Most of have you have probably seen the video of Hillary Clinton's exasperated, irritated "
I AM THE SECRETARY OF STATE, NOT MY HUSBAND!" to the Congolese student asking her to enlighten us on Bill's view. (See the video on the
The Lede, NYT's new blog.)
I graduated from a women's college that had Hillary as our graduation speaker. I'm a big fan--she's putting scratches in the glass ceiling, yada yada. Obviously, I get where she's coming from: why does this student not care about HER, the woman's, point of view? Aren't we trying to further women's roles in government, society--can't a woman act, think, and be important without her husband in the picture?
Samantha: "Emotional" is just code for "I don't want to hire a woman."
Miranda: They're like that at my firm. They're afraid you're going to cry over a legal brief.
The problem is not so much the core of her reaction, I think, but how she expressed the feelings. It goes back to the age-old problem of women being unable to show emotion because it wrecks our reputation, stunts our growth in the workplace, the world. Thank about that Sex and the City episode, where Samantha is trying to get the Richard account or when Charlotte cries at the gallery. As I kept saying throughout Hillary's campaign for presidency when they were lamenting her lack of emotion (she was TOO manly, apparently), if she had been too womanly, she would've had just as big, if not a bigger, problem! Case and point, here, I think.
The thing is, I also find it hard myself to express strong emotions without coming off too... too. I tend to cry when I get angry--maybe because those emotions don't have a lot of room to bounce around in this little body. I don't know. It seems we're kind of screwed as women--a man overreacting is, simply, a manly man; a woman, however, is PMS-ing (even on menopause, as they explained on The View--whose side are they on?).
What do you think?
