Fit To Print

Maureen Dowd as Sarah Jessica Parker

February 3rd, 2008

For a long time I have felt that Sex and the City was not only bad and obnoxious, but bad for women. When I saw a Times op-ed piece in 2003 saying the same thing, I was somewhat hurt they hadn’t tapped me to write it, but glad that they were getting the word out.

It’s not that women shouldn’t talk or care about men and shopping and such things, but it is a mistake to create a show that wraps itself in the mantle of feminism and then suggests that there is nothing more to the life of an independent woman than men and shopping and such things. HBO inspired legions of young female fans by romanticizing the materialism and superficiality of the Manhattan nightlife and helped to usher in the new era of faux feminism that acts as a buffer zone for any real worries about the continuing inequality between the sexes that happen to come close to permeating the public dialog.

Similarly, there is nothing wrong with a columnist who decides to write op-eds that are short on substance, but rich in snarky jabs at political figures, that almost always reinforce played-out caricatures. Such columns do nothing to advance political debate, but they can be entertaining, and there certainly seems to be a market for them. It is more problematic however, when said columnist purports to be new era feminist, while at the same time undermining the most powerful woman in the country by contributing to the cheap, misogynistic narratives surrounding that candidate (or “Queen Bee”, as Dowd calls her).

It is also a shame that this columnist has such narrow and misguided views of what it means to be sexy, what it means to be smart, or what it means to be a journalist. And it is downright tragic that such a self-absorbed, intellectually shallow writer too often represents the only female voice in the op-ed pages of the paper of record. This is not to say the Times doesn’t carry its share of unreflective, intellectual lightweights — Tom Friedman, Bill Kristol and Frank Rich all come to mind — but it’s more disappointing to see such poor work coming from the most prominent female journalist in the country.

I worry that many women believe embracing male ideals of sexiness constitutes a more modern version of liberated feminism. Likewise, as someone who too often relies on cutesy sarcasm and one-liners to stand in for insightful criticism, I see Dowd using similar devices (although much more effectively) to create the facade of intelligent commentary. It’s not that easy to be liberated and it’s not that easy to be smart. I very much agree with the idea that a smart, sexy feminist is not a contradiction in terms, but I think that Dowd embodies only the most surface-level realization of those concepts.

Hillary Clinton is a smart woman. She has a better understanding of the power apparatus in Washington than almost anyone else in the country. She has maintained her frontrunner status despite the best efforts of a hostile and sexist media, and has consistently proven a better spokeswoman for her own cause than anyone else affiliated with her campaign. I don’t encourage reverence for public figures and I don’t want Clinton to become president, but the baseless grounds for which Dowd trivializes her candidacy and her as a person (not to mention her assertion that Clinton hurts feminists) are contemptible. And I did call Clinton a robot and I am a hypocrite. What’s your point?

One can attempt to make the empirical case that Clinton is manipulative, controlling, or diabolically ambitious. But using rumors, innuendo and sparse anecdotal evidence to portray what is at best a hunch as indisputable fact is unethical and beneath a Times columnist.

Entry Filed under: Fitter Happier