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May 17, 2011

Newsweek Having it Both Ways with Sexy Callista

By Michael Shaw

Yes, touche to Newsweek, staying laser-focused on the new marketing strategy plumbing the female demographic with still another girl cover. And what a brilliant cover it is. If NewsBeast is ultimately interested in playing every angle and buttering up everybody while building its own brand, it does so perfectly here by:

1. Ripping Callista Gingrich as a Stepford-haired, female prototype from Central Casting with all the GOP trappings.

2. Ripping the stereotyping of Mrs. Gingrich as a Stepford-haired, female prototype from Central Casting while also providing specific inoculation to Callista who does make good use of her sexuality and can definitely use this high-profile act of insulation from corporate media against the killer charge she was having an affair with Newt at the same time he was beating up Clinton over Lewinsky.

3. Still circulating a sexy-as-hell piece of Palin-replacement newsstand-candy designed to give Newsweek’s super-popular, equally-red, equally “hands-on-hipped” “Palin home workout attack”” cover a run for its money.

Applying a blanket feminist argument saying they can do no right, this cover and the article also does an extraordinary job of sucking up to the rest of the GOP candidate’s wives, surely with visions of dozens of exclusive interviews down the road.
Img article cottle the good wife 205239769071

Playing up the sexual innuendo while hugging the sanctimonious high ground, by the way, I also love the accompanying photo illustration nailing the overlap in Washington between sex and power (perhaps most reflective of the tie-up between Newt and Callista — no airhead or bimbo at all, but a true D.C. operator) the White House clearly sighted between her legs.

(photo: unattributed online. photo illustration: Michael Elins)

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  • marc sobel

     but it’s not Calista, too many smile lines, her botox dependency will not allow them to appear.

    come to think of it, it could be a body double or perhaps the actually are cylons and this is just another one of the same model.

  • Noone57

    You can’t make fun of Gingrich’s website misspelling Callista’s name and then misspelling it yourself.

    • http://www.bagnewsnotes.com Michael Shaw

      Thanks for the catch. Did get it right in the title, though. 

  • http://twitter.com/fookitall IM Coyote

    Not surprising they covered her very scary eyes. And I thought Nancy Reagan was a freakshow. Have you seen the side by side photos of Calista and the Pudding Face guy? They could be related.

    Still, it looks like Newtie’s pretty much DOA as a candidate; they probably figured a generic GOP wife was the way to go at this point. 

    • Julia Grey

      Her staring eyes strike me as evidence of a thyroid pathology. 

      Or, more plausibly, she’s taking thyroid pills to keep her weight down and overdoing it.

  • Marie

     Ah, this reminds me of a gender in advertising study (in the 80s?) that demonstrated that men were more likely to be presented in close head-and-shoulder crops (ie shown as more of an individual), whereas women were more often portrayed showing head and body (it’s all about the body, baby).  

    So we are still stuck in showing off women’s bodies, are we, Newsweek? I call photoshopped hips for starters. Newsweek? Looks more like Weak News. 

  • Enoch Root

     That’s so, so mean.

    I mean, one can’t deny the stereotype of Republican Wife; it’s a strict straightjacket and power-play uniform. But to deny her *face,* ostensibly after a photoshoot, even… That’s just cruel.

  • Anonymous

     Thanks to a number of websites that easily calculate the difference between two dates, it’s possible to note that Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique 48 years, 2 months, and 28 days ago.  Like women in the early 60’s, today’s women have lots of mystique but not much political power. 

    Do women marginalize themselves?  Nobody is pushing Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann to take the extreme positions they take.  Nor did anyone force Sharron Angle to hand the election to Harry Reid by being the candidate from Outer Space.  Delaware voters elected not to send Christine O’Donnell to the Senate because of her poor choice of issues – chastity and witchcraft.

    In fifty years of reawakened feminist consciousness, we are still seeing women running for First Lady rather than President.  Is Callista Gingrich a person in her own right?  Her place in the spotlight is exactly as it would have been prior to Betty Friedan’s challenge to the prevaling values of her time.  She’s Mrs. Newt Gingrich, and such controversy as exists has to do with with her adherence to women’s traditional role as a “good” wife.

    • http://twitter.com/fookitall IM Coyote

      “Do women marginalize themselves? ”

      You might want to rethink this very offensive victim-blaming, especially in light of the renewed ferocity in the War on Women that’s happening in the state legislatures right now. (not that it ever went away) I very much doubt that’s Mrs. Gingrich in that photoshop, btw – she hardly has editorial control over magazine covers. The whole point of the image is to simultaneously reinforce the Stepford role, while pretending that there’s a choice when there’s really not one. One thing Michael didn’t point out above is that the head looks like it doesn’t match the neck, giving the woman a bobble-head impression. I can’t believe that’s not deliberate.

      Dem FLOTUSes are subject to vile attacks because they are 1) Dem and 2) have vibrant lives outside their husbands’ jobs. Women like Palin, ODonnell and Gingrich, even Angle are only allowed their pedestals because they stay within the “traditional role” of adoring wife, “mama grizzly,” chaste innocent, dim bulb, etc. In fact, they’re catapulted primarily because they fully embrace the role, become hyper feminine objects and they trash other women, which is a bonus for the GOP. Another bonus is these women are the supposed counterpoint to “the feminists” in that they fight directly against “liberated” women. Sure, it’s hard to see these women as victims, especially as they victimize other women, but if they have any ambition at all, the only way for a GOP woman to gain status is to play the game. If the story about Newt’s Tiffany bill is any indication, the rewards are staggering. See, also, Bristol Palin.

