I Promise You, Palin Wears the Skirts on Purpose

Oh Sarah Palin.  Can you believe we are this close to the election and I have yet to really tackle the persona of Palin?  Me either.

Now, normally the idea of critiquing the fashion sense of any female politician is repugnant and one of the few areas where I get all bitchy feminazi.  But Palin's case is different.  And no, it's not different because I think Palin is a nutjob.  It's different because what strikes me as so fascinating is her constructed identity, and in that sense, the skirts, the heels, all of it is fair game.

Say what you will about Palin's apparent lack of readiness, her blatant disdain for all things intellectual, this is a woman who knows her political base.  She winks.  She flashes a toothy open-mouth smile, and she wears a lot of skirts.  She's teasing the right with her anti-intellectual lapdance and has made herself the walking, talking blow-up doll of the religious right.  I half expect to see the pull-string peeking out from one of her silky blouses.  She is the right's  antidote to Hillary Clinton's Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits.  And she's doing it on purpose.

A lot of feminists have decried Palin's treatment by the press, and by other women in particular, as playing out another version of Mean Girls-- girl-on-girl hate crimes that hurt all women.  That would be true but for several factors, only one of which I can get into here.  The rest will have to wait for a future post.  

First, and most obviously, Palin is entirely complicit in her constructed political image and she works it with a savvy that the McCain folks either did not understand or totally disregarded.  When McCain first announced his pick the Republican base lit up like Christmas in Vegas.  The fringe of the party that had spent the better part of the twentieth century actively advocating against the rights of women heralded Palin as their champion.  And she took the crown with glee.  That snapshot allowed us to see what the religious right saw as an image of female leadership.  She was perky.  She was scrappy.  She was attractive (especially by political standards).  But she was also willing to cede all power, authority, and leadership to her male elder.  She was, at the end of the day, no threat to the male political establishment and never would be.    

But I have to give Palin credit.  She's just not mistress material.  As the McCain campaign derails pundits now complain about his inability to "control" Palin.  Her vicious race baiting (again, in stark contrast to the subtle race-baiting in the Democratic primary practiced by the Clinton campaign, but that is also another post) brings all the fever of a Pentacostal revival with none of the soul-saving.  It doesn't sit well with the Lutheran roots of mainstream America- it's too loud and too honest in it's bias.  

And Palin is too ambitious, again, a fatal flaw in the religious right's image of acceptable female leadership.  She's had a taste of the national spotlight and trust me, she's looking for more.  Think it was a slip when she referred to the "Palin/McCain ticket"?  I don't.

As the campaign draws closer to election day, and the pitch continues to elevate, and as the Grand Old Party sinks deeper in despair look for Palin's shirts to get a little tighter, the skirts a little shorter, and the hair worn down more than up.  Just a hunch.  

It's actually a game I'm pretty familiar with, but the thing is, Palin is no Hegemommy.  See to really beat the big boys, and I have no doubt that Palin aspires to beat them, you still need to be smarter than them.  The skirts, the winks, the toothy smiles are all the tools to get you past the cronyism, to let you in to the boardroom.  It's the substance that keeps you there.  On that point, neither the GOP nor its current fetishist Palin seem to get it.