The False Feminism of Sarah Palin

Apparently, fashion is even capable of generating trends in campaigns. Marketing has been presented as the revealed truth, the Orwellian eye that sees everything and the hand that guides towards the achievement of the goal. All this while even the goal is false or, in an euphemistic way, misses the truth.

One of the aberrations that we have had to hear in recent times is the portrayal of the governor of Alaska and the Republican candidate for the vice-presidency of the United States, Sara Louise Heath Palin, as a feminist. A woman of the new century who, in carrying herself almost perfectly, shows up on election posters, puts in stellar appearances on television programs or in complex political debates, an exact paradigm of the claims that women have been fighting for over a century.

The writer of this piece is not a bitter teacher or an avant-garde painter much less a cabinetmaker in a fine workshop, but if I had to dedicate myself to any of these professions, I would begin investigating, even if it were in its briefest form, their intricacies. Fundamentally not to be ridiculous when forming an opinion, speaking or producing objects of acceptable plausibility. More specifically, feminism is not so complex as to prevent its understanding by the general public, nor as simple and transparent as to comment on it without having at least a basic understanding to sustain the argument.

Senator Palin is a Republican version of Lara Croft with a touch of classic distinction in her Chanel, Armani and other apocalyptically designed suits that prevent any closeness with the common people; her arms resting on the sale of the traditional family as a safeguard to the morality that enhances a country. The family, as she understands it, is a protected temple where the principles are easier to manipulate and control and where she shines as the priestess, the mother of the clan, the woman.

So from the distance established by bodyguards, impossible lecterns, official cars and other adorned propaganda, the aspirant of the number two position in the White House encourages women to continue ensuring the family home at the expense of whatever, because in that way their work is as patriotic as the troops who go to different countries and defend the honor of their great nation. But it also conveys, through the transparency of her lenses, that they would never be what she represents. Do as I say but not as I do.

So we can choose epithet. Sarah Palin is practicing notorious hypocrisy in public or is being exercised by, without blush staining her cheeks, the official manipulation of the Republican Party. Because a person cannot go unnoticed when embarking on the odyssey of aspiring to be the co-director of a country and have to set aside and pass on to employees, family or privates the powers of the “mater familis” ought to realize each day of their selfless lives. Sacrificing the hours of household cleaning, the collection of children after school, the cooking, watching the skies etc., are tasks that are not in any way compatible to meeting in the Oval Office with supposedly the powerful man on the planet or making decisions with a global reach.

In her speeches Sarah Palin weaves, so intentionally or not, a spider’s web that traps so slowly but surely the dreams, desires and needs that complete the adventure that is life, and who mutilates (as it has been done since the beginning of time) the possibility that as men and women, we are not prisoners of a sexist label by which we condition the rest of our lives, but we start from the everyday cooperative option that makes us enjoy each other.

I think the governor of Alaska is a victim of beautiful long legs playing with a flirty skirt sufficiently adjusted to distill sensuality in every step an ambition of those who express the need to move beyond a narrow kitchen imprisonment.

Barack Hussein Obama’s fresh wind, his push for change, has needed not only rhetorical tricks but also the creation of visual effects to generate followers and supporters. Since Hilary Rodham Clinton stayed at the epic gates, Republicans uncovered their trump card, the beautiful woman with an iron fist and hieratic fearsome modernity which indescribably scares Americans. So it is not the manipulator or the manipulated, but an amalgamation of everything.

Although aware of the possibility of becoming an expired product and the focus of investigations and harsh criticism, this woman took on the challenge. Because at all costs she wanted out of the kitchen to leave the “roast beef” behind for “canard à l’orange” and to leave afternoons spent in front of the television to be dialectically measured with men who have had it easier than she. The problem is that she chose the wrong side. Sarah Palin lost the election by playing with letters and falsehoods and trying to renege on the very citizenship of freedom that she enjoys.