Rebecca Traister: Only Cowgirls Run for Office
[Rebecca Traister is the author of “Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election That Changed Everything for American Women.”]
Whether or not you believe there is any connection between the first assassination attempt ever made on an American female politician and the gun-slinging rhetoric of the first Republican woman ever nominated for the vice presidency, what’s undeniably true is that despite the vast philosophical and intellectual chasms between them, Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin have something in common: they are both cowgirl politicians. In this, they are symptomatic of the too-narrow ways in which the United States is willing to accept women as leaders....
It’s no surprise, then, that female political prospects have long been stronger in Western states. America’s first elected female senator was Hattie Caraway from Arkansas (appointed to fill her husband’s seat in 1931 and elected to keep it in 1932), the first congresswoman was Jeannette Rankin of Montana (a pacifist social worker elected in 1916, Rankin was raised on a Missoula ranch and used to tromp “through deep snow potting bears and wolves for pastime”). In 1925, the first two female governors were sworn into office just weeks apart: Nellie Tayloe Ross in Wyoming, the first territory to grant women suffrage, in 1869, and Miriam Ferguson in Texas....
This history is a big part of why Sarah Palin’s rootin’-tootin’ approach to image-building has often struck me as pretty savvy. Whether you think that Palin has perfected, perverted or merely performed the role of frontierwoman, her caribou-hunting, bear-evading shtick has helped situate her directly in the heart of the only tradition in which America has historically been able to celebrate its mighty women. It has made sense based not only on her home state and her constituency, but also on the history of America’s affection for cowgirls, long contrasted with its chillier attitudes toward businesswomen, brainiacs and feminists....
Read entire article at NYT
Whether or not you believe there is any connection between the first assassination attempt ever made on an American female politician and the gun-slinging rhetoric of the first Republican woman ever nominated for the vice presidency, what’s undeniably true is that despite the vast philosophical and intellectual chasms between them, Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin have something in common: they are both cowgirl politicians. In this, they are symptomatic of the too-narrow ways in which the United States is willing to accept women as leaders....
It’s no surprise, then, that female political prospects have long been stronger in Western states. America’s first elected female senator was Hattie Caraway from Arkansas (appointed to fill her husband’s seat in 1931 and elected to keep it in 1932), the first congresswoman was Jeannette Rankin of Montana (a pacifist social worker elected in 1916, Rankin was raised on a Missoula ranch and used to tromp “through deep snow potting bears and wolves for pastime”). In 1925, the first two female governors were sworn into office just weeks apart: Nellie Tayloe Ross in Wyoming, the first territory to grant women suffrage, in 1869, and Miriam Ferguson in Texas....
This history is a big part of why Sarah Palin’s rootin’-tootin’ approach to image-building has often struck me as pretty savvy. Whether you think that Palin has perfected, perverted or merely performed the role of frontierwoman, her caribou-hunting, bear-evading shtick has helped situate her directly in the heart of the only tradition in which America has historically been able to celebrate its mighty women. It has made sense based not only on her home state and her constituency, but also on the history of America’s affection for cowgirls, long contrasted with its chillier attitudes toward businesswomen, brainiacs and feminists....