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WHEN BOOZE AND GENDER COLLIDE!
In lieu of Lightning Round, lager!
Last week, Dana pondered whether Gates-gate had anything to do with masculinity. While I admit I didn't immediately see the Gates arrest in terms of gender, Obama's choice to defuse the tension by inviting them over for a beer did seem gendered to me. You know, just dudes and brews. Hangin' out. Shootin' the shit. Guy stuff.
Would this stunt have been received the same way if a woman were at the table? Or if it was staged by a female president? Like so many other day-to-day choices we make, booze preferences have gender connotations. Think Homer Simpson with his six-packs of Duff, or Carrie Bradshaw perched on a bar stool with a cosmopolitan in hand. I know men who sheepishly order sugary cocktails, and women who are called tough or manly because they drink whiskey on the rocks. While I don't think beer, in and of itself, is a strictly "masculine" beverage, I do think the idea of putting aside differences over mugs of beer is not an image that we typically associate with women.
Obviously Dana Milbank thought the idea of a woman at that table was also ridiculous, as he suggested in a silly video that Hillary Clinton, were she invited to the summit, would be "served a bottle of Mad Bitch." A screengrab:
Full video here, via Brian Beutler. (As my colleague Adam Serwer quipped, "Obviously, this is the kind of hard-hitting journalism Nico Pitney wouldn't be incapable of.")
In recent political history, candidates have declared their love for beer (and always the cheap, domestic stuff) as a way of signaling they know how to connect with "real" (usually white, working-class) Americans. That's why Adam's assessment -- that the beer summit was Obama's way of assuring white America he was just like them -- is spot on. But there're also a gender slant on this. In the Democratic primary, Obama poked fun at Hillary Clinton's inability to look authentic with a mug of beer:
“Around election time, the candidates can’t do enough. They'll promise you anything, give you a long list of proposals and even come around, with TV crews in tow, to throw back a shot and a beer,” Obama said, stirring laughter from an audience of steelworkers and steel industry executives.
Obama chose dive bars as the setting for his embarrassing faux-folksiness, too. But Hillary got way more mocking for it. I'd argue that's because of the gender connotations associated with certain types of booze -- it was easier to conclude the female candidate looked awkward chugging a mug of Bud Light. Maybe she should have ordered a white zinfandel. At least in my experience with white, working-class America, that's a common female-identified drink.
--Ann Friedman
COMMENTS (6)
I'm with you on the stupid (and sexist) comments on Mouthpiece Theatre, but white zinfandel? I'm trying to think of any women in my or my husband's white working-class families who drink it. And I'm coming up with squat. Beer (usually cheaper, American brands) aplenty, though.
Posted by: Eagle | July 31, 2009 9:10 PM
white wc women drink beer or bad margaritas
damn you hipsters for turning Pabst into PBR and driving Rolling Rock to $7/sixer
Posted by: i hope you get crabs nex time you slum | July 31, 2009 11:14 PM
There's a real difference between the way women are portrayed in the media, and who they actually are. And one of the biggest axes of meaning is class and sexual availability. Women drink beer. Of course they drink beer. But "good" women, historically, are not imagined in a bar drinking beer with their female friends because bars (as opposed to pubs) were seen as largely masculine enclaves. For the image of four women making up over a drink to resonate culturally it would have to be portrayed in a setting (set up as a vignette) that assures the viewer of the women's high status, otherwise they'd all come in for the kind of contempt and spite that low status/sexually available/tramps etc...come in for.
If Clinton had been the cause of a similar ruckus with other women she would, of course, have invited the other women *to tea* or *flavored coffee*, possibly to *cocktails.* This has zero to do with actual drinking preferences. It has to do with the notion of comfortable *settings* for certain kinds of interactions. The notion of what is comfortable and appropriate is entirely driven by the idea that there is a viewer out there to be appeased or titillated.
Needless to say its not that Dana meathead "couldn't imagine" Hillary drinking beer, or couldn't imagine her as president, or couldn't imagine her letting her hair down with someone. Its that his misogyny is so intense that it doesn't even occur to him how inappropriate it is to drag her in to this story and label her a "bitch." Its funny to him simply because it restores some of his lost manhood. Manhood that seems extremely fragile, frankly, regardless of what he drinks.
aimai
Posted by: aimai | August 1, 2009 8:54 AM
Aimai, you don't really expect these folks to talk about class do you? Sexism and racism, sure. They never have to come to terms with their parts in perpetuating that system.
Classism however... These folks use their class advantages in a million ways every single day. They will never admit that class exists, or that it has any impact on how the media judges people. That would mean they had to examine the way they got little Timmy into that elite prep-school, or why there brat deserves an Ivy league education more than the thousands of much more intelligent kids that would never even have their application taken seriously.
Do you think these folks would actually favor Affirmative Action if it weren't going to Will Smith's kids and people like Hillary Clinton that grew up rich? I seriously fucking doubt it.
Posted by: soullite | August 2, 2009 9:18 AM
aimai is spot on with Milbank...what the hell did HRC have to do with this story?
Posted by: Anonymous | August 3, 2009 6:59 AM
Manhood that seems extremely fragile, frankly, regardless of what he drinks.
Well, that's what happens when you give a boy a name like "Dana". See Johnny Cash, "A Boy Named Sue". If only Milbank Sr had named him "Stewart" or "Charlie" or "James" or something, we wouldn't be having all these problems.
Posted by: ajay | August 3, 2009 9:08 AM