What Will It Take to Make A Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power (60 page)

Now, between you and me, I can’t think to myself,
Wow, who is such an easy, malleable voter that they would shift so easily one way or another
, but there are people who are. Not everybody starts a campaign educating themselves and knowing about a candidate and being on board from the beginning. There are people who literally walk into the polling booth not knowing who they’re going to vote for. It does affect the outcome. It affects the money raising and it affects the future press coverage and it affects the race itself. So that’s a very important role that Women’s Media Center can play in monitoring media.

You know, media is the way we get our information, so if we’re getting skewed, incorrect, biased, sexist information, what are we building on? And there’s an implicit trust of the media, which sometimes flips into a total mistrust but doesn’t settle anywhere sane in between. We have
right-wing media that
blatantly
lies and doesn’t care if it’s caught. If it’s caught, it turns around and says, proudly, “Well, we’re not into fact checking.” Proudly! It should be like a Bill of Rights, like a media consumers’ Bill of Rights: You have the right to accurate information. You have the right to be aware of where the reporting ends and the opinion begins. You have a right to inclusive information that doesn’t exclude news pieces or individuals, much less reporters, because they’re of a certain gender or a certain pigmentation or a certain sexual preference or a certain ability. These should be basic rights.

MS
: Granted, my daughters are the daughters of the founder of Feminist.com, and yet I see the pulls on them and on their friends, especially at the ages that they are, about their looks and all the insecurities that girls have. Since the media is always telling girls otherwise, how can girls, even before they wind up as candidates, know that they have something valuable to offer to the world?

RM
: Yeah, I’ve been on that case for years, and we’ve changed it somewhat, but still not enough. We have a couple of programs—one was the SPARK program that the Women’s Media Center works on, and a number of girls’ programs—because of girls like your daughters, who have feminist consciousness but are continually besieged with the message of insecurity. The first level is insecurity:
You’re too fat, too thin, too tall, too short; your breasts are too big or too little
, et cetera. And then the second level moves right and says,
But we have advertisers who have just the thing that will address your problems
. And that’s how media makes its money, it’s through advertising, so the women’s movement has been critiquing that for a very long time.

I think there’s some good news on that front, though, in that girls are now taking a lot of the fight into their own hands. There are the two girls
who confronted
Seventeen
magazine about airbrushing and about too-thin models. There are a number of young teenage women who have started, because it’s so much easier now, a petition on, say,
Change.org
, and then suddenly these petitions are tweeted about and they grow like wildfire. And so in a sense girls are picking up the cudgels themselves now more and more and getting support from other girls for doing so. But, yeah, the media in terms of youth, and advertisers in terms of youth, have a sort of Jesuitical approach: “Give me a child until they’re seven years old, and then you can do what you want after that. I’ve sunk my fangs into them [
laughs].”
The Jesuit approach: You will
always
be a Catholic. And advertisers feel that the younger they get them, the better it will be, and then they have them for life.

MS
: I was thinking back to when I interviewed Gloria for this project and she was talking about gender roles—that we need women to be seen as competent, authoritative leaders, but we also need men to be seen as caretakers and nurturers. In terms of the softening of these very hard gender roles, I also wonder, with women being portrayed as “sex objects,” how that subliminally impacts the men who would then be seeing them as a potential presidential candidate, because they don’t see them that way.

RM
: I know. It’s one of the things that I love—and I’m sorry to keep coming back to her, but we are talking about the first woman president, possibly, and then it does bring me back to her—about Hillary Rodham Clinton [
laughs]
.

MS
: How can you not?

RM
: One of the things that I must say has absolutely endeared her to me, just hugely, is that in her last year as secretary of state, she was kind of
like, “Bugger off! I can’t care about how I look. I’m a busy woman, and I’m running the fucking world.” After all of the controversies over her hairstyles—for years as First Lady, as senator—she began to pull it back in a ponytail [
laughs]
. She would get off planes and hold press conferences with no makeup, because “Hello! I’ve just flown for fourteen hours from Timbuktu.” Even before the concussion, she stopped wearing her contacts and she started wearing these huge, thick, Coke-bottle glasses again. . . . But the message was, “Hairstyle?
Hairstyle?
Would you ask that of a male secretary of state? I’m the goddamn secretary of goddamn state, for Christ’s sake. I don’t have time for this crap!” And it was so funny and so wonderful, and nothing was said about it by her, but the message was perfectly clear: “I’m done with that. I’m done with that.”

MS
: Didn’t she actually say that to a TV interviewer [who asked her ‘which designers do you prefer’]? I think she actually answered with, “Would you have asked that of a male secretary of state?”

RM
: That’s part of the message—you wouldn’t have asked a male. But the other part is a real sort of “Screw you. Bugger off, people, I’m busy here.” It’s just marvelous, because she was, in fact, the busiest secretary of state in U.S. history, and that anybody would still be worrying about her makeup, her hair, or her clothes is absurd, absolutely absurd.

MS
: That is so true.

RM
: And it is true that we have to see men in alternate roles, as well as seeing women in alternate roles, and the media does not offer that very frequently. Interestingly enough, when I did the
Ms. Magazine
fortieth-anniversary panel at the Paley Center with Eleanor Smeal (who is now the current publisher of
Ms.;
I’m the former editor in chief, and I’m still a
consulting editor on global issues), Ellie at one point said, “Look”—and I have to agree with her—“I’m going to say something very dangerous here, and it is not that I don’t totally and completely support gay rights, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, marriage equality, and every other issue in terms of same-sex lovers’ rights, but I do want to ask, how come this issue shot right past us? It came up from way behind, was thought unspeakable, undoable, and somehow won the hearts and minds of Americans, became safe, and shot right past us while we are still having to defend
Roe v. Wade
? How did this happen?”

