Nailin Palin

"I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it."

                                                              --Rich Lowry, The National Review

"Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions, and our hearts,
Should well agree with our external parts?"
                                                               --Katherina, The Taming of the Shrew, V.ii

"And God help you if you are an ugly girl,
'course too pretty is also your doom,
'cause everyone harbors a secret hatred
for the prettiest girl in the room."
                                                                   --Ani DiFranco, "32 Flavors"

Have you ever met a really beautiful woman?  Like exceptionally beautiful?  I met a model recently, a bona fide, traffic-stopping beauty, maybe in her very early 20s.  In no makeup and and a gossamer-thin dress, she had one of the most classically beautiful face/body combinations I've ever seen in real life. High, ample breasts, corset waist, smooth hips, she might have been a Greek statue of alabaster marble at the Met come to life.  Her powder pale skin accentuated naturally red, beestung lips, bedroom hair, and doe eyes framed by jet lashes that Shu Uemura would want to model.  She was sex incarnate.  It was hard not to stare.

But then she opened her mouth.

Her words poured out, one sentence strung after another, a disarming stream-of-consciousness narrative.  Many statements were non-sequiturs, some said for shock value; some were bizarre fringe theories, which I didn't want to challenge as a guest in her home.  But everything came tumbling out into a big, nonsensical pile. 

It wasn't that she was dumb -- she obviously had a brain capable of retaining all of these odd bits and bobs.  In conversation, she didn't really register a listener's reaction, she just sort of bowled you over with her words.  It seemed to me that she was a woman who was used to having a captivated audience, but not used to really being heard.   

I found myself feeling bad for her.  This has got to be a problem particular to very pretty girls.  How can you get an idea across when a guy is mesmerized by your looks, hypnotized by your tits?  I've known women who have tried to tamp down the markers of their sexuality in order to be taken more seriously.  It must be a huge pain in the ass to have men use their dicks to assess you when you are trying to engage their brains.

But what about those women who invite the male gaze?  

What about the women who wield sexuality as a form of power? You remember the type from high school.  She was the girl who laughed extra loud at the teacher's jokes, twirled her hair and batted her lashes when she wanted a little extra attention.  She was the one who coasted by on her looks, probably wore a little too much makeup, and bypassed the meritocracy by flirting her way to the top.  I hated that kind of girl, hated what she stood for, hated the fact that she made things that much harder for prudish girls like me who don't feel sexy enough to use feminine wiles to their advantage. I was well into my 20s before I felt adult enough to consider myself a sexual being.  Maybe if I knew how to be a Regina George, I wouldn't feel so much animosity towards them.  It's hard to say. 

You could argue that sexuality and sensuality are valid forms of power.  In a competition for attention, Jenna Jameson might fare better using below-the-belt tactics than Madeleine Albright would trying to engage the same guy's mind.  But the one power cannot be a substitute for another.  When you put sexuality forward where intellect is required, you're not asking to being heard, you're asking to be objectified.

Which brings us to Sarah Palin and her male-straightening, "starburst" inducing performance at the VP debates on Thursday.  (Could Rich Lowry have gotten any closer to conjuring splooge?)  I found the whole business of winking and kiss-blowing downright degrading. Would it be any different for Sarah Palin to walk out with her tits hanging out of a bikini?  We're still talking about the same thing -- using sexuality as a subterfuge to distract from deficiencies in knowledge and skill.

But here's where the self-hatred comes in.  Women who wield sexuality as power are often competitive women without female friends (unless you count their sycophantic wannabes).  This play for male attention reinforces the idea that it is only men who have power -- win the men over with your flirtation and you can have anything.  But women across the nation aren't popping a chubby over it.  Does that mean their votes don't count, their opinions don't matter?

This is why Sarah Palin is no feminist.  By pandering to the penis, she is making it that much harder for women to be measured by their brains instead of by their looks.  Conversely, she is making it that much harder for smart women who are also beautiful to be heard.
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WTF does she mean by this, anyway?  Am I supposed to support [sic] her because I'm a Vagina-American?