Over at the New York Times, Tressie McMillan Cottom has devoted three separate columns (here, here, and here) to a careful exegesis of Sen. Kysten Sinema's clothes. Sinema has called this "inappropriate," and three of her fellow senators went further on Friday, writing in a letter that it was "demeaning, sexist and inappropriate."
On Friday Cottom responded to her critics. In a nutshell, she said that ordinarily they would be right, but Sinema is a unique case:
It’s important to consider the context when setting the bounds of appropriate discourse. The details of the Democrats’ social spending bill, Build Back Better, are in flux. But it has funds for Pell Grant increases, affordable child care, paid family leave and expanded health care coverage. It contains policy to slow climate change and mitigate its effects. It is not an exaggeration to say that lives hang in the balance with the fate of the bill.
And Sinema has placed herself at the center of this political drama. So it matters how she marshals her power. It also matters how she manages attention.
Sinema largely allows her performance to speak for her. She avoids interviews, and has been quite guarded about what she wants out of these negotiations.
....That silence puts a curtain between a powerful political actor and the public, who have a lot on the line. It also means it is more than fair to discuss and critique the political rhetoric coded in her performance, and that includes what she is wearing.
Hoo boy. The upshot here is that (a) BBB is an important bill, (b) Sinema mostly works behind the scenes, and therefore (c) lacking better options, it's OK to critique the "political rhetoric coded in her performance," which includes the clothes she wears.
This is a pretty weak pretext for doing something that Cottom knows she shouldn't. After all, there are always lots of important bills and lots of legislators who mostly work behind the scenes. That's hardly a compelling justification for viewing Sinema as somehow unique.
The fact that Cottom is herself a woman—and one who can sling academic discourse with a sure hand—is nowhere near enough to justify the kind of misogynist blather that women have been trying for decades to stop. Let's leave fashion criticism to the fashion writers, OK?
I think the critique is centered around her appearance as the Senate President a couple of weeks ago. She was wearing informal clothes (a sleeveless jeans jacket, IIRC) in a more formal setting. A man who showed up dressed like that would have gotten dragged also. It is disrespectful to the institution.
Sorry, just because she's a woman doesn't excuse her from the decorum of the Senate.
Can’t say as I approve of the sartorial choice but is it any further from the decorum of the Senate than bringing an infant to the floor?
What does bringing an infant have to do with 'decorum' in and of itself?
It might have made a better point than Sinema's entire wardrobe.
I would prefer members of Congress to not seem to dress for shock effect, but decline to join in the public opprobrium for the least important aspect of Sinema's behavior.
After all, my greatest objection to Jim Jordan is not his attire or lack of a particular item of it.
Sinema dressing like a member of a B52s tribute band is really no less an assault on Capitol dresscode than Jim Jordan's persistent refusal not to cover up the gunshow of his wrestling sculpted arms.
But it is better than Obama demeaning the presidency by wearing a tan suit.
NoNoNoNo! AUUUGH! Time to beat the tom-tom's of war for this one, Monty.
Still can't believe the Cobb County White Flight had Travis Tritt sing the Anthem at game 3 of the World Series. Should have been Cee-Lo for that game, then the Black Crowes & B52s for games 4 & 5.
Imagine the MAGA heads exploding when Fred Schneider gets up the national hymn.
*gays up
While the senate is often aptly described as a bunch of mewling babies, it is rarely literally such.
No, it's quite different.
Take your child to work day is quite apart from CBGB day during high school or college spirit week.
On the topic of infants in legislative chambers, this opinion piece was posted: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/25/baby-banned-parliament-women-politics-stella-creasy
Speaking of sleeveless: https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/14/politics/capitol-dress-code-protest/index.html referenced from: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/04/19/politics/tammy-duckworth-baby-senate-floor/index.html
https://youtu.be/S1v0FExW-z8
Not the presiding officer, eh?
Sinema not wearing sleeves is not the problem. A sleeveless dress or blouse is perfectly compatible with workwear.
The issue is Sinema dressing like she's about to go to a race party.
*rave party
Yeah, the bad one.
Yes - while not particularly a deep subject, it's really a kind of reverse gender discrimination to waive through her dess. She dresses in a way far outside of business norms for either men or women. A male Senator showing up in a jeans jacket or equivalant outfits would clearly get comment.
Of course there is an ideological angle - since she has pissed off the multi-culti Left there's Lefty woke knives out for her, and were she voting like the Squad they would without any doubt defending her.
Like it or not, there is a double standard on dress codes for men (they have no political valence) and women (they are sexist and oppressive). But it's double standard that feminists have insisted on. To refuse to apply the same rules to less than adequately progressive women is hypocritical and only exposes progressives to contempt and ridicule.
C. f. one Bernie Sanders.
It was Bernie's tribute to Dick Cheney at the Polish State Funeral.
