Women In Politics

Women In Politics

Just in the last few years, the role of women in the political arena has changed dramatically. Current Secretary of State and former First Lady, Senator from New York, and 2008 Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton made 18 million cracks in the proverbial glass ceiling that has prevented women for millennia from achieving their full potential with the 18 million votes she received in the Democratic primary. First Lady Michelle Obama, while not technically a politician, played a significant role in her husband's, President Barack Obama's, campaign, and is poised to play as significant a role as former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in the White House. Former Alaska Governor and 2008 Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, while controversial and the target of much criticism, both fair and unfair, has endured and remains a force to be reckoned with within both the Republican Party and Conservative movement. How does the media portray these women - positively or negatively? How does the media's portrayal of these women form and inform adolescent girls? Subsequently, does the media form and inform us or do we form and inform media?

The Female Force comic book series chronicles the lives of prominent women in positions of power - particularly political power. The women highlighted in the series are not presented as superheroes per se, but their lives are extraordinary and each issue reflects that. Works such as these make the life stories of powerful women accessible to young girls (and boys) and are an example of positive media influence.

Hillary Clinton

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is arguably the most powerful woman in American history - a history she has helped shape. Upon conceding to now-President Barack Obama, Clinton said, "Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18 million cracks in it. And the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time" (Milbank 1).

Michelle Obama

First Lady Michelle Obama grew up on the South Side of Chicago. From a working-class family, Michelle managed to graduate from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, and moved on to land a position in a top Chicago law firm in which she was the now-President's superior (!) ("Wikipedia"). Her story is the quintessential American story, but not one possible for many young American women, quite frankly. Nonetheless, she has inspired millions of young and adolescent girls - especially girls of color - and given them the hope that her husband has given so many others.

Walt Disney's "The Princess and the Frog" for the first time in animated film history puts a woman of color in a tiara. Is this progress? That's up for debate. Her race, however, is presented as more of an afterthought, which is progress. Vince Mitchell of the London Times accuses the film of capitalizing on the Obama era. The Village Voice gives a scathing review, noting "Six decades after unleashing persistent NAACP bugaboo Song of the South (1946), and two after firmly suppressing it, that peculiar cultural institution known as the Walt Disney Company has made a symbolic reparation by creating its first African-American princess—and plunking her down in the middle of Jim Crow–era Louisiana! A patronizing fantasia of plantation life in post–Civil War Georgia, Song could at least be understood—if hardly excused—as a product of its time (18 years before the passage of the Civil Rights Act). But is Disney's latest, The Princess and the Frog, the Obama-era fairy tale that anyone other than the "birther" crowd has been waiting for?" (Foundas). Nevertheless, it is a positive portrayal of a young woman in a position of power whose character draws obvious inspiration from the Obama family and the Obama women in particular, if only for her race.

Sarah Palin

Former Alaska Governor and 2008 Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin was launched from relative obscurity to the national stage when Senator John McCain chose her as his running mate. She has been heavily scrutinized, at times unfairly, but remains a heavy-hitter in the Conservative movement today. The unfair criticism of Palin tends to be rooted in sexism. As Michel Martin of NPR said "...they're (Democrats) doing what a lot of men can't seem to help doing with women — a lot of throat clearing, offering compliments about her appearance and then acting like she isn't even there. So here's Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden joking that one difference between the two of them is not his three decades of experience at the center of the country's most complex issues, but that she's better looking than he is. And here's Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, not saying that her politics are extremist or that her worldview and experiences are too limited to do the job for which she has been tasked, but that she's 'shrill.'" And even prominent figures on her own side, like Glenn Beck, voice that she belongs "in the kitchen."

When the media judges her makeup and not her qualifications, her outfits and not her experience, her hair and not her worldview, when they frame motherhood as mutually exclusive from a career - in politics or otherwise - they do a disservice not just to Sarah Palin, not just to women, but also to adolescent girls who aspire to be more than just a pretty face.

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