The London Telegraph's Celia Walden had herself done up like Sarah Palin. She writes:
As a former beauty queen, Sarah Palin has a point to make: she's a female Clark Kent wishing to distance herself from the spandex and big hair of her cover-girl days; she's a hockey mom encumbered by her looks - or is she?That luxuriant hair, tied up so impatiently, is as carefully thought out as the spectacles; (I'm 90% sure they're clear glass).
Now, wait a minute here. Clear glass? Whoa. Call Palin ruthless, stupid, corrupt, inexperienced, eager-to-kill-animals-and-deplete-the-world's-cuteness .... but she wears fake glasses?
I take this accusation quite seriously. As a woman who wears real glasses, I can tell you it takes energy and determination to live life with glass/plastic essentially glued to one's face almost 18 hours a day. Faking it? That happens very rarely. To go to Anthropologie, buy a cute pair to match with your outfit, and wear them for a day? Fun! But to go through life with the same pair, day in and day out, clear glass? No way.
Glasses-wearers get skin breakouts. We get nose indentations that may last forever, Lord knows. We sacrifice the beauty of our eyes to the yoke of good vision, sighing as we read women's mag stories about how to make the eyes "pop." We have to buy expensive sunglasses, and are stuck with the one pair. We can't have fun by just picking up any pair at a drugstore. We can't wear headbands because the behind-the-ear pressure is too much. At formal events, we look dorky and not beautiful because who the hell wears glasses as formalwear?
You simply don't. Not unless you have to. Which is why this photo -- among all the others I've seen -- proves that Sarah Palin doesn't wear fake glasses. No one wears pink taffeta and four-eyes without dying a little inside.
The thing is - have you noticed how strikingly gorgeous she is? She needs the glasses so that she can be taken seriously. I'm sure she is under strict orders form every political consultant who she has every talked to to NEVER TAKE THE GLASSES OFF. She takes the glasses off and she's too much.
It may be a shame that beautiful women have a hard time being taken seriously, but then it's a shame that some men pick beautiful, younger women over more qualified women (or men), too.
And yes, this is relevant. The woman is a phony, and this is just one more piece of her self-created imagery. Lipstick won't help her.
http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/7025/palinglassesad2.jpg
Or else she wouldn't be a Republican.
In my case, it would be the pink taffeta that would kill off a little of my soul. But I digress.
Palin has been and will continue to be fodder for misogynists. This fake glasses thing is just one more instance of focusing on her appearance instead of her fitness as a candidate; woman as ornament instead of a person to be taken seriously.