Don’t Cry for Me Wasilla

Edit/Note: An anonymous reader/poster has pointed out that the Sarah Palin Vogue cover photo below is a fake.  Apparently I wasn’t the only person fooled by it.  I found the image on dozens of web sites–including some newspapers–and all of them accepted it as authentic.  Still, I should have searched more carefully to confirm that it was a real cover.   The public’s (myself included) credulity about this image, I think, reinforces my central point.  I also think we could substitute Palin’s spread in Runner’s World for the faux-Vogue picture with less dramatic, but similar, effect.  Nonetheless, I apologize for not doing my “homework” here, and I thank the reader who pointed it out.  I shall endeavor not to make this kind of mistake again.  I am presenting my article in its original form.  I’ve learned a public lesson, and I’m not going to gloss over my error.

Original post:

During Sarah Palin’s resignation press conference, she chastised the media, saying “The response in the mainstream media has been most predictable [and] ironic.”  Putting aside the unlikelihood of anything being both predictable and ironic, can we say that the media’s coverage of Palin was either?

To the extent that the mainstream media embraced the lookism and perpetuation of the male gaze implicit in treating any woman in the public eye as a sex object, its response was a bit predictable.  But how much of this was a product of the media’s framing of Palin and how much was a product of her own manipulation of that framing?  If we look at this 2008 cover of Vogue we certainly see Palin-as-sex-object:

This would indeed be an indictment of Vogue if they portrayed all politically powerful women in this manner.  However, the Vogue cover portraits of Hillary Clinton (1998), Michelle Obama (2009) depict much less overtly-sexualized women:

So who chose to vamp up the beauty-queen-cum-governor?  It’s hard to imagine that Sarah Palin chose her outfit, pose, etc. completely independently, but it’s equally hard to believe that she objected to this method of presentation.  Surely if Vogue had asked Michelle Obama to pose in a plunge-neck dress with hair blowing in the wind she would have refused.

Indeed, Palin has invited the public to see her as a sex object.  She winked at the camera, and at Joe Biden, during a nationally-televised debate, for crying out loud.  Imagine candidate Hillary Clinton winking at candidate Obama.  Can anyone imagine Nancy Pelosi wearing knee-high boots and a smidge-longer-than-miniskirt?

None of this is to say that it should be impossible for a woman to be serious, powerful, and also sexual, if she chooses to be so.  The “controversy” over Hillary Clinton’s cleavage was upsetting because it suggested that a woman must completely deny that her body can potentially be seen sexually in order to gain power.  That sentiment may not seem as limiting as the imperative for woman to be sexual above all else, but it is limiting nonetheless.  The problem with Sarah Palin is that she gave us no reason to take her seriously and never had any significant power (sorry Alaska).  The media didn’t focus on Palin’s sex appeal while ignoring her gravitas.  She had no gravitas to ignore.

Palin’s downfall wasn’t caused by the mainstream media covering her unfairly but by the media covering her fully.  If the infamous Katie Couric interview had edited out most of what Palin said and focused only on her charming smile and designer glasses, I doubt the McCain/Palin campaign would have complained.  It was Palin’s inability to express an articulate, intelligent thought that sunk her political career.  The media’s focus on her sex appeal probably kept her in the public eye longer than she would otherwise have been.

Again, this is not a feather in the media’s cap.  The problem is that McCain’s choice of Palin as his running mate made her an instant national celebrity.  The media had no choice but to cover her.  When Palin said anything intelligible about public policy, her words were reprinted.  But she so rarely did that.  In a society in which it was not socially acceptable (and even sometimes encouraged) for a woman to trade on her looks, we would have had little choice but to ignore Palin completely.  Then, of course, her campaign would have complained that coverage disproportionately favored Joe Biden (or the Obamas).

Since Palin herself had little to offer but debutante charm, the media had little else to report.  They had to cover her, but she gave them nothing to cover.  Of Carrie Prejean, another conservative beauty queen recently gone wild, Donald Trump said, “If her beauty wasn’t so great, nobody really would have cared.”  Of course, the implicit logic of this statement—that what beautiful people say matters more because more people listen when they speak—is offensive.  However, in the context of American popular culture, Trump’s statement is (unfortunately) fairly accurate.

Thus Palin’s statement that the media’s coverage of her was “predictable” was actually right, though not in the way she implied.  The media’s coverage was not at all ironic, however.  Palin’s outrage about the coverage, on the other hand, pretty much defines irony.