“You’re really not all that interested in state dinners and teas and garden parties?” a befuddled male interviewer asked Hillary Clinton in 1979.
A new video mashup by The National Memo (which you can watch above), shows that reporters have been asking Clinton why she doesn’t fit into a neat little box of what a woman is supposed to be for decades.
In 1996, Barbara Walters asked Hillary Clinton, “Do you think the American people are ready yet to have a first lady who has strong opinions and an agenda?”
Exactly 20 years later, Americans have largely accepted that a woman married to a powerful man might have a thought in her head, but cannot let a “lady who has strong opinions” become the person in this country whose opinions matter most without reminding her that she is first and foremost, a lady. So her “likability” comes into question, her voice and tone are policed, we hear male commentators say things like, “men won’t vote for Hillary Clinton because she reminds them of their nagging wives.”
And through all the scrutiny that a man would undoubtedly never be up against, people wonder why Hillary Clinton isn’t eternally smiling.
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