Sexist political criticism finds new target: Conway
What powerful political woman is mocked for her clothes, is the target of pictures on Twitter depicting her as haggard and is routinely called a witch?
If you guessed Hillary Clinton, you’re right.
But if you guessed Kellyanne Conway, you’re right, too.
Misogyny, it seems, remains a bipartisan exercise. Whatever legitimate criticisms can be leveled at each woman, it is striking how often that anger is expressed using the same sexist themes, from women as well as men.
Clinton “repeats her tacky outfits,” one Twitter critic sniped. The Inauguration Day outfit of Conway, a counselor to President Donald Trump, looked like “a night terror of an android majorette.”
Clinton’s hair has drawn relentless derision. One Twitter user recently asked: “Why does Kellyanne Conway always look like she’s still drunk & wearing make up from last night’s bender?”
And both women have been repeatedly compared to witches from the Wizard of Oz, most recently in pictures shared on Twitter tying Conway to the witch killed under Dorothy’s house.
Cultural discomfort
The two women are at opposite ideological poles, but they stir up the same lingering cultural discomfort with ambitious, assertive women.
“These sexist memes are not the purview of one party,” said Karen Finney, a senior adviser to the Clinton campaign. “We fear strong women and women with power. These attacks are meant to delegitimize that power.”
Conway has drawn scorn, and been disinvited from some news programs, for her references to a Bowling Green massacre that never took place and her defense of claims about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration as “alternative facts.” Yet some of the criticisms have taken on a distinctly sexualized tone.
Raunchy allusions
Witness the furor over her sitting on her knees on a couch in the Oval Office during a reception for presidents of historically black colleges. While she drew fire for disrespect, some of the criticisms included digs about her spreading her legs and raunchy allusions to Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., told a now-notorious joke that hers was a “familiar” position in the Oval Office of the 1990s, drawing a rebuke from none other than Chelsea Clinton.
Conway suggested in an interview with The Daily Caller that there would have been more outrage at the comments if she had been a liberal woman, adding, “And it is not just if I were a liberal woman, but if I were a pro-abortion rights one.” Conway did not respond to a message left with her assistant requesting comment for this article.
Still, Conway has spirited defenders on the right on social media who say she should be championed as an example of a groundbreaking woman in politics instead of mocked in sexist terms, and some liberal women in Facebook comments chided others for sexism.
“Ladies & Gents, I disagree with her as much as anyone,” wrote someone identified as Melissa Mae. “It would be nice to see comments sticking to valid points instead of ALWAYS going after women on the basis of ‘looks.’ ”
Time to go forward
Mirya Holman, an assistant professor of political science at Tulane University who studies gender and politics, said, “This does mimic what conservative women have said in the past: ‘You liberals think you’re so enlightened, but we still get people saying vile things about us.’
“To me, the 2016 election was hopefully an opportunity to be reminded that we’re not in some kind of postgender society,” Holman said. “There’s a smaller set of acceptable behaviors for women.”
Finney, a longtime Clinton aide, has watched those issues play out for more than 20 years in public life as Clinton served as a stand-in for debates about women’s roles. She said she and conservative women would sit in green rooms awaiting television appearances and trade stories about how they were attacked.
“There is this sense: ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” she said. “‘Are we going back to this?’ Maybe we have to go back to go forward.”