On Misogyny and McCain

It’s really no surprise that Republican presidential candidate John McCain doesn’t have women’s best interests in mind.  Do a search for “McCain hates women,” and you’ll find plenty of evidence to support the query.  If you go neutral and search for “McCain women,” and you’ll find some pretty damning evidence of his misogyny as well.

If you’ve been keeping score at home, I don’t write a lot about politics.  I think that other, better writers have this arena covered (my favorite political, woman-centered or feminist bloggers are AngryBlackBitch, Broadsheet, and Tiny Cat Pants — linked on the blogroll ->), so I tend to focus on the problems I personally experience and the things I do to make change in the world.

I was reading through my blogroll today, and found Jenn’s post about McCain’s Obama-as-celebrity ad and Paris Hilton’s response to it.  I hadn’t seen the anti-Obama ad yet (I get a little insulated sometimes), so I watched it before watching the Paris rebuttal.  Before I discuss my interpretation of McCain’s ad, I just have to say: Jenn, I so agree with you.  I didn’t really have a lot of respect for or interest in Paris Hilton before that ad, and I definitely rolled my eyes before I watched it — “Why is Paris getting involved in politics?”  But she is producing a parody of herself, and whether she wrote that script or not, she does sound like she knows what she’s talking about.  I like that ad of hers.

The McCain ad, however, is really quite terrible.  So terrible, in fact, that I felt compelled to blog about it, even though it’s well within the realm of politics and that’s not my comfortable territory.

I searched around a little to see what feminist bloggers had to say about the anti-Obama ad, and I didn’t find a whole lot reflecting my reading of it.  I found a couple of posts at Amptoons (not linking, sorry — they’re from July 30th and 31st) about the black-man/white-woman/sexual availability themes of the ad, and a bunch of others discussing the negative campaign that this ad denotes.  What struck me about this ad was the misogyny inherent to its entire premise and imagery.

For those of you who haven’t seen or can’t watch the ad, the ad begins with the words, “He’s the biggest celebrity in the world, but is he ready to lead?”  During the first half of the sentence, images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton appear, and then images of Obama making speeches in various locations make up the background.  The ad ends with a criticism of Obama’s oil policy and discussions of higher taxes, which are valid criticisms, whether I agree with them or not.  The problem with this ad, the problem that leads me to a reading of misogyny in this ad, is the invocation of celebrity culture using women to represent it.

Celebrity culture is very much a feminized space in our wider cultural arena.  There is a focus on critiquing famous women — their sex lives, their looks, their clothes, their weight, their careers — while pedestalizing famous men, doting on famous men, or otherwise ignoring them.  The goal of magazines such as Star and Us Weekly and television stations like E! and, now,  VH1 and MTV is to force mainstream compulsory femininity down the throats of the women who buy into such narratives.  Women, especially those who have grown up reading such magazines and watching such television, learn quickly to critique themselves and other women in the ways of Star or be shunned from society at large for being too uppity.  It’s really effective training, and we have the patriarchy to thank.

From a perhaps more masculine mainstream perspective, celebrity culture is stupid, vapid, and pointless.  My Nigel regularly asks, “Who cares about what Paris Hilton is wearing today or who’s fucking who?”  If you turn on E!, you see who cares: women and gay men, most of whom are white.  Sure, there are probably plenty of straight dudes who catch up on Hollywood gossip regularly and there are definitely plenty of women of all sexualities who don’t engage with celebrity culture at all — I’m one of those women, for the most part.  But it’s clear that celeb-obsessed media is directed to an audience made primarily of women and gay men as a caricatured aside.

And it’s clear that celebrity culture doesn’t care about anything real or important.  E! “reporters” interview famous women about who designed their dresses, and most materials dedicated to glorifying celeb culture boil down to “look how rich/ugly/lazy/fat/etc. this person is!” with the complementary message being “look how poor/ugly/lazy/fat/etc. you are!”  Celebrity culture is perceived to be a culture without substance or merit, and the people who obsess about it are perceived to be people without substance or merit as well, especially by older generations and men in the US.

On the surface, it would seem that McCain is implying that Obama is as vapid and meritless as the rest of his “fellow celebrities.”  But by lumping Obama in with other celebrities, and especially by featuring such controversial celebrity figures as Paris Hilton and Britney Spear, McCain & Co. are essentially calling him a pussy.  He’s the stuff of women and gay dudes, not fit for the leadership of Real ‘Merican Men!  But McCain, you see, is a Man’s Man.  They are not only calling him a stupid, brainless celebrity, but they are challenging his masculinity by (how else?) denigrating feminized culture and compulsory femininity as represented in that culture.

Paris Hilton and Britney Spears are probably the two most reviled celebrities out there.  Part of the reason that so many people hate them is that they don’t perform femininity “properly.”  Paris Hilton sleeps with a lot of men and isn’t sorry for it, and Britney Spears had the audacity to gain weight after she was pregnant.  So, not only is Obama being associated with women and gay dudes, he is also being associated with bad women, women who aren’t “wife material.”  If he’s a celebrity like they are, then he must condone their bad behavior, and obviously, women’s bad behavior should not be condoned by national authorities, therefore, vote McCain, right?

I recognize that it’s just a shitty ad — who really cares if Obama is a person a lot of people like?  What a stupid fucking argument — but it’s built on an invisible frame of misogyny, which, like any bad ad, reflects more on its maker than its target.  McCain hates women.

ETA: Who’s a celebrity again, Mr. McCain?