Thursday, October 25, 2012

Wrong woman who won't go away

Dusted this off from saved drafts, forgot to publish at the time...
This article (Wrong woman, wrong message) by Gloria Steinem deserves a revisit because that lucky governor who was plucked by a crafty Presidential candidate to be out-of-her-element/V.P. is not being placed upon the mantle she rightfully deserves. It's any mantle, really, as long as it's there to be ignored and polished once in a while. But no one is leaving it well enough alone, especially the lucky trophy herself. Just to refresh, I believed the problem with her as VP candidate to be an issue of scale. She was suited to public service on at most a smallish state level, but she proved many times to be ill-equipped at handling even the most basic of domestic and foreign affairs. She was McCain's trophy partner, to be placed on the opposite side of his trophy wife in photo shoots.

And also, Tina Fey, I know you're super duper cute in the latest ratings boosting turn as Mrs. P but you of all people - you who said the porn industry should die and more feminist sounding things - should not fall victim to executives giving the people what they want. I can only imagine how addictive life's offerings are right now to someone who once worked at a desk, like me right now and forever, so I think history will give you a free pass. Besides, I think thinking women are winning right now. We haven't heard anything about Paris or Brittney in a long while.

Friday, June 29, 2012

My latest report from my mother is that she just had a good time with her stake young women president. "She is a very sweet sister." The time in my life when I most often applied the word "sweet sister" to any and all Church women I came across was in the young women from Beehive to Laurel and on through college, at BYU. Among LDS women, sweetness is the preferred unit of measurement. Sweetness is different from kindness, which is a preferred behavior in LDS men. Sweetness implies not only being slightly more considerate than the kind person, but also a level of docility and "innate" nurturing that is separate from kindness. "She has a sweet spirit" is sometimes code for "she's unattractive, but is on the nicer end of the Mormon woman sweetness spectrum." Sail away sweet sister, you are loved.