What does "hair and hemline" mean?

January 26, 2007 7:59 PM

Explain to me what the "hair and hemline" issue is?

I've searched and searched, and while I can find plenty of articles that REFER to "hair and hemline," I can't seem to find anywhere the EXPLAINS it. Why is this an issue for women political candidates?

posted by PandemicSoul to society & culture (20 comments total)

um that that the hair and clothes of female politicians is often discussed in the media?
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 8:08 PM on January 26, 2007

Why is this an issue for women political candidates?

Because we live in what is still a deeply sexist society?

But that doesn't answer your question. If you're a male politician, it's not that hard to figure out neutral things to wear. Most of the time, nobody will comment on your hair or your clothes, because everyone pretty much agrees what is appropriate for male politicians to wear in most settings. You wear a business suit to work; you wear a polo shirt and khakis to informal campaign events. It's not an issue. The same is not true for female politicians: there's no established, universally-acknowledged dress code for professional women. Therefore, female politicians' hair and clothes are held up to scrutiny and criticized, pretty much no matter what they do. If you're too frumpy, you get criticized for not being feminine enough. If you're too fashionable, you get criticized for being superficial. If you wear a suit, you're acting like a man. If they wear a dress, they don't convey a powerful demeanor.

My sense is that this is less of an issue than it used to be, but you still see articles about Nancy Pelosi or Condaleeza Rice's clothes, in a way that you generally don't about comperable men, unless they do something really out of the ordinary.
posted by craichead at 8:12 PM on January 26, 2007

Women's clothing options are generally wider and so there's more room for discussion. Clothes are a statement and the 'language' of womens clothing is richer. More to it than mens' professional monotone. If men had a wider variety of acceptable clothing options maybe we'd be picking that apart more too?
posted by scheptech at 8:56 PM on January 26, 2007

here, here. the only reason i wish "i were female" is the vast variety of hair and clothing options available to women. men wear pants and shirts and maybe a suit and have hair that doesn't change from day to day. women have pants and dresses and skirts and tights and boots and blouses and shirts and hair that is one day in a ponytail, the other day in a bun and the next is curled and the next is straight and the next is hidden under a nice hat...

women have a large domain of fashion style to choose from, so each choice may mean something to somebody. men have a relatively limited domain of fashion, so there's not much to say about a man's choice of clothing or hairdo or the month.
posted by zengargoyle at 9:29 PM on January 26, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

If you're asking why those particular words, rather than any other variables of female appearance, then the answer is that it's just shorthand for dress/grooming choices in general. "Hair and hemline" is, I suppose, popular because it's alliterative and refers to two of the biggest issues.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 10:44 PM on January 26, 2007

I don't think it's just that women get to wear neat clothes, so people talk about them. Women are judged on their clothes and hair and appearance -- and then half the time judged non-serious because they pay attention to their clothes and hair. But of course, if they don't pay attention, then they're called frumpy or dowdy or ugly. (Seriously, there are right-wing pundits making fun of Pelosi because she's "too ugly" to be Speaker. Unlike the oh-so-yummy Hastert.)

So female candidates get stuck in a double-bind, due completely, as craichead points out, to sexism. Women have to look good (that proves they've properly understood their ornamental role in society), but not too good (which would indicate they're obsessed with their appearance and therefore completely unable to comprehend manly things like healthcare and defense). Female candidates have to walk that appearance-based tightrope in way that male candidates almost never do.

(And there was some ridiculous article in the NY Times this weekend -- I assume in the Style section -- about how judging female candidates on their clothing was somehow not sexist. That article, like most of the articles that appear in the NY Times Style section, was absolutely and completely wrong, in every conceivable way it could have been wrong.)
posted by occhiblu at 10:49 PM on January 26, 2007

Women are judged on their clothes and hair and appearance

Ok, more than men maybe are but it's not like womens appearance means everything and men's means nothing. Male politicians are also judged by their appearance. They really have very little latitude in what's acceptable:

Consider Dukakis and his tank ridin' foolishness. He had the big ole helmet on, made him look silly. He didn't do or say anything, just couldn't pull off the military man look. The electorate punished him for that, severely.

