Maire Claire
Yeah, She’s Problematic, but Let’s Stop Looks-Shaming Kellyanne Conway
By CHELSEA PENG
Feb 8, 2017
At the risk of sounding like someone’s mother or that goody two-shoes who raises her hand to help the teacher out when the rest of the class is clearly in on an anti-question-answering conspiracy, I would like to say stop it—lay off Kellyanne*.
*not completely, just in this specific manner I will outline below
If you’ve been on the internet lately, you will have seen some memes equating the female figureheads of the Trump’s America to bananas in various stages of decay or miscellaneous cartoon demons. You might have seen the least offensive one (below), which refers to a comment you only make to a woman when you no longer have the will to live. Or maybe you’ve been following along as Nick Barose, major makeup artist and noted Conway opponent, evaluates his nemesis’ skincare habits. (Though he seems to be in on the joke, geo-tagging such content “Petty Island.”)
It’s savage, which means the same as funny these days. It’s easy. It’s good for a chuckle—until you recognize the hypocrisy.
Just a few months ago, we raged every time Trump called a woman unattractive, from Arianna Huffington to Bette Midler to Rosie O’Donnell. We said don’t you dare judge us by how we look, but in less-polite terms. So what’s the difference between his looks-based critiques and ours? What’s keeping us from stooping to the level of the man who would be despot? Going after Conway in this way is a cheap shot, especially when there’s plenty of other, more valid, deadlier ammo, including but not limited to: her living in the land of alternative facts (population: higher than you might think); misremembering “historical” events; and massacring a standup routine more violently than what she might have imagined happened at Bowling Green six years ago.
We’d do better to think of another woman in the public eye, whose appearance has been compared to much worse than overripe fruit, who still had the dignity to turn the other cheek. “When they go low,” she said, “we go high.”