I don't care. Do you?
Exactly.
Someone on @dougjballoon's Pitchbot feed remarked that if Cory Booker had indulged in Aaron Neville cosplay, he would have definitely gotten some looks & suffered the slings n' arrows of the Taek Industrial Complex.
If Kevin is suggesting Joe Manchin could turn up in jeans and a bikie vest without causing a minor media frenzy, he's nuts.
Yep.
Indeed.
Any man or woman engaged in sustained dressing as she has - eccentricly relative to ordinary standards for at minimum 'corporate dress code' - would attract comment.
And there's the real makings of a Catch-22 not just with Sinema but in general.
On the one hand, it's generally a point of agreement that how we dress signals something to people who see us. Some of that is what we mean for people to catch, and some of it we signal without meaning to, unintentionally. But clothing is generally accepted these days as something that signifies. And we're supposed to notice signifiers.
On the other hand, in certain circumstances we're also *not* supposed to notice how people clothe themselves and what any form of raiment might signify. Adult women, in particular, have been fighting for decades to be recognized for who they are and what they know and can do, beyond what they might look like or how they might present themselves. Men's clothing choices are traditionally more limited, but I think Rattus Norvegicus and kenalovell are right that if, say, a senator John Fetterman in 2023 takes his turn at the dais in a t-shirt and vest, there's going to be comment.
Sinema doesn't seem to say much to anyone in actual words, and also it really seems like she means for us to notice what she's wearing. The second point means she invites the kind of attention the column gives her, and I think she'd get that even if she talked to reporters all the time; the unusual is what gets attention, after all. But I also think a talkative Sinema would give people a completely different context for interpreting the attention-getting enigmatic, or fey, or arbitrary, or whatever, clothing choices.
It could be that the academics are off-base and it's just about what she feels like on any given day, nothing more meant, whether intended or not. I have to say that would be unsatisfying, to the extent that people want to have a sense of what she's like. Something so noticeable should have significant causes, right?
Or it could be that as one of only a hundred people among 330 million of us, she expects to get some attention, and is just playing with peoples' heads. Which is how I lean-- seeing her from far away, I agree with Josh Marshall that she's an immensely ambitious but also fundamentally unserious person and is working hard to make herself enigmatic in order to further that ambition. Kind of a Greta Garbo, maybe, but still wanting the spotlight. Which I think makes the couture choices something like shtick.
I hope I'm wrong, because what these 100 people do can be pretty consequential and I'd like to think they have some grounding or gravitas to them. Maybe, though, the significance is that there isn't much there?
Pretty sure if John "Black Lives Splatter" Fetterman is elected to the Senate from Pennsylvania, he will vote pretty much in line with his former Radical Left/Green Party Original cohort Sinema.
Still want to know if he upvoted Chris Hayes's tweet extolling Rittenhouse for getting a second chance at life.
Straight up: she loves the attention. It's about her.
And the best response is not to give her any.
^^^
Everyone in Congress is putting on a show and dress in a costume. It becomes more egregious when they are running for office. Plaid shirts become very popular for men. The best thing is to mainly ignore it.
Kelly Loeffler was a hero to most, but she never meant shit to me.
People think Glenn Yungkins started the fire of fancy people with multimillions or billions trying to dress like the denizens of an Ohio diner, but the Georgia woman senator was ahead of that curve.
... Hell, Low Energy JEB! was rocking a fleece vest for his please clap nadir. Yungkins ain't a special snowflake!
And Dubya's brush clearing episodes.
That was just being polite to Cindy Sheehan & making space for her.
Give me the man in the gray flannel suit instead.
Burroughs was always the best dressed of the Beat adjacent.
Agreed, though not as well off as most of his associates thought.
It was click bait. And it worked. The pundits and bloggers are bored.
Good comments here. Kevin should take note.
I will just take the opportunity to note that she has, to a large extent, betrayed many things she ran on. And spending the summer as an intern at a winery? What is this, Spoiled Girl Summer Camp?
PS: my family donated to her very first campaign, where she ran as a super progressive. We supported her ever since.
Sorry about that. I feel bad about that.
Sinema wants to be James Earl Carter, Jr., to Mayo Pete's Anwar Sadat & Snake in the Grass Warren's Menachem Begin.
Apropos of nothing, I like that photo of Charlie that appears on the blog's right side. That was my favorite from the montage you posted last Friday (although they all overloaded my "Cuteness" meter...)
Sinema? Dems really don't need congress people who are as wackadoo as the GQP. Although, the senator could dress like Lady Gaga, and if she voted right (that is, left) it would be fine by me.
It shows no support for women's issues or feminist concerns to grab them and use them as a cudgel against a specific target but otherwise ignore such issues the rest of the time, as Kevin Drum does. This has nothing to do with Sinema and everything to do with men using women's issues to attack a woman whom they dislike.
