Newsweek on Saturday did an astonishingly poor job of exploring why Republican women are suddenly being attacked for their beauty. “There seems to be an insistent, increasingly excitable focus on the supposed hotness of Republican women in the public eye, like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Michelle Malkin, and Nikki Haley-not to mention veterans like Ann Coulter,” the article now being prominently featured at the magazine’s website began. Hypocritically, Julia Baird’s piece never once explained or wondered why the same thing isn’t being done to Democrat women. Instead, the numerous headlines exclusively trivialized physically attractive GOP females such as the following from the website’s front page (h/t Twitter’s @buszero): Once entering the website to the actual article, readers were presented with another set of tasteless headlines (photo courtesy AP): Doesn’t the headline “Too Hot to Handle” defeat the purpose of exposing sexism? Or wasn’t that Baird’s point? It’s odd to see how some men insist that when women start to grasp power, we should think of them primarily as playthings and provocateurs. Is this the best way to explain their success? They aren’t challenging the status quo. They’re being wild! They’re not trying to lift the ban on offshore drilling. They’re being naughty! When four women beat a field of men on the same night recently, competing for primary and gubernatorial nominations, it was widely referred to as “ladies’ night.” Aren’t ladies’ nights those promotions where women are allowed free entry into bars to provide fodder for the men? Women in politics are used to being trivialized, and have tended to dress and behave soberly in response. The wisdom has long been that discussions about their sexuality are not just distracting and degrading, but also destructive. Indeed? Baird then offered some statistics to support this view: One in six members of Congress is female; out of a total of 535 seats, Republican women hold only 21, or 4 percent. It’s hardly an onslaught. The number of women holding state-wide executive office has dropped since 2002, from 88 to 72 of the 315 positions. There are only six women governors. So no matter how striking the incremental gains, we’ve got a long way to go before approaching anything resembling equality. Which is why we need to remember that these women are not competing to see who has the most smokin’ bod. They want to run the country, or their part of it. They want votes, not free drinks-and we need properly scrutinized candidates, not circus performers. That’s correct. But why did Baird’s article about this subject DEMEAN women with a headline like “Too Hot to Handle?” And why did her first paragraph include the phrase “increasingly excitable focus on the supposed hotness of Republican women?” That’s NOT the way a female writer encourages people to “remember that these women are not competing to see who has the most smokin’ bod.” Also in the first paragraph was the following disgusting reference: Playboy even ran an outrageous piece titled “Ten Conservative Women I’d Like to Hate F–k,” which read like a sick attempt to make rape cool. “We may despise everything these women represent,” wrote the author, “but goddammit they’re hot. Let the healing begin.” This was a truly disgraceful piece published at Playboy’s website last year, so much so that readers didn’t need to be reminded of its existence. Making matters worse, Baird completely ignored the double standard whereby Democrat women in politics are not so victimized. This undermined any attempt on her part to discredit those doing it to Republican women. Whether intentional or not, this was another disgusting representation of GOP females that the National Organization for Women would come down strongly against if it was written about Democrats. It really does require a tremendous rationalization talent to be a liberal woman in America today, doesn’t it?
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Newsweek: ‘Why We Sexualize GOP Women’ – ‘Too Hot to Handle’
