On Palin and Prettiness

It's interesting to note that, in the last whiteboard post, not one of the comments came from women (I don't think). Let's see if we can change that.

First, my feelings on Palin's speech were initially... not negative. I tend to believe people before I start picking apart why they're saying what they're saying. This credulity helps in my work, so long as I later have a little time to mull, after which I often make a 180-turn, having realized I've swallowed exactly what the speaker wanted me to swallow. This was the case last night with Palin; I was buying her delivery. Sure, the early content sounded canned, yet my first impression was, wow, nice silver jacket. And, her hair's so shiny. (Or, what my friend later described as, "Going for the Oprah crowd.") Meanwhile, my husband had a look on his face like he'd just smelled a big fart, he was not liking her at all, and asked, "Why does she keep snarling?" Then Palin picked up some steam; she knows how to tell a joke, how to pause. This last is an incredibly valuable skill in the course of human affairs; with it, you can make people squirm, wonder, fear; you can get them hot.

Speaking of, anyone notice the "Hottie for VP" placards?

Which brings me to Palin's beauty, or more precisely, her prettiness. She is a very pretty woman who, at 44, knows how to use it. There's been some back and forth about whether she'd have been put up for VP had she been less pretty, less young, a question I think we can fairly easily answer: No. Just as it takes a certain proportion of ingredients to bake a cake, Palin has what the GOP deems the right balance and combination for this ticket; "very attractive and spunky" (the first two things my dad noted about her), Christian, conservative, tough, a fresh face for most voters; a few (not too many) miles on the tires.

After she finished speaking, and the talking heads at CNN were murmuring, "Yes, oh yes, oh my," and my husband was ready to throw some furniture around; after Palin was no longer on-camera and I could stop being confused by her pulchritude, my head cleared enough to know I distrusted the narrative; that the entire show was meant (as these shows are always meant) to pull us by the hands and in, which it clearly was doing for the audience, and the announcers, including Campbell Brown, who two days earlier had been running at McCain operatives, lance-first. I now knew exactly why, when I'd initially said the little girl wetting down her brother's hair was cute, Din had come back with, "What the hell does that have to do with anything?!" He was not interested in the theater, was not blinded by Palin's beauty. Quite the opposite: he saw the latter as the tool it can be -- sharp, shiny -- and he was not going to fall on or for it.

I have a daughter who's extremely attractive. I walk down the street with her and watch men's faces involuntarily rearrange when she comes into view; it's as though her beauty enters a primal part of their brain pans and causes a little lightening storm. We can say all we want about how beauty shouldn't matter; it's brains that count, it's heart and humanity. But anyone who has working eyeballs knows, beauty does exist and we do respond. Quick: you go to Burger King and the gal who takes your order looks exactly like Catherine Deneuve did in 1968; she's asking you if you wants fries with that, and you want to answer but you just can't stop staring her...

If you are someone who has beauty, you learn how people respond to it, and then you respond, and then they respond, and the years go by, and you build your apparatus accordingly. Just as you would if you were seven-feet tall, or born with no legs, or if you were the king of England.

Sarah Palin is a pretty gal. She's physically tough -- the shooting, the gutting, the running -- but still looks great in a skirt. She's got that gleam in her eye, that snarl on her lipsticked lips; that Sarah the Barracuda looks like she might eat you for breakfast, and hey, you might like it. Now, put her in a room with what for the most part will be men (because we know most people in Alaska; in the oil and gas industry; in the room picking the Republican VP, are men), men whom we know are visual creatures. (So, of course, are women, but women, in the main, do not respond to a beautiful woman the same way a man does.) I recently read the quote, "The most powerful people in the world are young pretty women and old rich men." We saw both last night onstage. They each have what the other needs.

Someone here recently left the comment, "What is it about Palin that scares you so much? I suspect I know. Obama is the fairytale, the dream. Palin so excited the right that she instantly embodied the reality that is threatening to awaken the dreamers." But why does she so excite the right? It's not just her policies, it's the package the policies come in; the package looks good, and this is the wild card; the card we have not seen played, and yes, it does scare people who don't want to see McCain elected, and particularly women, because -- as the two reactions to Palin's speech by women that have thus far been left here -- they don't trust her, and not because women don't necessarily trust a pretty woman, but because they know the advantage she can have, if she chooses to take it. Palin's delivery last night indicated, she can and will. That it's part and parcel of why she's here.

Comments

[Brett]

uhh, wow! I really don't have words to reply right now. That post was so insulting to my intelligence as a man I have no comment right now except to say that you apparently think those of us men who support (ie, take Palin's clothes off with our eyes) can't see beyond her looks. But your husband is above that so his dislike of her is justified.

I wonder why I can't stand "perky" Catie Couric? She's supposedly a hottie of her mouth.