Sinema is saying "look at me" with her style of dress, and she cannot whine about it when people do look and comment on her clothes. But I see this as akin to the "who wore it best" features and the analysis of the red carpet apparel of stars at award shows, or the commentary on Melania's jacket. Sinema did this on purpose and she can deal with the consequences of her actions, of all kinds.
The refusal to conform to unwritten dress codes in a situation involving respect for not only government but also her constituents shows a kind of immaturity found in teenagers. She is thumbing her nose at Congress and she can expect people to thumb back. If she wants her dress not to matter, she can grow up. The two Republican women who used her "style" to complain about feminist issues are using her to further their own interests -- it is a cheap and easy way to show their constituents they are working hard at their jobs, while supporting nothing and voting for nothing.
Kevin Drum has a lot of remedial reading to do if he wants to suddenly start talking about women's issues.
You make an important point here. Unfair criticism would be say ranting about a Senator not wearing high heeled pump shoes and stockings along with a skirt or dress. Pantsuits and flats are appropriate. Also I have no problem with members who are elderly or have health issues wearing shoes appropriate to their needs. When a member is dressing to make a statement, then yes it would be fair game to speak about what they are trying to say by their clothing choices.
Good points. And, speaking about "unfairness" in criticizing a member's clothing, how soon we forget the outrage -- OUTRAGE!! -- over AOC dressing in nice, appropriate Congresswear when she took her seat. "Wasn't she supposed to be so POOR?" the wingnuts raged. "Where did she get the money for [fill in the sartorial blanks]??" Like they expected her to show up in the House wearing a too-small t-shirt and ragged jeans, with tennies.
So, in this case, a female member who managed to conform to the unwritten dress code was savaged for so doing. Of course, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a real Democrat. That makes a lot of difference these days.
Neither Green Party Chaos Agent Kyrsten Sinema nor BREX card charging Justice Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a Democrat. Full stop.
Sinema is saying "look at me" with her style of dress, and she cannot whine about it when people do look and comment on her clothes.
I've seen this form of argument about what women wear somewhere before. If only I could think of where I saw it....
Seriously, if everyone just takes 10 seconds to step away from the context of they don't like Sinema for holding up the bill, it should be perfectly obvious that people are saying stuff that they totally do not believe, and should not believe, when applied to any other woman.
Wow, I hadn't read TM Cottom before. She sure knows how to use 500 words to say what can be said in 50.
And she doesn't even (so far as I can tell) get to the useful point of discussing Sinema's clothing (if there is one): the fact that Sinema seems to be using clothing to say "I'm one of the regular folks, not a slick Obama elite Democrat" or something. Also, it would be interesting to see some analysis of her clothing versus Manchin, who seems to dress (as I recall, since I can't say I pay careful attention) like a typical Mitt Romney country club Republican. Maybe the lesson here is that indeed it's possible for a guy to betray the Democrats in that "man of the people" Hawley/Cruz/Youngkin way and still dress like a city slicker, but for a woman you've got to do a lot more to indicate you're a Blue Collar sorta-Republican.
By the way, I think Ashley Mears (quoted in the 3rd TMC column KD has linked to) is trying to get at some of these class issues, but TMC puts it so vaguely I can't tell what she means.
I'll just mention that Ashley Mears is a pretty interesting person. Tyler Cowen interviewed her on his podcast a year or two ago and praised the book she was pushing at the time (an academic sociological study of the modeling and fashion industry) as one of his favorite books of that year. Worth looking up if that intrigues you. She has a good sense of humor and interesting insights, imo.
Unlike your gender, what you wear is the result of choices you made. Therefore, it is a message. Fashion is politics.
And it wasn't an unwritten rule she broke with that denim vest. It was a quite explicit written one, and there was a sign. She put on the vest only after taking up the gavel.
So, she's pitching how "You can't control me!" and "I break the rules!" as a political statement with her choice of dress. At least that time she was. Of course we can take note of that.
An yes, the Jim "gym" Jordon dress style.
I disagree, Kevin. There are NOT "lots of legislators who mostly work behind the scenes," or more precisely not lots of legislators who have positioned themselves as de facto rulers of this country.
In fact, there are precisely 2, and the other, Joe Manchin, has at least been willing to articulate his demands, desires, etc. These 2 senators control the fate of the country and quite possibly the world, so it is no mystery that, in the absence of articulated positions from Sinema, analysts turn to whatever they can find to read the tea leaves.
If you want an analogy, look to North Korea, where the press was filled with commentary on Kim's weight loss -- normally not a subject that would deserve much attention -- as a possible sign of the direction of this regime, which carefully controls its messaging, just like Sen. Sinema. Or to the attention paid to Gorbachev's fashion choices when the USSR was beginning to open up.
There's an easy fix for the senator if she doesn't like this attention: speak up. Do your job!
