Women Looking Like A Man

"The notion that a contemporary women must look mannish in order to be taken seriously as a seeker of power is frankly dismaying. This is America, not Saudia Arabia." Time Magazine, page 18, February 4, 2008, quoting Ann Wintour, Vogue Magazine editor, reacting to Senator Hillary Clinton's supposed reasons for refusing to appear in Vogue because allegedly she would look to feminine.

I take issue with the interpretation that Ms. Wintour is taking as to Senator's Clinton's alleged reasons for not appearing in the magazine. Ms. Wintour seems to believe that if you do not want to look "too feminine" then you must look "mannish". This is a simplistic interpretation, since there are other "looks" that Senator Clinton may have wanted to project besides "mannish" , but that because of cultural interpretations of what feminine means, the posibility of projecting these other "looks" might have been excluded by adopting "Vogue"s "feminine" look. For example, having the look of an intellectual, an innocent, or a working class woman may not be related to the "feminine" image attributed to "Vogue". I believe that what Senator Clinton was trying to avoid by not appearing in Vogue was to project a "feminine" image that some people may interpret as frivolous, egocentric and/or cold, which regretfully are some of the negative interpretations that our culture gives to the word "feminine". Our culture provides enough negative interpretations of the word "feminine" that trying to avoid some of those interpretations by not appearing in a magazine does not necessarily mean "mannish".