The American presidential campaign gives us much to reflect on. The faces of three very different women show us a lot about modern political discourse.
Hillary Clinton stands out. Once she became a qualified presidential candidate, rather than the humiliated wife of a president, she was cut off at the knees. Even a black man was preferable to a middle-aged woman wearing a beige pant-suit who reminded too many men of their mothers.
She must have expected sexism: it had happened before. When first-term President Clinton appointed 'my wife' to do a serious job, reforming the health care system, neither the media nor the self-appointed elites were willing to make the best use, or any use, of the proffered 'two for the price of one'.
By the end of 1994, Hillary Clinton had been sidelined by her husband's own administration. She wrote in her memoirs, 'I underestimated the resistance I would meet as a First Lady with a policy mission'.
Too punchy, too confident, too ambitious, too female — because being seen to have real power and authority, as a woman, invokes the Furies. Her failure 14 years ago led to her becoming a 'lightning rod for political and ideological battles ... and a magnet for feelings ... about women's choices and roles'.
Once wronged by her man, sympathy kicked in, and turned off again when she sought to lead in her own right.
Michelle Obama, on the other hand, enjoyed a short honeymoon as a beautiful, sassy, smart and loyal presidential aspirant's 'first wife'. But once Hillary was scuttled, and once the Democrats rallied behind her husband's campaign, the same media that lauded Obama's poise and style confected 'offence' at her comment that she was "for the first time in my life proud of my country'.
As a future great man's intimate and domestic support at the Democratic Convention, Michelle was safely bookmarked.
Then John McCain anointed a former beauty queen and 'hockey mom' with negligible political experience, fundamentalist religious and right-wing political opinions (pro-Iraq, killing moose with machine guns, drilling tundra parklands for a few years more oil, but anti-choice — did her pregnant 17-year-old really have one?) as his vice-presidential nominee.
This small-town 'beauty queen' in her 40s, with big hair, great legs, short skirts and killer heels, delivered a strikingly well-written speech to the Republican Convention in which she ad-libbed only once: that the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull terrier is