The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

The Feminist Pajama Party

Melinda, I think your own tacking back and forth on Hillary reflects not just the tendency of women voters to swarm her only when she’s been attacked, but also our own ambivalence about what the first female president needs to look like and how we should react to her as women. If you look back over the raucous pre-and-post-feminist pajama party in the media this week (and when have you last heard Gloria Steinem, Erica Jong, Maureen Dowd, Camille Paglia, Marie Wilson, half of Slate, much of the blogosphere and your dental hygienist all whacking each other with pillows on that single question?), we still have a lot of disagreement about that. And as big media turns its attention onto the next Burning Cultural Question (likely, Obama and Race) we may feel like we have to go back to debating these issues less publicly and heatedly. 

Let’s not.

At the risk of flogging a dead metaphor, that’s no different than Clinton being accused of crying when she actually held it back.