“We, as women, often find ourselves stuck between two bad options: embracing traditional gender roles and risking being perceived as lacking leadership skills and strength, or embracing ambition and power and risking making people uncomfortable and hostile. That annoying voice in my head is reminding me to navigate between those two unpleasant options. It feels mandatory, but also often impossible. And it's exhausting.
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign offers a glimpse of a world in which we will no longer have to do that. Not because she will be such a shining example of female power that she'll singlehandedly shatter restrictive gender norms and brush their dust off her power-suited shoulders — although that sure would be nice! — but because her campaign is going to inspire such ridiculously gendered demands and critiques that we'll all be reminded of how silly they are, and that if we're going to succeed it will be in spite of those inner critical voices, not because of them.”
Actually though. Like, this is a big reason I am excited about this campaign and the potential for having a female president: It’s going to force so much investigation of gender norms, and the way that media describes power and femaleness. Like, people are used to speaking about first ladies in a certain way and having a certain gender for American presidents and their spouses. I think of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as sort of that first sweep when you are trying to clean something super dirty, like literally just bluntly getting the cobwebs and dust and dirt out of the way so that it isn’t impossible to deal with. Later, after several more steps, we can get to the point where we are being careful and perfect and polishing it and making it look nice and making it usable.
(Also though, I can’t figure out what object I am imagining in the above analogy - sort of an old trophy that’s full of dirt in the back of an attic? A trophy that can be used as like a serving dish? That’s totally a thing)
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