Hillary Is Subjected to Yet Another Demeaning Article About Her Wardrobe

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 4:38 PM on December 9, 2007.

This post, written by Steve Benen, originally appeared on The Carpetbagger Report

In July, in one of the lower points for presidential campaign coverage, the Washington Post's fashion writer, Robin Givhan, wrote an odd, 746-word piece about an outfit Hillary Clinton wore on the Senate floor showing a very modest amount of cleavage. "With Clinton, there was the sense that you were catching a surreptitious glimpse at something private," Givhan wrote. "You were intruding -- being a voyeur.... Showing cleavage is a request to be engaged in a particular way."

It was an unusually silly article about a presidential candidate in one of the nation's most important daily newspapers, and it deserved all the ridicule it received.

Today, as Michael Froomkin noted, Givhan was at it again, with a piece titled, "Wearing the Pants: Envisioning a Female Commander-in-Chief." It is -- you guessed it -- an entire piece the A section devoted to the senator's pantsuits.

The mind, so easily distracted by things mauve and lemon yellow, strays from more pressing concerns to ponder the sartorial: How many pantsuits does Hillary Clinton have in her closet? And does she ever wear them in the same combination more than once?

The pantsuit is Clinton's uniform. Hers is a mix-and-match world, a grown-up land of Garanimals: black pants with gray jacket, tan jacket with black pants, tan jacket with tan pants. There are a host of reasons to explain Clinton's attachment to pantsuits. They are comfortable. They can be flattering, although not when the jacket hem aligns with the widest part of the hips (hypothetically speaking, of course). Does she even have hips?

And because Clinton seems to prefer crossing her legs at the ankle -- in the way girls were taught when girls were still sent to finishing school -- there is less likelihood of any embarrassing straight-to-YouTube video.

Women have come a long way from the time when wearing a pair of pants was considered "borrowing from the boys." So it would be highly regressive to suggest that the candidate is using trousers to heighten the perception that she can be as tough as a man. And yet ...

Now, I try not to be a purist when it comes to articles about political trivia. Presidential campaigns are bound to include some coverage of the candidate's personalities, families, interests, etc. Voters care about some of these details when evaluating presidential hopefuls, so it's probably not realistic to expect major media outlets to be all-policy, all-the-time.

Having said that, this piece about Clinton's pantsuits is more than just silly; it's demeaning.

If a fashion reporter wants to do a piece about candidates' choice in clothes, I suppose that makes sense. But fashion reporters probably should shy away from doing political analysis -- and worse yet, psychoanalysis -- of candidates for national office based on preferences for colors and fabric.

What would possess a woman to wear a jacket the color of a geranium in full bloom and then imply she doesn't want anyone to notice or comment on her clothes? Yes, a woman can still be taken seriously, viewed as tough and celebrated for her ideas even if she is wearing a sunshine yellow suit. But someone, somewhere, is also going to notice that she is dressed like a solar flare. Clinton is too smart not to know that.

Those are the color choices of someone who not only wants to stand out, but is happy to do so in a palette that is quintessentially feminine.... Clinton-the-human-color-wheel is wooing Ohio and Florida.

She also has made a clear visual distinction between herself as first lady and as presidential candidate. As first lady, she played to tradition, dutifully wearing skirts of an unflattering length and jackets shaped like a rectangle. But now it is not so far-fetched to believe that her wardrobe is a way of reminding voters that a woman can have as much peacock bravado as the boys.

Oh my.

Tagged as: clinton, election08

Steve Benen is a freelance writer/researcher and creator of The Carpetbagger Report. In addition, he is the lead editor of Salon.com's Blog Report, and has been a contributor to Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly, Crooks & Liars, The American Prospect, and the Guardian.