Saturday, November 1, 2008

Sarah Palin's clothing

I think most of us have heard enough about Sarah Palin's clothing and the money spent on it. I do think that there's a double standard at work here, nobody stated any figures on how much Obama, McCain or Biden spend on their wardrobe. Something that isn't mentioned often as well is that women in power or in the public eye get scrutinized based on their appearance far more than men do. How much have we heard about Hillary Clinton's and Angela Merkel's appearance in comparison to other male politicians? A male politician can just throw on a black suite, a white shirt and a tie and he can wear that same outfit every day and nobody will notice/care. Women, on the other hand, don't have that luxury and wearing the same outfit more than once can already lead to criticism. Women also have to appear 'attractive' and be slim - at least - or else they are in trouble. Just look at Hollywood - there are buttloads of slightly (or not so slightly) overweight, not handsome or attractive, male actors in leading roles while women who are not a size 0 are already labeled 'fat', 'ugly' or 'pregnant'. (I'm not saying that all actors should be attractive, I'm merely pointing out a double standard. I would appreciate it if Hollywood mirrored real life better.) So I'm not convinced that it's fair to attack her on that, when clearly, there are a lot of other things that she could be attacked for - her foreign policy, her stance on abortion, why rape victims were charged for their own rape kits,...

BUT, even if this might go against my feminist believes, I still have to laugh at some of the things that come out of this. If that makes me a bad feminist, then so be it, but I tend to laugh at jokes that are funny.

Obama Pictures and McCain Pictures
see Sarah Palin pictures

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I do wish that the criticism had been directed more at the campaign, and less at Palin personally, but I do wonder why she couldn't just use that same wardrobe (x5, or whatever) that she used to run for governor. It's not as if the situations are that different.

Anonymous said...

is that really her? O_O

yes, women must have different clothes each and everyday. while men can wear the same design over and over and over again.. thats fashion. *rolls eyes*

finn said...

although I do agree with you in general, I have to say, that changing the way women are represented in Hollywood alone will not do the trick.
You have to change the recipients too. My guess is that if they were willing to pay as much for a movie with an "overweight/ugly" actress in the lead, the big cheeses would react to that too...

Nelfy said...

@ Brianna: I agree with you, she could wear things twice, although I do think that her wardrobe in Alaska has to be different than the wardrobe on the campaign trail.

@finn: yes, that is very much true! I feel like the media and society are in a vicious circle in which the media thinks that only thin and beautiful women are attractive and the society consumes the media, therefore there's no reason for the media to change what they are doing. the change has to come from both sides, how that change will come is the difficult question in my mind.