The XX Factor: What women really think.

1950s Dating Horrors

Hanna, I am the product of the “simpler” '50s dating culture. My parents were young, hot for each other, met their families' requirements of looks (her) and potential earning capacity (him), and married at ages 19 and 20. Their union produced four children, lasted 20 years, and was a nightmare for all concerned. So I do not share David Brooks’ nostalgia for a time when dating had ‘guardrails.' I dated for decades in the pre-cell phone era, and it wasn’t technology that gave me an ironic, contingent feeling about my adventures. One of my male friends once said to me, “Sometimes I think you deliberately go on bad dates just so you have a story to tell” ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Taylor Swift, Your Speech Was Interrupted by Individualism

David Brooks alerts us to the fact that a congressman said something rude at a presidential speech, and a musician interrupted an awards show. “This isn’t the death of the West,” he reassures us. Good to know! But what is it? Why, it’s the death of all that is good and humble in this world, and the subsequent rise of “expressive individualism.” At some point between 1945 and today, we have crossed “a sort of narcissism line.”

Michelle's Arms: Too Hot for The New Yorker!

Guns and Roses, and David Brooks

Washington is a place where people have always been suspect of style and overt sexuality. Too much preening signals that you’re not up late studying cap-and-trade agreements.

I think that’s pretty accurate, despite Dowd’s typically scattershot treatment. But later, from the mouth of Dowd’s Times bedfellow David Brooks:

She should put away Thunder and Lightning. ... Washington is sensually avoidant. The wonks here like brains. She should not be known for her physical presence, for one body part.

Part of why I like Washington so much is its nonrunway atmosphere, the slightly schlubby khaki culture that puts a premium on policy rather than couture aesthetics. Yet its conservatism does translate to gender roles, especially in fields as dominated by men as politics and journalism, or—where I sit—political journalism. Brooks, et al., provide the anti-peer pressure, the incentive to flatten hipness or personality, or treat each as the opposite of smarts. In D.C., just wearing a colored blazer makes one feel a bit flamboyant. (A group of motivated, high-octane girlfriends and I just finished debating my recent moratorium on purchasing clothing that is “not appropriate for work”—more on that later.)

In the end, Dowd counseled Obama to be herself, assuming that her fluency on the intricacies of climate legislation (a facile proxy for things wonkish) will make its own impression, and noting, “the only bracing symbol of American strength right now is the image of Michelle Obama’s sculpted biceps." This was comforting news to one who feared that the hardnosed lawyer and hospital executive was being forgotten in all of the risotto-scooping and playhouse constructing (by choice!) that has peppered her schedule of late.

But it still irks me that Brooks seems more cowed by the FLOTUS’ guns than he has any right to be. Who’s dividing whom into constituent parts? Oh, right—"Washington."... Obama’s toned arms look great, but are probably the most androgynous, least sexual part of a woman’s anatomy. So his complaint is not really about inappropriate sexuality; there’s nothing shameful (in America’s puritan sense) about being known for that “one body part.” His beef is in fact about power, of the incredibly banal corporeal variety. So Obama's "physical presence" threatens him. Yawn—we covered this with the Williams sisters. As euphemistic as he attempts to come across, I think Brooks is just being sexist. He should be more afraid of her pillow talk on Medicaid. Thoughts?

We'll Miss George

Juliet,

I think this is going to turn out to be a real crisis moment for the conservative movement. The difference between Palin and Bush is: He was just pretending to be regular folk from the heartland, whereas she actually is. Bush was perfect for the conservative movement. (As was Reagan, in a different way.) Bush could masterfully pull off the act of being a struck-by-the-light evangelical from Texas. But the Buckleys and the Frums and the Brookses of the world all knew that actually, he was safe--an Ivy Leaguer from the landed gentry who was just playing a necessary role.

Palin, on the other hand, really tests this faux populism the party leaders have been peddling for so long. Now, the elder Buckley's test--faculty of Harvard or first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book--is real. Palin comes from the latter category, and it ain't looking pretty.  

Before his column today, Brooks told a luncheon crowd that Palin was a fatal cancer on the Republican Party. A week earlier, he'd praised her debate performance as fluid, confident, energetic--piled on the compliments. Either he is just hoping for the best and can't make up his mind. Or he said at a private luncheon what he really believes. Either way it seems the movement is headed for a brain freeze, as all its best thinkers desert.

Skinny Lattes in Wasilla (Yes, There Is a God)

People who've never been in a Wal-Mart think she is parochial because she has never summered in Tuscany.
—David Brooks on Sarah Palin

When I read the part of Maureen Dowd's column yesterday that said she had "sautéed'' herself in "Sarahville" and ventured into a Wal-Mart to see how the other half shops, I  figured she had taken the David Brooks Challenge. I also was picturing her at the superstore in Alexandria -- and even that I would have given a pretty to see, as my granny used to say. (Was she wearing sunglasses? Did an assistant approach the tattooed woman for her?) But if she went personally to the pray-away-the-gay church in Wasilla, that's a whole other field trip.