I admit it: when I listened on the radio as Nancy Pelosi took the gavel this week as the first woman -- and incidentally the first Californian -- to become Speaker of the House, I got teary-eyed.
Wow, a woman, running not just a house, but THE House. Two heartbeats -- or in Vice President Dick Cheney's case, two heartbeats, a skip and a jump -- from the Oval Office. The Republicans' now-minority leader, John Boehner, observed graciously as he handed Pelosi the gavel, "Whether you're a Republican, a Democrat or an independent, today is a cause for celebration.''
Any woman of any party who was of voting age in 1984 remembers an image that until now was the defining ''wow'' moment of women in politics: Geraldine Ferraro, up there on the podium at the Democratic National Convention, in that traditional, triumphant running-mates arms-upraised pose with Walter Mondale. Never mind that she was an unknown and a flawed choice, or that the ticket got creamed. She was -- in a way Margaret Thatcher never meant it -- ''one of us.''
I got teary-eyed then, too. My first thought, then as now, was, "Wow.'' My second thought, I am embarrassed to admit, was ''Oh, honey -- lose the puffed sleeves.'' I was a political novice and a fashion novice and still I knew somehow that puffy sleeves were not... vice-presidential.
It's what Rep. Stephanie Tubb-Jones said apropos of a recent Newsweek poll: "Women are harder on women. They demand a level of perfection they often do not from male candidates.'' Not just candidates: when Monica Lewinsky made her first big TV interview after Dressgate, thousands of women called the network demanding to know... where they could buy the same color lipstick Lewinsky was wearing. And there's been that run on Pelosi pearls since the November elections.
Let's just render those subliminals a non-issue, shall we? I'm proposing a new line of women candidates' couture from a famous clothier. Maybe they should call it Brooks Sisters.