Women and the idiots who analyze them

As I was reading this Slate article about the lessons Hillary Clinton can learn from Katie Couric, with its really startling insights like don't allow yourself to have a personal style of dressing off the job or it may make you look like you're indecisive, I thought back to my post yesterday about the law school women who had been bullied on the internet.  In a sense, it is all just variations on a theme -- why women can't.  Women can't be lawyers/TV anchors/president because they're sluts/frigid/too feminine/too masculine.  The Slate piece states "the two women come at these jobs with very different liabilities: Katie seems too soft, Hillary too brittle" with no sense of apparent irony at all.  Of course, one's too soft and one's too brittle, all women are too soft or too brittle.  I challenge you to find me a professional woman who has not at some point in her career been labeled one or the other (or both).  Trying to get it "right" is aiming for a spot that doesn't exist.  Too girlish to be president, still too girlish, nope, still too girlish, oops, too mannish, sorry!  Incidentally, I have a boychild at home and I believe this kind of sexism hurts him (and guys in general), too, because they can't do anything that smacks of femininity (although I see some hope with his generation).  It's the same standard that gets John Edwards called a faggot or effeminate.  The only difference is that it's possible for men to get it "right" and be president, if women get it "right," then they're excellent first ladies and not much more.

Comments

[Mithras]

Gore wore earth tones and was savaged. Bush wore a flight suit with a sock stuffed in the crotch and people swooned. Lesson: Don't take advice on fashion and mannerisms from the media.

[Mithras]

You read Slate?