Former centerfold reveals political double standard
September 17, 2009
by Amy Siskind
|Hat tip to Casey Corcoran of the BPHC for passing along this Newsweek article by his friend Katie Connolly.
Katie Connolly wrote an excellent piece in Newsweek titled GOP Senate Candidate’s Racy Pics Don’t Matter — Because He’s a Dude. Even the title is funny, if the punchline weren’t so tragic.
Katie’s points out a blatant double standard in the way men and women politicians are treated – also known to our readers here as SEXISM!
The piece discusses a GOP candidate, MA Senator Scott Brown, who is running for Ted Kennedy’s open seat. Katie writes:
Brown’s been a fixture in Massachusetts conservative politics since the early 1990s… Some Gaggle readers may remember the fiscal conservative as the father of American Idol contestant Ayla Brown. But others may remember him from his 1982 nude centerfold in Cosmopolitan, dug up by Wonkette back in 2007.
Now you’ll excuse me here because The New Agenda does not typically publish “racy” photos – and don’t hit more unless you want to see them – but we’re making a point here….
Katie writes:
Brown was just 22 when he won Cosmo’s “America’s Sexiest Man” competition. Cosmo wrote that “adorably sexy” Brown likes “slinky girls” and that he wasn’t shy about taking his clothes off. “I’m not ashamed of my body,” Brown told Cosmo. “I work hard enough to keep it in shape. When you go to the beach, you automatically seek out the best bodies, female and male. Why should it be different in a magazine?”
Katie then aptly points to the double standard in the way our country judged vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the former beauty queen. Some in our country, especially one real sick-o Donny Deutsche, seem to have an unhealthy obsession with Palin and her looks. Would we as a country tolerate hearing, for example, Campbell Brown wax poetically about wanting to bed Scott Brown? Never!
Katie writes:
Although a nude centerfold might not kill a female politician’s career, it would most certainly prompt questions about her character. Was she unacceptably promiscuous? Did she have a wild, compromising youth? While we scoff at the exploits of young men?they’re allowed to be “footloose and carefree”?women are rarely afforded that luxury.
Thanks Katie for making me laugh – then pause – then sigh and think, ah, so much work to be done!
Who was that previous poster who hated on Sarah Palin because she giggled and winked and worked her hot mamma looks or whatever nonsense it was that she spewed?
Hey, where’d you go! Here’s your chance to prove how Not Sexist At All you are by hating on a guy who worked his hot looks!
*crickets*
Thought so.
[...] Former centerfold reveals political double standard [...]
[...] someone addresses this! I’m shocked how few people have. For me, Senator Scott Brown posing in Cosmo was just not a big deal EXCEPT for the fact that it [...]
this is such a ridiculous double standard – you KNOW that if a woman politician had something like this in her history, the whole country would be up in arms. they would be attacking her values, her character, her integrity. in my opinion, she would not get elected. think of the various women who have suffered, career-wise, for their decision to pose nude. there was that teacher in florida who was fired, that army commander who got dismissed after posing for playboy. don’t even things like beauty pageants have rules that you can’t have posed naked? personally, i don’t think it should make a difference for anyone either way – everyone looks at the magazines, and everyone has sex, so why does it matter – but if people are going to be penalized for it, COME ON, america. don’t hold women to different standards then men. if anything, it should be reflect more poorly on a man than on a woman, given how much women are sexualized in the media and the world in any case.
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