[Brett]

Sorry, distracted by my 2 year old twins. Last sentence regarding Couric (how do you spell her name) is that I believe very little of what comes out of her mouth. She's not a journalist she is a partisan mouthpiece but I'm not taken in by her looks.

[aroyo]

You are exactly correct that the 'package' is very much a part of Palin's appeal to the right....and probably those that will be drawn to her that are not on the right.

But it would be remiss not to mention that packaging is an equally important component of Obama's appeal. Replace the handsome black man with the soaring rhetoric with an old white man who merely delivers and adequate speech, and there is no 'movemet' - even if their policy platforms are identical.

In Palin, the right has their Obama.

[Nancy Rommelmann]

I can concede Aroyo's point, while still choosing to throw my lot Obama's way.

I wonder: can we expect, in this age of instant information, to have candidates other than those that have flash appeal? If we choose to avail ourselves, we have millions if not billions of ways to access pictures/sound-bites/opinions of the candidates. It is not a paradigm that lends itself to deep thought, but image worship.

[aroyo]

I don't think anyone is/was worshiping the images of John McCain or Hillary Clinton.

In Hillary's case, it must have been hair-pulling frustrating to lose to Obama when she considered herself to be the 'candidate of substance.'

[Loren Minnick]

As I mentioned earlier, one of the things to look for is the beginning of the Rovian race fear/demonizing which will be eased in subtly now that the "base" is spun up. Forget the glass ceiling, abstinence sex education, hockey moms, etc... this race can only be won by atavistic appeals combined with a blackout of any issues discussion. The first buzzword to be expanded in the coming days: "community organizer." That phrase does not conjure up a bunch of DAR ladies in Chicago. It even transcends race in way... visualize Warren Beatty in "Reds." A toofer!
BTW... Every kid who graduated from high skool in Spokane in the 50s and 60s was given a copy of the U.S. Constitution along with a rather paranoid lecture about the evils of government intervention in our privacy and curtailment of free speech. I didn't get the idea that they were LBJ supporters.(They skipped the gun paranoia since we all had guns in Spokaloo.)I wonder if they lived long enough to see secret wiretaps and a million citizens on the terror watchlist?

[Nancy Rommelmann]

"This race can only be won by atavistic appeals combined with a blackout of any issues discussion."

Gee, do you think the prettiness plus all the personal details/travails might distract from the issues? Sort of like flashing something shiny at a bird right before you shoot it?

As for Roveian tactics: ugh.

[Zev]

"I distrusted the narrative; that the entire show was meant (as these shows are always meant) to pull us by the hands and in,"

That's just how I feel when I hear Obama speak.

[Zev]

"As for Roveian tactics: ugh."

I don't get all the Rove hate. What he does is no different than what Carville does, what any political strategist does. He's just very good at it.

[Eric]

Spokaloo? We call it Spokanistan!

Of course, here in Idaho, anyone from Washington is considered a liberal. Oregonians are the Taliban.

[Michael J. Totten]

Oregonians are the Taliban.

WTF?

[aroyo]

Michael,

Remember, being from Idaho he is likely referring to Eastern Oregonians. They are as church-going conservative as they come. Polar-opposites from their Multnomah County counterparts.

[Eric]

It's a good hearted joke Michael\Arroyo. Kinda like southern Californians vs northern Californians.

[Michael J. Totten]

"It's a good hearted joke Michael\Arroyo."

I sort of figured that, but wonder what it means. Do you think Oregonians are ultraconservatives or ultraleftists? You compared them with people from Spokane, whom you say are "liberals." Oregon is more conservative than Washington, but we're still a blue state. So the meaning of your joke is ambiguous.

[Hillary]

Nancy, you personally are both a beautiful and a charismatic woman, and you do command a great deal of attention in any room with your joie de vivre and animated storytelling. But I think it is oversimplifying the formula to say that this is about you unleashing your "prettiness" on your hapless victims like some kind of kryptonite bomb.

At the risk of making us both sound incredibly vain, I think you and I are both pretty, but I do not share the perceived experience of having my beauty move social mountains all around me. I'm a hardcore introvert, and usually bring my invisibility cloak to parties, if I go at all. In short: I don't have charisma, and you do. And as a result we move through the world differently. I disagree with your self-assessment that it's your prettiness that gets you over: I think it's your attractive personality, and that you are discounting the importance of behavior over looks.

You aren't alone. Why do men get described as charismatic, while women are called pretty? Active vs. passive. Governor Bill Clinton held a stage much the way Palin did, through a powerful yet easy demeanor, a winning way, and, yes, a measure of physical beauty. Was he ripped for being just another pretty face? Was he "feared" because he might whip out this magical beauty and somehow wield it to hypnotize and destroy us?

