Apparently We Have Not Really Come Such A Long Way, Baby

Maybe you missed this, dear reader, it having appeared in the cheeky, gossip-infested Style section of the Sunday New York Times and you being a serious person, but yesterday there appeared an article discussing the potential for a female president of the United States.

Why, you ask, should a discussion of why our country has never had a female head of state (and why it in fact lags behind many other countries, including those not exactly famous for their benevolent and equal treatment of their female citizens) be considered next to the adjacent articles "Strung out On Love and Checked In for Treatment", "Shopping with Lauren Conrad Heidi Montag: Blond Ambition Comes in Flats or Heels", and "Having All the Fun", part of the campaign to re-heterosexualize Eric McCormack?

Is it as simple and 1950s as this? Women politicians are to be discussed primarily in terms of their makeup, hairstyles, and catfighting potential? We're trying to think of charitable reasons why this article might be in the purview of Style. It does quote a few celebrities, such as Susan Sarandon and George Clooney, but the Hollywood varnish strikes one as applied, not intrinsic. One can almost hear the editor calling the writer, breaking the news: "That article on the prospect of a woman president? Yes, we still need it tomorrow, but it's going in the Style section and we'll need some celebrity quotes." Ouch!

When one reads the article on the website, as we did, the text is sandwiched between a column of photos of real women foreign heads of state on the left, and a giant Neutrogena Dermabrasian ad featuring a woman wearing nothing but a towel on the right. That is the context in which we read about the unfortunate dearth of women in "the political pipeline in the United States, which now, with 8 female governors out of 50, and 14 female senators of 100, still offers a limited number of experienced candidates for the presidency."

Last but not least, we would try to ignore the the article’s title, with its terrible pun and its ever-so-slight whiff of “eww", but we found that to be impossible.

A bee in our bonnet? Try a hornet's nest!

Yours In Indignation,
The Broads