Lack of Reflectivity
It's hard for a certain kind of woman -- MY kind of woman -- to write about Sarah Palin without being catty. Women are much more sensitive than men to the power urges of the women in our midst, and Sarah Palin gives off massive surges of will-to-power. What else she does -- hence our negative response -- is pretends it isn't there; the will-to-power, that is.
This is foremost a matter of grooming, and perhaps Christian (or Muslim or Jewish Orthodox) grooming at that. So much of modern American womanhood has gone over to the style of the well-preserved hooker that it's surprisingly relaxing to observe a woman who projects a controlled attractiveness instead. She looks sexy but not-for-you. And why should she be "for you," with her five children? She looks like she likes to be sexy for her husband, and thus begins to fulfill damaged desires of many an American spouse of either gender.
I like it myself but I don't think it's real. I know no one her age, with a full-time job and five children, who looks like that; primarily because no one has the time, with all those commitments, to keep looking like that. Sarah Palin is at the age where stress and lack of sleep show on your face. It did on Meryl Streep; it did on Elizabeth Dole. There's a Dorian Gray quality to Palin's attractiveness that invites darker thoughts by those of us who have been there.
How do you get thin like that after 5 children? Not so easy. Regular exercise and diet? Doubtful. Bulimia? I would think so. The only other person I've ever known who was so perfectly, stylishly thin (and I lived in Los Angeles for a long time so I had plenty of people to observe) maintained her figure, and a million other secrets, by bulimia. Lovely young woman, but horribly conflicted, particularly about her own inability to handle her self-doubts without self-disgust.
Maybe it's not bulimia (and maybe it is) but these are the kind of thoughts that rise inevitably in your mind watching Sarah Palin in an interview -- control freak, manipulator, secret-keeper.
And then you watch the men around you fail to be uneasy, and you add a phrase, "man-eater," because it fits so well. Considering the world problems she has declared herself ready to resolve, she spends a wildly-disproportionate amount of time focused on disarming you instead, protecting herself, spreading her pheromones around the unnervingly large space she seems to need.
I can't help being catty. There's something wrong with this woman; and the worst thing about it is that so many people can't see it. She is just the one though to do a terrible amount of damage to the people around her before she does -- if this is even in the cards for her -- become aware of her willfulness and take stock of what it means.
In this she seems so much like John McCain, who survived terrible privations and did not learn from them what everyone else in the '60's learned: The Viet Nam war couldn't ever have been won, and one owed fidelity, especially after such sufferings, to the wife of one's youth.
If elected, what would these two do to make over the world in the image of their un-self-reflective dreams?
This is foremost a matter of grooming, and perhaps Christian (or Muslim or Jewish Orthodox) grooming at that. So much of modern American womanhood has gone over to the style of the well-preserved hooker that it's surprisingly relaxing to observe a woman who projects a controlled attractiveness instead. She looks sexy but not-for-you. And why should she be "for you," with her five children? She looks like she likes to be sexy for her husband, and thus begins to fulfill damaged desires of many an American spouse of either gender.
I like it myself but I don't think it's real. I know no one her age, with a full-time job and five children, who looks like that; primarily because no one has the time, with all those commitments, to keep looking like that. Sarah Palin is at the age where stress and lack of sleep show on your face. It did on Meryl Streep; it did on Elizabeth Dole. There's a Dorian Gray quality to Palin's attractiveness that invites darker thoughts by those of us who have been there.
How do you get thin like that after 5 children? Not so easy. Regular exercise and diet? Doubtful. Bulimia? I would think so. The only other person I've ever known who was so perfectly, stylishly thin (and I lived in Los Angeles for a long time so I had plenty of people to observe) maintained her figure, and a million other secrets, by bulimia. Lovely young woman, but horribly conflicted, particularly about her own inability to handle her self-doubts without self-disgust.
Maybe it's not bulimia (and maybe it is) but these are the kind of thoughts that rise inevitably in your mind watching Sarah Palin in an interview -- control freak, manipulator, secret-keeper.
And then you watch the men around you fail to be uneasy, and you add a phrase, "man-eater," because it fits so well. Considering the world problems she has declared herself ready to resolve, she spends a wildly-disproportionate amount of time focused on disarming you instead, protecting herself, spreading her pheromones around the unnervingly large space she seems to need.
I can't help being catty. There's something wrong with this woman; and the worst thing about it is that so many people can't see it. She is just the one though to do a terrible amount of damage to the people around her before she does -- if this is even in the cards for her -- become aware of her willfulness and take stock of what it means.
In this she seems so much like John McCain, who survived terrible privations and did not learn from them what everyone else in the '60's learned: The Viet Nam war couldn't ever have been won, and one owed fidelity, especially after such sufferings, to the wife of one's youth.
If elected, what would these two do to make over the world in the image of their un-self-reflective dreams?
posted by Nellmezzo | 11:52 AM
1 Comments:
Ah, lebensraum...
I watched some of one of Palin's gubernatorial debates today, and she not only sounded more coherent and knowledgeable (because she probably was more knowledgeable about the issues involved there), but there was no folksiness in her manner at all. Of course I had already known that her current demeanor was a calculated strategy, but the discrepancy was shocking nevertheless.
I don't if you've seen this blog post at National Review, which is already infamous, but it makes for a nice complement --or maybe supplement -- to your post.
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