Never Doubt It: The Enduring Double Standard

I am not a Sarah Palin fan.

Her race baiting and nasty mud slinging are the worst of American politics.

But I knew that the ensuing trashing of Palin would take place. If racism sells well in American politics, misogyny is the most valuable commodity on the market.

After the most intelligent, disciplined, and forward thinking campaign in American history, the big news this week on the MSM was that women didn’t like Michelle Obama’s choice of of Narciso Rodriguez’s dress for her husband’s acceptance speech.

And please note, if you Google “Michelle Obama,” as of 8 November 2008, the “related search” options given at the top of the page are: “michelle obama dress michelle obama fashion.” That’s right, America’s most well educated First Lady in history is now the premier fashionista for the next four years. Michelle is the one who will set the trends and dictate fashion, with her every appearance on People and Style covers. Princeton undergraduate and Harvard law to become our foremost style icon–no education required. The rest will have to take place quietly behind the scenes. I trust her to do so. Just make a note of it.

So I applaud Ms. Palin on the following, which I found on the BBC: click here. (The snippet inspiring this post, Sarah Palin speaking on women, clothes, and politics has been removed in a matter of hours. What a shocker.)

You may think that Palin is the worst thing since . . . . McDonald’s, high fructose corn syrup, and George W. Bush, but on this she nails it, in all her oblique and awkward glory. And she should know. She was picked for all the wrong reasons, and expected to successfully sell her femme maverick status, amid the sequestering and despite her many political shortcomings.

The Republicans will hang her out to dry, in her pretty black dress and well coiffed veep hairdo, all of which were as deliberately displayed the 7 American flags and conglomerate of economic advisers decorating Obama’s first press conference, because misogyny is alive and thriving in America.

Even though McCain has presumably asked that the swiping between Palin and his campaign adivisers (read: white, male Republican strategists) to stop, the Republicans will blame her. She will do most what men would do, defend herself with stridency. (Is Bill Clinton’s despicable, “I did not have sex with that woman,” so long ago?) But she’s not a man, and since her ambition exceeds her abilities, an admirable trait for those born without fallopian tubes, she will come off in the worst light possible.

Meanwhile, McCain will return to the comforts of the Senate, and to his blond haired, blue eyed, eerily Barbie-doll-esque wife, the one he acquired after the first one went lame.

Market value goes down on damaged goods.

Never doubt it; the double standard requires a desirable commodity package. Because until there is a tide change, American women must market themselves to the testosterone and unexamined lusts of America’s men, and the women who devotedly follow their lead. In order to garner power, the package must be a commodity, nothing more, nothing less.  This power must pander to men’s desires while showing other women how to “do it,” how to make the game work for themselves.

But don’t blame men; women find this transaction the easiest way to break the chains which bind us.

Conversely, you can’t blame us. Misogyny is the toughest gig around.

Now, let’s all all bump and grind to the sound of real female power right here in the good old U.S.A. (while we all are emotionally awash of Obama’s victory, and the almost certain glaringly homogeneous cabinet which will no doubt come to pass in the not too distant future):

Love. The quintessential capitalist commodity. Only for women with the goods to sell.