Thirty Ways (emphasis on) LOOKING at Hillary

Sabrina's earlier post described a really excellent example of how a female political figure can be portrayed in the media without the physical coming into play at all. I had been thinking about our discussion of the coverage of Kagan's physical appearance just the other day when I realized that the 27th way of looking at Hillary in Thirty Ways Of Looking At Hillary was written by the same author of the original offending article in the Kagan discussion, Robin Givhan.

If anything, Givhan's chapter in Thirty Ways lends credence to the idea that Givhan was really attempting to get at something deeper with her Kagan article, and it seems like Givhan may just be a real defender of the political power of fashion in general. She ends her piece with a discussion of our obsession with male candidates looking "presidential" and pointing out that we don't really have a guide for what a woman Commander In Chief looks like, so Hillary cannot be faulted. I guess I find this logic flawed in general -- we shouldn't be basing our decisions on "looking Presidential" at all, right? Yet at the same time, most of us agreed that their are certain codes of dressing in the professional world that communicate specific ideas, right? It seems as though the issue of physical appearance gets more and more complicated the more we delve into it.

Ultimately, I think the issue with Givhan's logic, and her chapter in general, belies the issues that I had with Thirty Ways in general. While the chapters may address important issues and perspectives, it just does not feel like their are very many real revelations. The perspectives feel gossipy and the supposed 30 ways of looking at Hillary feel pretty concentrated in the kind of post-feminist argument against Hillary. I understand Hillary is a divisive figure in American political culture, but I was hoping that a book like this would dig deeper into the reasons we look at Hillary this way -- but maybe that is too much to ask of a compilation that is simply "looking" at Hillary.

I guess I wonder what it is about Hillary that makes her a prime subject for a this kind of analysis? Why don't we have a Thirty Ways of Looking at Sarah book? I mean granted -- Hillary's political career and position in American history is longer and in many ways more substantive than Sarah Palin's -- but Thirty Ways does seem to be focused on Hillary as a candidate. Interestingly enough, a Google search for "Thirty Ways of Looking at Sarah Palin" does generate a few hits including:
- 5 Ways of Looking at “Sarah Palin Feminism” « Shapely Prose
- Sarah Palin, False Prophet
- 30 Unique Dolls - The Sarah Palin Action Figure is Just The ...
Also in this search I found a review of Thirty Ways which offers a similar criticism:
http://www.alternet.org/story/75352/. Essentially any of these treatments seem one-sided in their approach and treatment. Can we really not see a diverse group of opinions contained in one volume or blog post on figures like Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton? Or if the diversity does exist -- why can't it delve beyond the gossip and approach things in a truly analytical manner?

I must admit, their were at least two sections in Thirty Ways that I thought offered something really unique and importantly critical of how we look at Hillary -- namely, Judith Warner's "Confessions of a Hillary Hagiographer" and Cristina Henriquez's "Hello, My Name Is..." both of these delve into issues of identity and function as excellent examples of ways to look at Hillary.
If only the entire book consisted of such explications...