When Women Speak, It Better Be From The Kitchen
When a powerful woman is reduced to a trope.
I’m certain I’m not the only one who was aghast at the Republican response to the State of the Union address delivered last Thursday.
Once I picked my jaw up off the floor, where it had gradually dropped during the weird, breathy, sometimes bordering on hysterical, performance delivered by Alabama Senator Katie Britt, I really began pondering…
‘Who is this woman and why was she the mouthpiece for the Republican party at this most critical juncture?’
Most of all, I wondered… why??
The setting
Why in the kitchen? I most certainly had an immediate reaction to that, and when my husband (so, not a raging feminist woman) walked into the room midway through her speech and immediately asked, “Why is she in a kitchen?” I realized it was, in fact, weird.
Since I’ve been, for my mental health, keeping my attention to the intricacies of American politics much less involved as it has been in years past, I had never heard of the senator from Alabama. My first introduction to this woman was seeing her, at her kitchen table, dressed like a housewife with a sparkling cross necklace, her eyes bordering on crazy as she delivered perhaps one of the…
