What else?…Sarah Palin

Sometimes in my most solipsistic moments I begin to see national or world events as some divinely provided symbol sent as commentary on life.

And so it happened that as I was going back to work, feeling pangs of motherly guilt, and crying about daycare drop-off in small out-of-the-way places at school, the world send me Sarah Palin.

Could the cultural myth of the Supermom, revised and burnished by the reluctant approval of the religious Right, be any more ironic?

But there she was iconicized in the form of the New York Times website, her biography perfectly dovetailing the profiles of undecided voters. Thrust forward were her credentials as a mom: five kids, mother of a special needs child, hockey mom, army mom. All of this while hunting moose, whistle-blowing, and cheering on her snowmobile-racing husband. Oh, and governing the state of Alaska.

Sarah Palin did not make me feel inferior as a mother. But, the heralding of Sarah Palin as mother underscored the cultural biases that, on some level, impact how I feel about my own parenting. (I wonder, was Hillary Clinton villainized as she was in ‘92 because she’d only had one child? Was her lack of productivity as a mother reason to doubt her ability to advise her husband? Was it reason to fear her stanch feminism?)

With the hullabaloo around SP, I saw the old trap for mothers that I and my mom-friends still feel the pinch of today. SP (with her red high heel sandals, up-do, and carcass of a grizzly slung across her couch) embodies the old perfume commercial whose jingle I can still hear in my head: “I can bring home the bacon…fry it up in a pan…and never let you forget you’re a man…’Cuz I’m a woman…” Ah, yes. Isn’t that what feminism is all about? Elevating the status of a woman by talking about how a woman can do all the things a man an do…and more?

In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir discusses the history of how women’s bodies have been misunderstood. According to Aristotle I believe, women were incidental (convenient?) receptacles for sperm– the real source of humanity. Indeed, women’s bodies have been as much about what is seen as what is unseen…And perhaps eroticizing women’s bodies is compensation for all that is unseen and misunderstood.

It’s a leap, but Sarah Palin– for all her highlights, beauty contestant photos, and newscaster sheen– is another example of a myth thrust in front of women to tell them what they are. But who needs to have women explained for them, really? Sarah Palin is the latest in a long line of patriarchal fantasies. She is another fantasy of male cultural reproduction…She represents the fantasy of what a patriarchal world wants to believe it can produce. And ironically, this fantasy has been sold to women as the epitome of female power– of female choice!– and of feminism itself.

Of course, it’s not ironic that Sarah Palin is anti-choice. In order to keep the male patriarchal fantasy alive, the fantasy must reproduce. Therefore, women in this fantasy cannot have control over reproduction. Which is another way of saying sex, for a woman, must be about reproduction. Sex, for a man, can be about desire. Again, Sarah Palin embodies both. Sarah Palin is not a notch in the belt of feminism. She is another version of the old mold, slightly revised to co-opt the language of feminists.

And every morning, when I leave my little boy, I am happy to go work and sad not to stay at home with him. The choices are a blessing. But they are not without consequences, a reality the mythological, supermom, “cake and eat it too” example of Sarah Palin will never address.