And it was very courageous of her to raise it, because anybody who knows Ellie’s record knows that she is not homophobic, but she just knew that there would be a fear about raising that. And I think she’s right to question it, and I think I know the answer. I think the answer is twofold. First of all, men are involved in the gay-rights struggle. If it was solely a lesbian-rights struggle, it would not be as successful. Once men are involved in anything, it’s taken more seriously. One reason why racism is taken more seriously is because men suffer from it as well. So that’s one reason. And I think the other reason is, it was perceived as not having to do with reproduction. Reproduction is so central to the oppression of women in the eyes of the patriarchy because you have to control the offspring—that’s the product. Women are the means not necessarily of production, but of reproduction, which creates production, so it goes to the heart of the economy and who controls the family, controls the state. If you are perceived as not reproducing, [then the patriarchy doesn’t see you as a threat]. Of course, there are many different options and lots of ways that gay parenting can be accomplished and is accomplished, but in the general perception, it’s not that much to the fore. So I think those are two of the reasons.

When you, on the other hand, talk about a woman’s right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, you hit the actual nerve. And also, we’re
just talking about women,
just
women. There are no men involved in women’s rights, the perception of women’s rights. It will liberate men as well, but that’s down the road a bit. Meanwhile, it’s going to make them give up power. So if men are not suffering from something, it’s just not as important.

MS
: That’s fascinating. I never thought about it that way. That’s really interesting. So, in general, are you feeling optimistic at the juncture that we’re at?

RM
: Yes, but then I permit myself pessimism on alternate Wednesdays. I’m psychotically depressed, and then time’s up! [
laughs]
I was very heartened not only at the new women who got into Congress, but at who they were—there’s the veteran who is a double amputee, a Hindu, [a Buddhist], and an atheist—and they’re all feminists! It’s a kind of
yeah, duh, of course
! So I’m heartened not only by the fact that they’re there, but by who they are. And I also think that they’ll stiffen the spines of older women who have been there longer. I think women always had to wait until the very end. I mean, I thought Hillary would make it last time, so I lost a bet of a quarter to Gloria, who said, “No, it will be a black president, a male, before it will be a woman.” If she decides not to run, or if, God forbid, something happens to her, then it will not be in my lifetime, just speaking selfishly. If she does, in four years we’re going to have the first woman president, and that makes me optimistic because of
who
that first woman president would be. If, as I said, it had been a Libby Dole or, God forbid, a Sarah Palin, I would kill myself on the spot by hari-kari. But there is a shift in consciousness now occurring.

Here’s what I think, Marianne: I think that our species, in general, demonstrates its most effective capacity in its adaptability. And that’s not just me, that’s science. So if the thing that has made us the dominant
species, though not necessarily for good, is our adaptability, if that’s our strongest characteristic, that’s a really strong positive. And that means that this will be realized.

On the other hand, our species learns to adapt very slowly, and we often don’t get it until it’s almost too late. You can see this happening with global climate change. Suddenly some people came around, but it had to take water up to their necks, in their own neighborhoods, before they would realize it, all politics being local. So it’s a guarded optimism, but I am feeling optimistic.

I think that there’s a lot more to do, but I think we’ve made a very solid start, and I don’t think it can ever be as effectively erased again. I think, because the species is in danger, the planet is in danger, and we’ve reached a real critical point, that the general zeitgeist that is afloat, if you had to read it in a bubble over the heads of humanity, it would be saying, “We need all hands on deck now.” Oh my, that even includes women.

MARY MATALIN

“Among the fastest-growing sectors of the private economy, even in this anemic recovery, are women-owned small businesses. In order to have some semblance of control and order in their multitasking lives, women are opting out of inflexible working environments like large corporations and other areas that preclude either a personal and/or family life. Also, women are natural entrepreneurs. Women are discovering the male model of economic success doesn’t comport with their concept of a well-rounded life. I see this as a very promising trend.”

M
ARY
M
ATALIN IS
one of the most celebrated and popular conservative voices in America. As an author, television and radio host, and widely sought-after political contributor, pundit, and public speaker, she has become noted for her straightforward manner and insightful political repartee. She has served in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations, and as counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney. Matalin has made frequent television appearances as a political commentator, securing a career in conservative media advocacy following decades of work in the GOP political trenches. She has made numerous appearances on NBC’s
Meet the Press
, as well as on the popular HBO series
K Street
, and hosted CNN’s critically acclaimed debate show,
Crossfire
. She can be seen as a frequent guest commentator on news networks such as ABC, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News Network. Today, along with
Arianna Huffington, she cohosts the nationally syndicated radio program
Both Sides Now
, which is currently broadcast on more than one hundred radio stations across the country. The show represents a departure from traditional news-talk product, which male voices dominate across the United States.

Matalin is also an acclaimed author and serves as editor at large for Threshold Editions, a conservative publishing imprint at Simon & Schuster. In addition, she coauthored the best-selling political-campaign book
All’s Fair: Love, War, and Running for President
with her husband, James Carville. Her most recent book,
Letters to My Daughters
, made both
The New York Times
and
Washington Post
best-seller lists.

Note: Due to scheduling constraints and other factors, this interview was not conducted verbally, like the other interviews included in this book. Instead, Matalin provided written answers to the interview questions
.