Lincoln could never get elected these days, way too rough looking for TV.

If John McCain suddenly started showing up for work in bowling shirts people would think his mind had gone on permanent vacation. Just based on clothing choice.

You'll never see a really overweight male president like has happened in the past. People won't accept that any more.

Facial hair is completely verboten these days. It's been a long while since any serious contender has sported a beard or mustache. This is purely a fashion issue.
posted by scheptech at 12:31 AM on January 27, 2007

And I'll go out on a limb and say that a female candidate with a beard or mustache will never be elected. Ever.
posted by stovenator at 1:03 AM on January 27, 2007

The only male politician whose hair I can ever remember being discussed, even for a moment, is Japan's Junichiro Koizumi, and his hair's nothing particularly remarkable for a guy his age, although there's just a hint of Richard Gere.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 2:02 AM on January 27, 2007

Right, scheptech. But the point is, male politicians have a neutral option — short, parted hair; blue or grey suit; blue or red tie; no helmet, duh, and no beard — that will make everyone happy. If a man wears that uniform, and keeps himself reasonably tidy, nobody even thinks to question his leadership based on his appearance. Conservative, liberal, young, old, whatever — people agree that a guy in that outfit looks like a politician, and they move on to thinking about his platform.

Female politicians have no such neutral option. Whatever they wear, someone will think it marks them as an unfit leader. And the resultant debate over whether they look the part distracts the electorate from their actual opinions and abilities.

I hear what you're saying about women's fashions, and I agree they're more interesting than men's. But having more options all of which prevent people from taking your political career seriously isn't as much of a blessing as you seem to think.
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:19 AM on January 27, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

This makes me want to post a question about gender-specific clothing... one of my all time pet peeves.

Why do we have such social constraints over what is appropriate BY GENDER?

Ok, I'll buy into bras and specialized undergarments for functional reasons, but the exterior veneer?

I have to stop now before I start ranting.
posted by FauxScot at 6:12 AM on January 27, 2007

Interestingly, and to pick a little bit of a bone here: When you see the style-section parasites or another pack of media jackals start talking about a male pol's hair and clothes (or haircuts, or shoeshines, or where they buy their suits), it's almost always a pretty explicit attempt to feminize them in some measure. So, yes--still a deeply, stupidly sexist society.

And ditto on the complaint that boys have only boring clothes to wear, unless one pays attention to Milan's runways, which typically sport clothes that (if they were intended for real people) would make you look like you were...unwell... if you actually wore them.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 6:15 AM on January 27, 2007

Women have more options, hence more responsibility.

"With great power comes great responsibility".
posted by blue_beetle at 6:41 AM on January 27, 2007

Why do we have such social constraints over what is appropriate BY GENDER?

Because current ideas about clothes are basically a product of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when there were all sorts of constraints that were determined by gender. Before that, men could wear pretty clothes and bright colors and ruffles. Before that, there also wasn't a theory that the sexes were radically different: men were merely *better* than women on every measure. Men were stronger, smarter, more moral, etc.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a new theory emerged, which was that men and women were equally good, but totally different. Men and women were good at separate, complimentary things. Men were rational, while women were emotional. Men belonged in the public sphere, while women belonged in the home. (That distinction between public and private didn't really make a lot of sense until the industrial revolution.) Men belonged in the competitive world of commerce and politics, while women belonged in the cooperative, nurturing world of the family. Men worked, while women consumed. Men were sexual agents, while women were sexual objects. (Women weren't thought to have any sexual urges at all, so their role in sex was to attract the attention of men.) Men wore somber, dark clothes which emphasized their seriousness and rationality, while women wore bright, pretty clothes that emphasized their attractiveness and showed off their aesthetic sensibility. There's actually a name for this change in men's clothes: historians call it the "great masculine renunciation".

The business suit is a product of that period, which marked the beginning of the industrial revolution in Europe and North America. So is the idea that it's inappropriate for men to wear bright colors or ruffles and frills.
posted by craichead at 7:29 AM on January 27, 2007 [3 favorites has favorites]

Emperor Snoo Kloze: And ditto on the complaint that boys have only boring clothes to wear, unless one pays attention to Milan's runways, which typically sport clothes that (if they were intended for real people) would make you look like you were...unwell... if you actually wore them.

