So, apropos of nothing in particular, I was thinking about the three women we have on the Supreme Court now (Kagan, Sotomayor, and Ginsburg), and how we are slowly moving away from the “Smurfette Syndrome” in politics.
The Smurfette Syndrome, for those who are unaware, is a trope where they
are lots of different male characters, and then one female character, who is apparently
used to represent all women or femininity.
Like the 100 to 1 ratio of females to males in the Smurf village, later
slightly improved to 100 to 3 ratio. Seen
in countless tv shows and movies, and can also be seen in real life, like the 5
to 1 ratio of men to women in Congress.
Or the even worse 0 to 44 ratio for presidents. Here is a video explicating the theory
further:
While I
believe the situation is slowly improving on all fronts, will we ever reach the
point of parity of representation amongst the sexes in politics? Is that even something we should strive
for? What if less women were genuinely
uninterested in politics compared to men, as I’ve heard some theorize? Are women in politics always doomed to be Smurfettes?
I gotta tell you I think about this ALL the time. Particularly as I'm picking out what my kids get to watch. I have a beef so big with Pixar about how they never have girl characters. So you can imagine how I feel about my government and the press being so crazily unrepresentative of women's voices. When I worked on the Hill we used to argue about whether a black man or a white woman was likelier to become president first. I always said a black man (though at the time I was usually thinking Colin Powell). I would never try to diminish the strength and power of racism, but I feel like sexism is considered wholly acceptable, still, in our society in a way that racism is not. People try to hide racism and public people get fired for saying racist things. People do not try to hide sexism.
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