Land’s End Postscript: Sexism In Business & Politics

I’ve been further puzzling over the Gloria Steinem interview in the Land’s End catalog, and I’ve come to a second conclusion: It’s sexist.

My thinking began by mentally reviewing the other catalogs I receive. None of them ever feature prominent political leaders in them. To wit:

Duluth Trader (they’ll tell you about the model’s horse farm or blacksmith shop, but politics are right out)
Vinyard Vine (they’ll tell you what department the pictured employees work in, but still no politics)
L.L. Bean (are Labrador retrievers political animals?)
Territory Ahead (politics aren’t romantic, and they sell romance)
The Company Store (they sell bedding – let’s not go there).

Even the vast array of religious vendors who fill my mailbox stay out of politics. No sane man loses the sale of a First Communion dress over the outcome of an election.

Meanwhile, we have a presidential primary going on, and it’s hotly contested. Gloria Steinem has come out forcefully and publicly as part of the campaign machinery for Hilary Clinton. She’s so intensely invested in the outcome of the presidential elections that she’s started forgetting her own values:

Women were expected to help power Mrs. Clinton to the Democratic nomination, but as she struggles to overcome a tough challenge from Mr. Sanders and trails him in New Hampshire polls, her support among them has been surprisingly shaky. Young women, in particular, have been drawn to the septuagenarian socialist from Vermont, and the dynamic has disappointed feminists who dreamed of Mrs. Clinton’s election as a capstone to their long struggle for equality.

Ms. Steinem, 81, one of the most famous spokeswomen of the feminist movement, took the sentiment a step further on Friday in an interview with the talk show host Bill Maher. Explaining that women tend to become more active in politics as they become older, she suggested that younger women were backing Mr. Sanders just so they could meet young men.

“When you’re young, you’re thinking: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie,’ ” Ms. Steinem said.

Realizing that this was potentially offensive, Mr. Maher recoiled. “Oh. Now if I said that, ‘They’re for Bernie because that’s where the boys are,’ you’d swat me.”

But Ms. Steinem laughed it off, replying, “How well do you know me?”

In this presidential race, Gloria Steinem is unequivocally campaigning for a particular candidate. She’s as partisan as they come.

So why on earth would a clothing catalog run a puff-piece interview with a prominent backer of one of the candidates, smack in the middle of the primaries?

Now for all that Land’s End used the interview to announce it’s financial backing for a constitutional amendment, the Gloria Steinem interview wasn’t about political parties and elections specifically. One almost gets the impression Land’s End management doesn’t realize that Steinem is a political figure.

This makes no sense. If another company ran a massive spread featuring a prominent Donald Trump or Jeb Bush or Bernie Sanders campaigner — someone who was actively in the media right now during the primaries explicitly promoting the election of his candidate — we’d reasonably conclude it was meant as a political piece unless there was some explicit maneuvering to show otherwise. (“Gee, let’s forget elections, tell me about your Labrador retrievers.”)

So how could Land’s End fail to notice that Gloria Steinem is one of the faces of the Hilary Clinton campaign?

I propose it’s because she’s a woman.

The Sexism of Too Much Praise

For women of my generation, the fact that a female can be a doctor or a lawyer or a political hack is just not news. We aren’t amazed. We don’t gape in awe. In the playground circles I run in, it’s more surprising to discover a mom who doesn’t have an advanced degree and a professional life than one who does. We take it for granted that women are perfectly capable of professional pursuits. (And we take it for granted that this is true regardless of her race — it’s not only the white-girl 40-somethings who can flash an impressive resume.)

There’s just no market among we liberated types for articles that say, “Wow! A Woman Engineer!” or “Wow! A Woman Governor!” The girls my age are governor, or district attorney, or state senator, or whatever you like. Please don’t be amazed at our competence.

If Gloria Steinem’s place in history were strictly one of campaigning for equal pay for equal work and the like, she would no longer be in the news. We’d all be grateful, and she’d have taken up some new activity now. That is not who she is, professionally or personally.

Although a portion of her life’s work is politically neutral (as can be said for any other political figure), the bulk of it is not. To dismiss her with a gee-whiz puff piece is to fail to notice the vast portion of her career. It would be like running an article about Christine Lagarde in which you somehow failed to remember she directs the IMF.

What could make you do that? What could make you suddenly forget the very public, highly partisan career of a major political figure?

The only thing I can figure is that ovaries are terribly distracting.

Even Our Opponents Deserve Respect

I could not be more strongly opposed to Gloria Steinem’s politics. The pages of this blog I hope demonstrate that amply. But the irony of the Land’s End interview is that it insults us both. For me, it’s a question of a vendor presuming to send political propaganda into my home. For Steinem though, it’s worse, whether she knows it or not. In air-brushing her accomplishments, Land’s End treats a significant chunk of Steinem’s political work as if it simply weren’t there.

That doesn’t feel like equal treatment to me.