A short-short lesson in sexism

[trinityvixen]

Newsweek took a ton of flak for putting this picture on their cover the other week. The haters claim this move was sexist because it reduces Palin to a pretty face instead of a credible political force.

Comments

[trinityvixen]

Sorry about that--fixed it I think.

Just for the record: the fact that you don't find the photo sexy doesn't prove sexism is present/absent. It's not about whether it appeals sexually to one person but whether or not the person in the image is being presented in a sexual manner. In this case, you can argue that she is. She's wearing tight clothes to show off her figure, and her legs are completely bare. It's hard to remember in our culture of sex that such things are still themselves sexual in a lot of ways. (In fact, you can argue that someone wearing tight/revealing clothes is sexier than someone naked since it leaves something to the imagination, which is always better at filling in the blanks with fantasy than nudity is.)

The issue is whether this picture is, disconnected from its running context, sexual. ivy03 argues that it is, that as soon as you take away the explanation that she's a runner and put her in those clothes, posed that way, it's sexualizing her in a way that would not be done to a man. I counter that if it is sexism, it is Sarah Palin manipulating it since that is her choice (or seems to have been since she became famous). She took this picture this way as much as she was posed this way. This is a favor to her fans, as much as anything else.

[droidguy1119]

I guess I would argue that right now, in the 21st century, given how overly sexualized everything else is in the media, that the image in question is not being presented in a sexual manner. The photo has a context, in Runner's World, but I don't think removing it from said context makes it a sexualized picture. She's not posing provocatively, in terms of runners outfits her dress is restrained, and she's posing in her house with the American flag, not on a beach or some visually striking environment.

Plus I'm pretty sure they were plastering Obama in his bathing suit on the cover of supermarket tabloid magazines long before this.

[trinityvixen]

I think you're right, actually. Obama was the nominee presumptive long before Sarah Palin was on the scene and we definitely saw him in his bathing suit before we saw her in her track suit.

Are there elements of that outfit she wears that could be construed as sexual? Oh hell yeah, but it takes some doing. I mentioned that her wearing something tight and revealing her legs falls under the category of sexualized presentation--easier to see how when you try to imagine a man doing that and being on a serious news mag. In this case, what I think is playing in here is part of what you mention--with our culture being heavily sexualized--working against this being an inherently sexy picture. If anything, it's about exercise, and exercise is not, to say the least, sexy in and of itself. It's almost too wholesome to be baudy.

[droidguy1119]

Yeah. I mean, she looks exactly like she should: like she's gonna go jogging. It seems very "political photo promoting exercise" to me. It seems so All-American of her.