An absolutely beautiful article at The Nation looking at the media’s inability to cope with the fact that Judy Dean is exactly what she appears to be — a normal, well-adjusted independent woman in a healthy, loving relationship with her husband who doesn’t want to abandon her medical practice to be trotted out at every political opportunity during the campaign season.
The ongoing public inquest into Dr. Judith Steinberg makes me see, however, that we need First Ladies: Without them, American women might actually believe that they are liberated, that modern marriage is an equal partnership, that the work they are trained for and paid to do is important whether or not they are married, and that it is socially acceptable for adult women in the year 2004 to possess distinct personalities–even quirks! Without First Ladies, a woman might imagine that whether she keeps or changes her name is a private, personal choice, the way the young post-post-feminists always insist it is when they write those annoying articles explaining why they are now calling themselves Mrs. My Husband.
…it’s only when a wife has her own identity that her choices are scrutinized. If Dr. Judith Steinberg was simply Judy Dean, if she spent her life doing nothing so important it couldn’t be dropped to follow her husband as he followed his star, no one would question her priorities. No one thought less of Barbara Bush because she dropped out of college to get married, like those Wellesley girls in Mona Lisa Smile. No one reprimands Laura Bush for abandoning her career as a librarian and spending her life as her husband’s den mother. No one asks Hadassah Lieberman or Elizabeth Edwards or Gertie Clark how come they have so much free time on their hands that they can saddle up with their husbands’ campaign for months, or why, if they care so much about politics, they aren’t running for office themselves.
…What if the media tried on for size the notion that having an independent wife says something good about a candidate? For example, maybe, if his wife is not at his beck and call, he won’t assume the sun rises because he wants to get up; maybe, if his wife has her own goals in life, her own path to tread, he won’t think women were put on earth to further his ambitions; maybe, if he and his wife are true partners–which is not the same as her pouring herself into his career and his being genuinely grateful, the best-case scenario of the traditional political marriage–he may even see women as equals. Why isn’t it the candidates who use their wives to further their careers with plastic smiles and cheery waves who have to squirm on Primetime?
Damn straight.
(via Doc Searls)
iTunes: “Brandenburg Concerto in F Major, No.1, BWV1046, I. Allegro” by Rees, Jonathan/Scottish Ensemble from the album Bach: Brandenburg Concertos, Violin Concertos (1998, 4:11).