Politics and the female body

Kathlene M. writes at The Thinking Housewife:

“Do women make for better news?” I would say no. When I see a glammed-up Dana Perino, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Sarah Palin, Diane Sawyer or even Nancy Pelosi talking or pontificating on television, I cannot pay attention because I’m too distracted by their appearances.

This is a key observation. People tend to think that only men are distracted when the female body is overexposed in, say, an office environment or on a TV political program. But women are also distracted by inappropriate female exposure. As I have observed before, women, in their own way, are as interested in female beauty as men are, perhaps more so. So when you turn on, say, Morning Joe, and see the perennially bare armed Mika Brzezinski (with her blank face) sitting cheek by jowl with Joe Scarborough (sitting so close they look like a couple, but they’re not a couple), or when you turn on Sean Hannity’s “Great American Panel” and notice that blonde who always wears a low cut dress with bare arms, as though she were at a cocktail party rather than on a TV program discussing national politics, it’s not desire as such that distracts; it’s the intrusion of the revealed female body, with all the meanings and associations that body has, into a setting where it doesn’t belong. And this distracts women as much as men.

Laura Wood posted my comment and replied:

That is an excellent point.

Women are interested in the appearance of other women out of a natural sense of competition. But it’s more than that. As you suggest, the female body does not only have sexual meaning, but carries many associations. When the feminine body becomes profane or banal, all of life seems to lose its lustre. The world is dis-enchanted.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 09, 2011 01:04 PM | Send