Julie Ponzi over at the Ashbrook Center blog No Left Turns critiques Sarah Palin’s response to the Newsweek cover featuring her in running shorts here. The entire post is worth reading.
Was the cover telling? Yes. But it told me more than perhaps you wanted me to know. It seems to me that you had to know that it was coming. And, in knowing that, you had two choices before the picture was ever taken. If the Newsweek result was something you had reason to fear (as clearly you did) you should not have done it. So why was that picture ever taken? Oh, because you’re a runner and good health is important to you. Fabulous. Run. Talk about running. Promote running. Do a cover of Runner’s World… in a jogging suit. But you enjoy being a girl, you protest. There’s nothing wrong with that. Indeed. There’s not. You shouldn’t have to look like Bella Azbug in order to be taken seriously in the political world. But when you make a conscious effort to show off what your workout gave you this is always going to be the result. Any non-feminist knows that. And, frankly, I believe you know it too. You in jogging shorts is never going to be the same thing as Bill Clinton or George W. Bush in jogging shorts. Is that fair? Maybe not. But who is going to change it? Whining sure as heck won’t change it… though it does, perhaps, serve some imagined political purpose.
