Don’t Tell Me What She’s Wearing, Tell Me What She’s Doing
U.S. Senate candidates Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown just recently announced their pledge to curb attack ads by third parties during the 2012 campaign. This agreement will help level the playing field and keep the election focused on the politics, not third party interests. Despite this progressive pact, an op-ed in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette paints a just plain sexist portrait of Warren on the same day.
Interestingly, columnist Dianne Williamson wrote the article, striving to support Warren and Brown’s alternative approach to campaigning. However, Williamson dedicates the beginning of the article to Warren’s physical appearance during a recent meet-and-greet with supporters and the press. Instead of including meaningful excerpts from Warren’s conversation with her supporters, Williamson only adds that a voter said she was “even more beautiful in person.”
Warm, personable and engaging, Warren excels at the meet-and-greet. Dressed on Thursday in a brown, quilted knee-length coat and simple gray pants, granny glasses perched smartly behind intelligent blue eyes, she hardly filled the “elitist hypocrite” moniker recently hurled her way by Scott’s Brown campaign manager.
Williamson uses Warren’s physical appearance to speak to her character in this article while Brown is given much more depth (and no clothing review) right from the start. While Williamson was probably trying to discredit the claims that Warren is an intellectual elitist, this could have been done by talking about what she was doing, not what she was wearing.
Women are much more than the attitude they portray through physical appearance. Warren has well-known resume. Any of her past positions, statements, or jobs would have been a fair representation and could have provided material for Williamson to show she’s not an “elitist hypocrite.” By summing up a female politician by her physical appearance we disgrace all the credentials that truly mark her political relevance.
Published by Kate McCarthy on 01/23/2012