candidate, who is admirable. This is about permission to hate Clinton because, not only is a man of color less scary than a woman with power (and what’s not less scary than that?), but this particular choice allows people to feel good about being sexist. Or at least the chance to feel, a la Maureen Dowd and other Humans wHo Hate Hillary, that, if we are being racially equitable, we can’t possibly be called misogynist.

“Don’t be stupid!” one of my students abjured in a classroom debate this semester. “I can’t be sexist: I’m a woman!”

Oh, dear. Well, it’s not that simple, you know. Last week I was emailing around to get a group of colleagues together for a viewing of Sex and the City, the movie. While there was considerable enthusiasm, there were also some ruffled feathers. The word “superficial” was used. The F-card was played, albeit light-handedly, and there was dudgeon of a moderate altitude.

OK, let’s see: a series about four women who value their friendships above everything else? Four women who enjoy good sex, great clothes, and pink drinks sans guilt? Four women whose humor never arises from the buying or deploying of cleaning products? Yes, I see the problem. True, the series never worried much about World Peace – that putatively staple concern of pretty women in high heels and prime time – but how many comedies do mange to touch every single base in our socially responsible in-fields?

In the fall, I’m teaching a class about the first Queen Elizabeth, another woman who identified the sex/power/clothing triad as crucial for negotiating her way in the world. Her official colors were black and white and her motto was “always the same” -- a preemptive strike if I ever saw one. Elizabeth Tudor makes an interesting foil for Carrie Bradshaw and company. Publically fetishizing her sexuality; co-opting the Mariolotrious title of Queen Virgin; turning her body into an icon of power, into the land of England, into the sun that illuminates the rainbow; generally kicking ass and taking names, Gloriana managed to deify all odds and run England for nearly fifty years. The woman had style.

But she would never have won a primary. When social change comes for women, it’s rarely by engraved invitation or popular vote. Sex and the City ran on HBO, not NBC. While Elizabeth’s impossible dress in the Ditchely portrait of the 1590s is closer to Carrie’s shoes than to Clinton’s pantsuit, all three women had the same idea: clever packaging may mitigate the pangs of social revolution. But, my sisters, it helps to have a protestant reformation or a subscription network on your side.

Did Clinton need a pinker pantsuit or maybe some ruby slippers? Would any amount of roseate sugar have been sufficient coating, absent a terrifying social imperative or pre-paid cultural hegemony?

Semper eadem, I fear, still.

"the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house"  Audre Lord

so why do we keep using them?  julia walker