    • http://twitter.com/fookitall IM Coyote

      “Do women marginalize themselves? ”

      You might want to rethink this very offensive victim-blaming, especially in light of the renewed ferocity in the War on Women that’s happening in the state legislatures right now. (not that it ever went away) I very much doubt that’s Mrs. Gingrich in that photoshop, btw – she hardly has editorial control over magazine covers. The whole point of the image is to simultaneously reinforce the Stepford role, while pretending that there’s a choice when there’s really not one. One thing Michael didn’t point out above is that the head looks like it doesn’t match the neck, giving the woman a bobble-head impression. I can’t believe that’s not deliberate.

      Dem FLOTUSes are subject to vile attacks because they are 1) Dem and 2) have vibrant lives outside their husbands’ jobs. Women like Palin, ODonnell and Gingrich, even Angle are only allowed their pedestals because they stay within the “traditional role” of adoring wife, “mama grizzly,” chaste innocent, dim bulb, etc. In fact, they’re catapulted primarily because they fully embrace the role, become hyper feminine objects and they trash other women, which is a bonus for the GOP. Another bonus is these women are the supposed counterpoint to “the feminists” in that they fight directly against “liberated” women. Sure, it’s hard to see these women as victims, especially as they victimize other women, but if they have any ambition at all, the only way for a GOP woman to gain status is to play the game. If the story about Newt’s Tiffany bill is any indication, the rewards are staggering. See, also, Bristol Palin.

  • Glen

    I don’t want to get into the feminism argument here, but one thing I will point out is that it’s kind of inappropriate for Newsweek to use Callista Gingrich to comment on “political wives” as an example of a trend.

    I find Callista both horrifying and amusing, but let’s be real, what she and Newt are doing with her role is something unique in politics. I’m sure the purpose is to neutralize (“newtralize”) the damage to his image as a serial adulterer by having her so prominently by his side, but even so, this is unlike what any other candidate has done.

    The other Republicans candidates’ wives aren’t even on the radar screen as far as I know. Democratic wives have been uniformly tied to a certain proper, attractive, yet background role. Except for Hillary Clinton, who trod an uncomfortable path as both background and expert lawyer and policy wonk.

    Callista is being presented as an “equal partner” in the campaigning and marketing process – NOT, I should point out, in the future governing process. She’s like his PR spokesperson or something. I find it curious, and maybe even unconvincing, but the Gingriches are certainly claiming a wifely role that no other candidate’s wife has really claimed.

    This is contrary to Hillary, BTW, who was being marketed as an equal partner in the ability to govern.

  • Anonymous

    I don’t see Sarah Palin as a victim or indeed Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, or Michelle Bachmann.  The positions these people take are their own; nobody forces them.  When I asked if they marginalize themselves, it’s noteworthy that they seem to aim for the margins.

    We’re fifty years down the road from The Feminine Mystique, and we’re still thinking of women more as acted-upon than as agents of their own destiny.  But it’s obvious that the situations women find themselves in are the results of their own choices.  Christine O’Donnell spent Republican money on a campaign ad leading off with the statement, “I am not a witch.”  Sarah Palin shoots animals for sport.  Harry Reid defeated Sharron Angle by quoting her own words, the same fate that awaits Michelle Bachmann.  These people are not victims.

  • Anonymous

    I don’t see Sarah Palin as a victim or indeed Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, or Michelle Bachmann.  The positions these people take are their own; nobody forces them.  When I asked if they marginalize themselves, it’s noteworthy that they seem to aim for the margins.

    We’re fifty years down the road from The Feminine Mystique, and we’re still thinking of women more as acted-upon than as agents of their own destiny.  But it’s obvious that the situations women find themselves in are the results of their own choices.  Christine O’Donnell spent Republican money on a campaign ad leading off with the statement, “I am not a witch.”  Sarah Palin shoots animals for sport.  Harry Reid defeated Sharron Angle by quoting her own words, the same fate that awaits Michelle Bachmann.  These people are not victims.

  • http://twitter.com/fookitall IM Coyote

    “When I asked if they marginalize themselves,”

    You asked “Why do women marginalize themselves” and used the wingnut women as proof of your thesis. Whether or not I like these women, and I do not, they are just as much victims of the patriarchy as any other woman. Sure, they choose to abandon self-respect for money and fame, but the fact that they have to do so to get ahead is where the victimization comes in. Not to mention, the women you target are hardly marginal. By buying into the hyper-feminine anti-feminist stereotype illustrated by the picture above, they have made national names for themselves, haven’t they? The rewards for bowing down to the patriarchy and attacking other women who don’t can be fabulous. The purveyors of the stereotypes think it’s well worth the cost, too, because not only do they get to indulge in their misogyny, they can get left-leaning men to exhibit their own male privilege, opening another rift in the liberal coalition. If some of the stuff I’ve seen on lefty blogs (supposedly feminist allies) were directed toward a liberal woman, there would be hell to pay, but since it’s Palin, sexism is just fine and dandy. That’s why I find it amusing that you complain that “we’re still thinking of women more as acted-upon than as agents of their own destiny” while saying these women are not victims because they’re making choices based on the limitations available to them. Also, when my lady bits and the upkeep of them are subject to state and federal control, I’d say I’m not the agent of my own destiny, wouldn’t you? 

  • Anonymous

     The Newsweek article nods towards feminism as if to acknowledge its existence, and then proceeds to ignore it.  Michael says this is having it both ways, but I say this is how people think about feminism these days.  It’s a great place to visit, but most people don’t live there.

    I used the example of right wing women because Bachmann and Palin are thought to be contenders for the presidency.  The other two, Angle and O’Donnell, wear the political equivalent of the Princess Beatrice hat because they choose to.  There are no female contenders on the left except for Hillary. 

    Here we are, 50 years into feminism, and Newsweek’s lead article is titled The Good Wife 2012.  An equivalent article written back in say, 1960, would at least have shown the woman’s face.  That’s some progress in fifty years! 

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