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La Scandale de Couture
Oct. 24th, 2008 10:46 amTo continue Duncan's Sarah Palin as Evita fantasy:
I come from the people
They need to adore me
So Christian Dior me...
In all seriousness, I am still mulling over how I feel about the whole clothing mishegoss. There are a bunch of different issues at play here (possible misuse of donor funds, the hypocrisy of Palin's message about how "real" she is--the kind of "real" American she says she is, doesn't drop thousands of $ on designer clothing, societal expectations of how a woman "should" look and specifically how a woman in power "should" look). As much as she (or the RNC, whoever was at fault here) should not have used donor funds that way, I find myself incredibly annoyed that yet AGAIN we pore over how the woman looks--how THAT'S relevant. And it's relevant in both ways--we're talking about it, and she/they obviously felt that would be an issue. If she hadn't upgraded her wardrobe (if it needed that--that's another issue, she was a state Governor, didn't she already have a decent wardrobe?), she would've been torn to shreds for being too dowdy or frumpy. Or--gasp--too masculine. No matter what choice she makes, it's the wrong one--the media NEVER shut up about Hillary Clinton's hairstyle when she was First Lady. Somehow, no matter how she wore it, her hair was sending secret coded messages to the rest of us--either it was too preppy, too severe, too girly, whatever.
It can be cute and fun when constituents affectionately tease the people in power. I remember reading a cute article back in 2004 comparing hairstyles of the four men on the two tickets and it was completely non-partisan, very much in jest, and frankly a welcome relief to the general nastiness of the season. They even got quotations from the candidates. But the reason it's fun is because it *is* so ridiculous--because it's men.
I come from the people
They need to adore me
So Christian Dior me...
In all seriousness, I am still mulling over how I feel about the whole clothing mishegoss. There are a bunch of different issues at play here (possible misuse of donor funds, the hypocrisy of Palin's message about how "real" she is--the kind of "real" American she says she is, doesn't drop thousands of $ on designer clothing, societal expectations of how a woman "should" look and specifically how a woman in power "should" look). As much as she (or the RNC, whoever was at fault here) should not have used donor funds that way, I find myself incredibly annoyed that yet AGAIN we pore over how the woman looks--how THAT'S relevant. And it's relevant in both ways--we're talking about it, and she/they obviously felt that would be an issue. If she hadn't upgraded her wardrobe (if it needed that--that's another issue, she was a state Governor, didn't she already have a decent wardrobe?), she would've been torn to shreds for being too dowdy or frumpy. Or--gasp--too masculine. No matter what choice she makes, it's the wrong one--the media NEVER shut up about Hillary Clinton's hairstyle when she was First Lady. Somehow, no matter how she wore it, her hair was sending secret coded messages to the rest of us--either it was too preppy, too severe, too girly, whatever.
It can be cute and fun when constituents affectionately tease the people in power. I remember reading a cute article back in 2004 comparing hairstyles of the four men on the two tickets and it was completely non-partisan, very much in jest, and frankly a welcome relief to the general nastiness of the season. They even got quotations from the candidates. But the reason it's fun is because it *is* so ridiculous--because it's men.