Eponysterical.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 9:21 AM on January 27, 2007

Why is this an issue for women political candidates?

Because, things being what they are, they have to work at it. Style matters but doesn't have to be an obstacle. In the west, think powerful women such as Margaret Thatcher or Eva Peron.

The business suit is a product of that period, which marked the beginning of the industrial revolution in Europe and North America. So is the idea that it's inappropriate for men to wear bright colors or ruffles and frills.

I'd broaden the view a little: it's inappropriate for "business people" to wear things that attract attention to them personally and distract from the business at hand. Ok, men have long been "the business people" and so have found their common demoninator look, but women can do just fine: a smart sophisticated look that emphasizes mind over body can be a postitive advantage if done well. Haven't you people been paying attention to Stacey and Clinton?
posted by scheptech at 9:44 AM on January 27, 2007

Deborah Tannen discusses how women are "marked" in the professional workplace in her book Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work. Men are the workplace norm and therefore have neutral uniforms/looks; women are the deviation and have no neutral look.

Tannen explains how she came to this realization when she is at a conference and starts automatically analyzing the different looks of the women in a mixed group to get a read on what kind of image they're trying to project or are unconsciously projecting - but she cannot, even when she tries, get a similar read on the men in the group because they all look the same. It's a pretty effective example.

The standard image of a politician is a man in a suit with a haircut like this and tie and shoes like that; it is so much the norm that all of the men who look like that blend from one into the other and we're left only to focus on their words and actions. But anything that deviates from that image is subject to analysis because it stands out, it's marked.
posted by Melinika at 9:57 AM on January 27, 2007

I recently got an answer to why my Japanese students have no appreciation, no concept even, of rhyme. When almost all of your words have but three endings, everything rhymes. It's nothing special.

So while women may get judged more often on appearance, you shouldn't downplay the truth of what zengargoyle had to say. When your only choices are suit, blazer, sports coat, what exactly does it 'mean' when you choose one over the other?

The most conversation I hear about male political candidate's clothing tends to be about the tie. Oooh, it's striped. Oh, it's bright. Hmm, not sure about those checks. They're trying, people. They just don't have much to go on.

To get on topic, the major male-female difference when it comes to things like "hem and hairline" is appropriate level of sex appeal. The day Obama comes out in assless leather chaps, this will be an issue for men. Till then, "hem and hairline" remains a women-in-the-spotlight thing.
posted by dreamsign at 12:47 PM on January 27, 2007

(I believe the article occhiblu was referring to is "Speaking Chic to Power', printed in the NY Times on January 18th. I do not agree that it is about "how judging female candidates on their clothing was somehow not sexist". It has already been put in the paid archives, or I would link to it.)
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:29 PM on January 27, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

There are large portions of the article quoted here.

I think this is pretty much what turned it into an eye-roll for me: "Just raising the issue of a powerful woman’s wardrobe choices strikes some people as sexist, an undermining of her talents and qualifications. And last week, when a reporter approached several of the female members of the House and Senate, or their staff, to talk fashion, some did not want to engage. Others cringed, at least initially. But when the conversation veered into the nitty-gritty — what do you wear, where do you buy it, what image do you want to project — the women in politics happily chatted away."

The general "Women in politics act like they don't want to talk about this stuff, cuz it isn't PC, but if you keep pressing them, then they start acting like the girls they really are! Chat chat chattering away!" Somehow I doubt male Senators or Reps would be described as "happily chatting away" about their ties. Which seems to exactly underline why pestering female politicians about their wardrobes does generally result in extremely sexist portrayals -- I mean, for heaven's sake, the author couldn't even get to the end of the paragraph without throwing in sexist language.

TPS is right in that the actual focus of the article was on Pelosi's fashion icon-hood. The underlying (or meta?) message that the article itself was not sexist, however, fails miserably.
posted by occhiblu at 12:04 PM on January 28, 2007