As a general rule I accept that it is inappropriate to comment on people's appearance.
But Sinema is such an awful, unserious, egocentric, irresponsible, incompetent individual that I say she deserves any dirt flung her way and then some.
Being obtuse or opaque does not stop people from searching for things to critique. But also, everyone delivers messaging via their wearables and articles of clothing.
Hillary Clinton wore pantsuits for a reason. Once a year (or more), most women and some men in Congress wear white for a reason. Serena Williams wore tights for a reason. It's clear that Krysten Sinema wears her clothes with a purpose.
There is one surefire way of limiting conversations about one's wardrobe: conform.
I think Sinema embraces the criticism of her wardrobe choices, despite her public protests.
"is nowhere near enough to justify the kind of misogynist blather that women have been trying for decades to stop. Let's leave fashion criticism to the fashion writers, OK?"
So the assertions are
- figuring out state of mind by indirect signals is what? Impolite? Likely to give incorrect results?
The reason this needs to be clarified is that half the social "science" of the past generation has been based on these sorts of indirect signals. Power poses, dismissive glances, history described via statues, clothing, music styles.
So we can dismiss all that as nonsense? Or it's only nonsense when applied to "the wrong targets"?
- caring about clothing is misogynistic? Perhaps so, but it seems to fall very much into the "self-loathing female" category. The only people who give a fsck about these columns are other women; good luck finding a random man on the street who
-- knows what Sinema looks like
-- has a clue what she wears
-- has ever in his life read an article (in the NYT or anywhere else) on the subject of female fashion.
The whole way this is being treated is a total lie.
This is NOT about het cis man oppressing women by saying nasty things about their clothes; it's about some fraction of women (IMHO a small fraction) insisting that the rest of womenkind behave in a certain way.
And, of course, like so many of these sorts of arguments, it vanishes up its own fundament as soon as you look at it closely. So criticizing the clothes of others is bad? OK, I look forward to "feminism" issuing its broadside against all of drag culture; most notably of course the subculture of throwing shade, but, honestly, pretty much every aspect of drag culture is about wearing clothes that other people notice, and commenting loudly on the clothes other people are wearing.
And, of course, it's not like the hard, feminist, left is so squeaky clean on this issue.
Remember Louise Linton (Mrs Steven Mnuchin)?
https://nypost.com/2019/06/14/louise-linton-insists-shes-no-villain-blames-everyone-else-for-her-mistakes/
Were these feminists sticking up for Ivanka in the face of this sort of criticism?
https://www.thelist.com/293104/ivanka-trumps-most-inappropriate-outfits/
But of course feminism cannot phrase its demands as "we, the 10%, insist on telling the other 90% of women what to do" so we get this nonsense that it's everyone's favorite villain, the white patriarchy, taking time out of its busy schedule of raping and colonizing, to care about what fashion statements women are making with their choice of full vs one quarter sleeves .
Personally, putting aside her politics, I like her fashion sense. But whatever she wears and however we feel about it, it's not a good basis to judge how good a senator she is.
Wearing something different can be a political statement. Congress MPs in India used to have to dress in homespun to show their solidarity with the poor, even though it cost about 10x as much as machine-made. Labour politicians in Israel would ostentetiously not wear ties to show they were sons of the soil, not spoiled westerners; Iranian politicians refuse to wear ties for the same reason. The more outrageous members of the Chicago 7 were cheered on by their supporters for dressing outrageously to anger the judge and flout the norms of the court.
Interesting commentarty on changing standards- people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg wear what woulfd have been considered inappropriate casual wear to business functions; they wear suits and ties when they appear before Congress. Some have even said they dress that way to flaunt their contempt for Congress.s old-fashioned wats.
I think the point that's being missed is the apocalyptic rhetoric that's a usual trope of the Right has seeped into Leftist discourse in a way not seen since the early 1970s largely due to the events of the past year. Lives are at stake? Yes it's an important bill but no one is going to drop dead on the spot if it isn't passed. This isn't a hostage situation.
Oh, it's bad to criticize Sinema's choice of clothing - right?
Conservative Christians who loathe the promiscuity of the way some women dress also critique and LOUDLY the dress of one of its most prominent congress woman. Rep ilhan Omar NEVER shows skin, rarely shows her hair and IIRC wears very little make up
But boy she sure is a dangerous Muslim isn't she? She must be smuggling in weaponry to the House floor under her head gear. This is the perception Fox News wants US to believe while their female hosts had to "twirl" to get their jobs, they have to be UN-natural with their hair color, and wear skirts that show a lot of their their tanned, toned legs, especially while sitting on the couch, usually between to males
Stop it already. All we seem to do is complain about everything.
On the topic of appropriate dress, something I noticed in another context:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/11/22/politics/sean-parnell-suspends-senate-campaign/index.html