Carly Fiorina Is Not “A Beautiful Woman”
But that’s okay because she is running for President, not Miss America.
In a Rolling Stone interview earlier this month, Trump expressed incredulity that anyone would vote for the “face” of fellow GOP candidate, Carly Fiorina. People expressed outrage over this comment, taken to be of the sexist ilk for which Trump is notorious, and last night in the GOP debate, Fiorina was given the opportunity to respond to Trump — who has insisted since the backlash, including again during the debate, that the comment referred to Fiorina’s “persona,” not to her physical appearance.
Fiorina responded: “Women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said.”
Trump announced into the microphone: “She’s got a beautiful face and she’s a beautiful woman.”
She isn’t, though. She’s a put-together woman. If I saw her in the grocery store, I’d be like, “That woman probably has an important job,” but I wouldn’t be like, “That woman is beautiful.” That woman doesn’t need to be beautiful. She needs to be good at her job.
Can we all stop thinking with our genitals for a moment and remember that the people who founded this country apparently resembled Paul Giamatti? Have you glanced at money lately? TJ is the only hot one. Before everyone was an amateur photojournalist, people looked like garbage on the reg, and they still got their jobs done even if their wigs were askew because the internet didn’t exist and the world wasn’t full of remotely located bullies.
Very few people are remarkably attractive, and Fiorina is not one of them. Most of the GOP candidates are not.
Rand Paul looks like a Vaudeville clown who lost his costume trunk and hasn’t slept for four days.
Ted Cruz looks like a Disney villain sketched with pen on a wet cocktail napkin.
Scott Walker looks like he is constantly reliving the moment when he found out his car was disqualified from the 1975 Pinewood Derby for having too many weights and he tried to explain to the Cub Scout leaders that he had checked the rules several times.
Lindsey Graham looks like a lonely old carpenter made a boy out of enchanted urethane caulk and wished so hard for a son that it came to life.
Chris Christie does not fit well in t-shirts.
My point is that Fiorina is solidly in the middle of the pack, attractiveness-wise.
To some extent, it’s frustrating that the debate moderators are entertaining Trump’s sexism enough to bring this question up on CNN, and it’s frustrating that Fiorina is reading it as being sexist (instead of simply wildly inappropriate for politics) by responding specifically about “women” having “heard what Mr. Trump said” — anyone who hears one candidate talking about another’s face should reconsider his respect for the smack talker.
While Trump’s remarks and general attitude are things that female voters should certainly consider when they head to the polls, men are not exempt from considering them just because Trump seems less likely to (publicly, in print) evaluate the legitimacy of their campaigns based on their bone structure. Male voters should consider the merits of a candidate who employs such careless (or callous) rhetoric.
When Fiorina declined to respond to this aspect of Trump’s remark on the debate stage — when she declined to say, “Speaking that way about any candidate’s face is inappropriate, and at some point Americans will realize that you cannot both be President and say all the things Donald Trump enjoys saying” — she aligned herself with the notion that female candidates and female votes are somehow inherently sympathetic to each other, in the same way that candidates of color and voters of color are allegedly sympathetic to each other. This is limiting, primarily because she is calling on only women to have “heard what Mr. Trump said,” but also because in doing so, she is affirming her position as a victim of Trump’s bullying, and she is calling upon female voters to prove through their votes…? That what Trump says is inappropriate? That Fiorina’s face is worthy of votes? That someone from another party seems like a better candidate for women to support than anyone in the GOP?
Trump saying something sexist isn’t news. It happens all the time. Our tolerance of Trump saying sexist things isn’t news. It happens all the time. Women in positions of relative power playing into the established dichotomy between “women” and “people,” especially in an effort to win support, isn’t news. It happens all the time. Our tolerance of this dichotomy, when it makes people spend multiple seconds of a televised debate for candidacy for the American Presidency on the issue of whether a man said something mean about a lady’s appearance is news, and it’s gross.
For the record, even though Marco Rubio is the cutest GOP candidate, he still looks like a merperson.
