It’s no secret that women are exploited by the media. With the hype surrounding the Federal Election, and the coverage of America’s next Presidential Election, I started thinking about the ways in which women in politics, in particular, are portrayed by the media.
“First lady Michelle Obama serves as a fashion icon,” “Power Dressing: How Women Politicians Use Fashion,” “The Hillary Clinton look: power hair, pantsuits and practicality,” “Michelle Obama: Fashion’s first lady.” These are all headlines provided by The Washington Post, BBC News, The Guardian, and Forbes.
Women in politics are largely misrepresented by the media, the focus generally being on fashion, domestic roles, and maternal capability.
According to a book entitled Women in Politics and Media, a long-scale Canadian study that was done between 1975 and 2012, and compared the media coverage of both male and female politicians, found that “women did receive more attention to their physical characteristics and personal lives thus underscoring the gendered nature of personalization in political reporting.”
Michelle Obama, wife of the President of the United States, first African-American First Lady of the United States, writer, and Harvard-trained lawyer, is more often than not, reduced by popular media to a fashion icon. Hillary Clinton, a candidate for the next Presidential Election and the first female to be elected as senator from the state, is at the butt of pantsuits jokes. During Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign, Michelle Obama dealt with not only sexism by the media, but also racial stereotypes. The Harvard lawyer was featured on front covers of magazines with photos of her shouting. She was captured in moments where her facial expression looked angry, and was described as being what some would call a “monster” by reporters. During a commencement speech she delivered at Tuskegee University in Alabama, Obama addressed what it was like to see the way she was being portrayed during the election, and the pressure that came along with it.
“As potentially the first African-American First Lady, I was also the focus of another set of questions and speculations; conversations sometimes rooted in the fears and misperceptions of others,” Obama said. “Was I too loud, or too angry, or too emasculating? Or was I too soft, too much of a mom, not enough of a career woman?” During the speech, Obama also mentioned the racial discrimination that she has faced since Barack Obama started his campaign.
“Over the years, folks have used plenty of interesting words to describe me. One said I exhibited ‘a little bit of uppity-ism.’ Another noted that I was one of my husband’s ‘cronies of color.’ Cable news once charmingly referred to me as ‘Obama’s Baby Mama.’”
In an interview that was done with CBS News, Obama mentioned that she was tired of being portrayed by the media as “an angry black woman”—a stereotype that haunted her during her husband’s campaign.
As a result of the scrutiny she faced, her speeches were completely re-written, and her public persona was deliberately manipulated in order for her to fit the role of a proper wife.
Hillary Clinton’s image in popular media has been that of a harsh, stone-faced, emasculating ice queen. In 2014, Time Magazine’s front cover featured a giant image of a woman’s leg, wearing a pantsuit and high heel, with a tiny man hanging from the end of the heel, with the headline “Can Anyone Stop Hillary? How to scare off your rivals without actually running (yet).” Clinton is often criticized for being too masculine, anti-male, or just plain scary to the opposite sex. Television commentators and reporters have continuously made sexist comments toward Clinton. “Men won’t vote for Hillary Clinton because she reminds them of their nagging wives,” a Fox News anchorman said on live television.
Clinton was also part of a cleavage scandal, when she wore a deep v-neckline while delivering a speech back in 2007. The tabloids pounced on her; the shirt sparked conversations all over live talk shows and newsrooms regarding Clinton’s cleavage—whether it was sexy, and what the correct amount of cleavage should be for a woman in congress. She was mocked and laughed at by male and female newscasters for “trying to be sexy.” News segments on television actually dedicated entire 30-minute segments to comparing the amount of cleavage Clinton showed with other female politicians.
Michelle Obama’s past experiences with the press, and the way Hillary Clinton is portrayed in the media, are excellent examples of the way that women in leadership roles are often portrayed as threatening, which is probably one of the reasons why women are still so underrepresented in politics.
We live in a time where women have more opportunity to inhabit positions of power than ever before, so why aren’t more women doing so?
The answer is probably one that has to do with the fact that many women don’t want their personal lives drawn and quartered. Women in the workplace already have to deal with discrimination, sexism, sexual harassment, and judgement. There is already stigma attached to career-driven women, to women who choose not to have children, to women who choose to have children and a career, and to women who choose to stay single. Personal lives, whether ridiculed or not, should not be made public on a gendered basis.
Women are resilient, women are powerful, but it’s difficult to look our daughters in the eye and tell them that they can grow up to be the Prime Minister of Canada, when we know full well that the odds are stacked against them.
Maybe to solve this issue, we need to stop asking ourselves why there aren’t enough female politicians, and start asking why it’s socially acceptable for a reporter to make nagging-wife-jokes about a presidential candidate on national television.