Politics gets a Facelift: Physical Image and Modern American Government

Let’s face it: these days (despite all of our supposed progress) there is profound pressure on women to look not merely beautiful, but inhumanly flawless.  I blame the media who, with its relatively recent acquisition of photo tweaking technology, has used a heavy hand in airbrushing already good-looking female celebrities into impossible specimens of slender, ageless pulchritude.  Add to this an abundance of glossy magazines sporting upgraded images of female stars on their covers while prominently displayed at every grocery store in America, and you have an entire population of women who, by simply operating in contemporary American culture, are suggestively bullied into being looks obsessed. 

In her October 14, 2010 submission to the Huffington Post, Peggy Drexler analyzes (most likely for an audience of liberal women) the political implications of American preoccupation with female beauty by using the example of recently emerged candidate for the Delaware Senate, and bona fide cutie, Christine O'Donnell.  Drexler observes a new power wielded by beauty in politics that may be trumping job appropriateness, and cites O'Donnell as symptomatic of this situation.  Drexler drives home her point by enumerating a few of O’Donnell’s drawbacks such as her unclear educational history and her bizarre opposition to the practice of masturbation, and then postulates that if O’Donnell were bereft of her physical endowments, she might also be without a political career.  Drexler strengthens her position by mentioning that it is not as though you can’t combine intelligence and competence with good looks, but in light of O’Donnell’s glaring flaws that may render her unsuitable for political office, wonders if her presence on the national political forum is due only to her good looks, presented to an American public, conveniently primed to unquestioningly accept the beautiful over the qualified.