Former PM is just a little out of touch
If for some reason you needed additional proof that Twitter is the most annoying place on earth, look no further than the frenzied indignation surrounding Canada’s 19th prime minister, Kim Campbell. This week, the 70-year-old former PM, a.k.a. the only woman to have held the highest office in our land, made an astoundingly unwise tweet on a topic best left to Tyra Banks: women’s fashion.
“I am struck,” Campbell wrote on the social media site, linking to an article about public speaking tips, “by how many women on television news wear sleeveless dresses — often when sitting with suited men. I have always felt it was demeaning to the women and this suggests that I am right. Bare arms undermine credibility and gravitas!”
I don’t think I have to tell you what happened next, but it’s my job, so here goes: people got mad at the former PM. Really mad. For starters, the mostly younger, mostly female, backlash hollered in Campbell’s direction a response to the effect of: “How dare you tell us what to wear! The sleeves don’t make the woman! We will fight for the right to bare arms!”
In the words of female Global news anchor Angie Seth, who is pictured in her Twitter profile smiling in a sleeveless dress:
“Really? No disrespect to you (Kim Campbell) but myself and my female colleagues wear what we chose to wear with dignity, respect, and professionalism. We have shed the stereotyped female suit and are proud of it.”
As they should be. These women are 100 per cent correct. Not only is it outright Victorian to get your panties in a bunch when you see a pair of exposed arms on television, it’s also wildly unfair to anyone who has spent countless hours sweating in front of a Jillian Michaels DVD toning those triceps.
That’s hard work. If you got it, flex it. I’m looking at you, Michelle Obama.
It’s also freezing cold in the vast majority of North American offices, so any woman who can deliver the news in a sleeveless dress on live TV in an office studio — without developing frostbite — is a hero in my books. (Unlike those feeble male anchors, warm and toasty in their jackets.)
But joking aside, as much as I agree with the female broadcasters and younger feminists taking Campbell to task for her prudish tweet (a tweet she unfortunately doubled down on), I have to admit I’m also exhausted.
I’m exhausted by intergenerational feminist warfare. I’m exhausted by what feels like a constant battle between the old girls’ club — women who shattered glass ceilings in a viciously sexist culture, making it significantly less vicious, and the modern girls club — women who are grateful to their feminist elders but who can’t help but cringe and criticize when they make disappointingly retrograde comments.
I’m not a bystander to this battle. I came down hard on Angela Lansbury late last year (one of my favourite people in the entire world) when she said women “must sometimes take blame” for sexual harassment and assault.
I don’t regret criticizing Lansbury’s comments, but I am uncomfortable with how noxious and hateful much of the social media response was to the 92-year-old actress.
The response to Campbell isn’t nearly as harsh but it is combative and in some cases a little tone-deaf to the realities of the former PM’s legacy.
Campbell was prominent when only a handful of women held highprofile positions of power, when most women in public life were described in media as “the first” or “the only” of their kind.
In fact, as a kid in the 1990s, I frequently confused Campbell, the first female PM, with Manon Rhéaume, the first female goaltender to play in the NHL (Rhéaume played for the Tampa Bay Lightning in 1992 and 1993 pre-season games).
The “first and onlys” was a small club in Canada back then and I suppose, to a kid, its members were easily interchangeable. Fortunately that club has expanded to include seconds, thirds, and “one of manys.” But the “First and Onlys” à la Kim Campbell appear to have a hard time navigating the waters of modern-day feminism. They say the wrong things, even if their hearts are in the right place.
Let’s revisit Campbell’s tweet, for example: it’s possible she isn’t merely being prudish — she appears to be attempting (albeit clumsily) to make a point about double standards in media. Why is it that the guys wear suits and women show skin? Doesn’t this demean us?
The problem is that in trying to expose a double standard, Campbell reinforces it, because she suggests there is something indecent about perfectly appropriate women’s office apparel.
But I think it’s important to remember, before we rush to judgment and label the former PM irredeemably “problematic” that though her delivery was flawed and laughable, her goal is not.
She wants women to have credibility and gravitas. She wants us to have power, as she did once, ever so briefly.
Sleeves or no sleeves, she’s not the enemy. She’s just a little out of touch. Emma Teitel is a national affairs columnist.