So as a woman, no, I don't fear Palin because I "know the advantage she can have." Far from it. I believe it takes a lot more than a pretty face to command a room. I think it's clear enough if you look at the portraits in government hallways that politics has never been a beauty pageant, so why it should become one now just for her escapes me. I think if it were that easy, we'd already be ruled by a race of voluptuous amazons (and perhaps the better for it).

I'll post later today on jackandhill.net about my own thoughts on Palin, which have little to do with her considerable physical charms, and more with my experience as a newspaperwoman covering small town politics and small town politicians like her. (She can totally be my mayor any day.)

[Eric]

I'm an ambiguous guy.

This whole left wing / right wing thing is ridiculous in my opinion. I'm anti war, pro death penalty, environmentalist but think we should drill in ANWAR, liberal with a real distrust of many of today's Federal Government programs yadda yadda yadda. I was a Republican until Reagan's mantra of "deficits don't matter" and "moral majority" rhetoric took over the party.

I love Spokane and until recently had a condo on the Oregon Coast at Otter Rock.

But we really do refer to it as Spokanistan, lovingly.

[Nancy Rommelmann]

I did not mean to say (though might well have) that Palin sways the audience only because of her prettiness. I meant to say, it is part of her package, and the package -- more than, say, Biden's -- is what gives her delivery system added value. I do think it's her... I don't want to say intelligence because I haven't seen that, but her focused intensity, the way she used her time (the pauses, the bellicosity), the way she moves. She's comfortable in her skin and strong in it. She's intense.

More interesting to me, today, is the idea of how we all -- myself included, certainly -- have been fixated on the many family dramas she brings to the table, how these are so hot-button and polarizing and generate so much chatter, few are paying attention to the "issues" (as is, say, Din; who found Palin's positions and delivery quite foul), and that this is exactly what the GOP intends.

Of course, as to who cares about which issues: I imagine there are more women interested, today, in what brand of lipstick Palin uses (hey, she brought it up) as her take on immigration.

[Zev]

Just watched a lot more of the speech. What do you mean "snarling?" I don't see any snarling.

[aroyo]

First polling is out from the speech. Watch by roughly the same number of people who watch Obama a week ago (incredible!), and Independents swung 9% toward the McCain camp. I don't think most people who watched the speech were as turned off by Palin as you and Din. She came across as bright, witty, articulate, and tenacious. In other words, exactly what the McCain campaign was lacking. Some of the comparisons I've read today (Reagan, Margaret Thatcher) are over the top, but she definitely does not lack charisma - and it is about much more than her pretty face.

[Brett]

I think Din's bias is showing. I have heard no one indicate she was "snarling". She was on the attack. That is the job of the nomineee for VP. She was able to go after her opposition with a smile and twinkle in her eye as she turned the knife. That is what is so amazing. It's difficult to pull that off with humor and she did it with amazing skill. I'm really enjoying watching the liberals lash out in fear of her.

And since there is so much discussion about her prettiness I'll say for me she doesn't do it for me. I put her in the "not bad" category but certainly not drop dead hot!

I think when people hear someone speak as they feel themselves it enhances whatever attractiveness they have. IOW look on those those we agree with more favorably in many facets including attractivenss. The opposite is true when we vehemently disagree with somone. Still I can't see how Din can see snarl when for me it was clearly a smile. She was enjoying every moment of it and it showed.

[Nancy Rommelmann]

She does this little thing with her lip, one side raises a hair more than the other; not "the big bad wolf" snarl, just a little tug. It's sexy, but what can I say, my husband didn't dig it.

[david]

Sorry ... this woman is not that good looking. And I think her ass looks big in those smarty pants. Now, if Deneuve or Angelina Jolie had been on the stage I could understand. But Palin is hardly the trophy type that rich old men go for. But she's a very effective liar. And great at innuendo. But as a friend of mine once wisely said, "Yeah: innuendo. And out the other." And that's just what her speech upon experience and reflection was: out the other.

[Jason S.]

She snarled a bit in the very beginning and then eased back the more she spoke. And I'm rooting for her, even though I think McCain was reckless to choose her as VP.

[Brett]

David ~

What did she lie about?

Are you referreing to one of the latest smears which was that she lied in her speech about rasing funding for special needs children in school. Lefties said she lied about that and actually cut funding. Well, she did not lie. Her critics lied.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/09/newest_palin_smear_she_cut_spe.asp

Malking has more.
http://michellemalkin.com/

[Brett]

Nancy~

Yeah, I know what you mean about the lip thing. It was kinda weird. I shouldn't be so petty but I guess it was the way she pursed her lips. It was a bit crooked and not very appealing.

But I absolutely loved what she said. Yes, I'm biased too. I'm biased in that I like her because she says what I'd say if I had the stage.