Men who have never had a beauty magazine teaching them about their T-zones might have found this line of questions stupid, and people who think candidates should only be scolded about their policies could have found it offensive. . Could you find out about the beauty routine of a male candidate this way?
Well no. But that was part of the problem, right? Many women have seen that Elizabeth Warren was one of them. Finally, a presidential candidate who took issues like maternal health and paid parental leave seriously, and who also knew exactly what Nora Ephron meant when she wrote that she felt bad about her neck. It was an impossible tightrope, but it made it easy; it made most things easy.
One of my female acquaintances once mentioned online that it scared her how much she loved Elizabeth Warren, leading a man supporting Bernie to inform her that – Actually – you should not be afraid of a candidate this way; it was strange. No, the Warren fan tried to explain. She was not afraid of Warren. She had never felt so personally moved by a candidate before, which meant she had never felt so vulnerable to the idea of losing her candidate. She assumed it would happen eventually and she was right. Warren announced Thursday that she is leaving the race.
Since almost the beginning, his candidacy has been haunted by the vaporous and shapeless specter of sexism, which turns out to be the worst type of sexism, because some people can feel it in their bones and others do not at all believe that it exist.
Voters, especially Democrats, knew it was not going to fly to call candidates “devils” and “witches,” as many people called Hillary Clinton in 2016. Instead, this time , they just had endless debates about being “eligible” and what it meant to be “presidential”, and we decided that none of the candidates – neither Kamala Harris, nor Kirsten Gillibrand, nor Amy Klobuchar, nor Tulsi Gabbard – was not one of those things. Coincidently.
Whenever I mentioned Warren in a column, I received emails informing me that she was a liar who lied about everything. After a few back-and-forth exchanges, “everything” would gradually be distilled into “Pocahontas”, a reference to the Native American ancestry that Warren said was part of his family folklore. It was a terrible mess. His decision to do a DNA test – which revealed only a minute of Indigenous heritage and ignored the cultural history issues that many Native Americans define them – made matters worse.
Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders reversed his stance on delegates at a negotiated convention. Meanwhile, Joe Biden started telling a cockamamie story about his arrest in South Africa while he was trying to visit Nelson Mandela, which was not supported by contemporary or other accounts. But none of that mattered, because, as the readers reassured me, they didn’t lie like liars like Warren.
Sometimes I wished that some doubting experts on Warren would go wild and call him the word C on live TV. At least then we could stop wondering if sexism could all be in our heads.
In the past three years, a lot of being a woman – a human, but mostly a woman – has meant wondering if everything was in your head. Did your boss harass you, or was it a harmless flirt? Had Joe Biden Really Learned Not To Massage Women’s Shoulders Without Being Invited, Or Was His Apology Strange, And If You Thought It Was Strange, Should You Keep It For Yourself Because All This Could be in your head? Talk about locker room, talk about locker room, locker room speak, and that’s partly why we liked Elizabeth Warren. Unlike the most wonderful and awakened gentlemen, she did not need to know more, because she already had them. She felt in his bones.
For a while, it seemed like she had a good shot, but as the vote approached, she didn’t. Frightened voters blamed “the country” as if they had not populated the country themselves. I’m ready for a female president, but the country is not. And then they voted for a man they could tolerate in place of the woman they loved.
On Super Tuesday, she didn’t even reach her home states of Massachusetts and Oklahoma. She didn’t even come second.
Wednesday, anticipating his inevitable resignation, I switched to social networks, where many of my friends were waiting for the news as if we were waiting for the results of a cholesterol test: nervous, but eating a last hamburger before the drugs are officially prescribed (maybe Warren will still be vice president?). Most importantly, mentally make a to-do list of all the lifestyle changes you will force yourself to do when the bad news comes. When you have no choice, you can at least have a plan.
Here’s what I was thinking about.
I kept thinking that Elizabeth Warren was returning home or to her hotel, exhausted and disappointed, having spent a career trying to do the right thing and now preparing to do the right thing again: give up. Unite the party. Work with Biden or Sanders. Try to ignore the trampling rage on either side that you refuse, as supporters of both will feel empowered to comply.
“Choose to fight only fair fights,” she told campaign staff on a call Thursday, warning of her decision to quit the race. “Because then when things get difficult – and they will – you will know there is only [one] option before you. However, you must persist. “
I thought how, exhausted as she is, she will always remember to open Pond’s jar of cold cream and dab it on her forehead and cheekbones, as her older cousin Tootsie once taught her, because these are the rules of femininity. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Put your face fresh for the next day. Cultivate your little tips and tricks, your time tricks and the secrets of your success. Give them to another younger woman. I hope God will work for her.
Monica Hesse is a columnist who writes about gender and its impact on society. For more information, visit wapo.st/hesse.