Okay. I'm officially done with the XX Factor. After the insanity of primaries, I really started to get the impression that women writing about "women's issues" really translated into piece after piece about motherhood or a woman's choice to not embrace motherhood, vaguely injected with occasional political link-up or discourse. Of course, none of the XX Factor women seemed to have made that choice, since all of them appear to be mothers and frequently interject that into their commentary (as if women and reproduction are intrinsically connected when it comes to analyzing politics, regardless of the subject).
It was only recently that I noticed that, despite the many women that contribute to the XX Factor, almost all of them invariably emerge from the same demographic of women. All seem to have children. Most are white. Most espouse left-leaning views. Most seem to secretly wish they were Judith Warner of the New York Times, so they wouldn't have to keep trying to somehow integrate political commentary into their posts and could finally just enjoy the pure pleasure of constant, self-referential domestic anecdotes about their husbands and children.
This means that, despite the facade of diverse cross-section of American women, there is little diversity in what actually gets written in the XX Factor. In the last three days I have learned all about Sarah Palin's five children, her sassy-sexy librarian glasses, her ability to conjure up images of down-home-type aunts or grandmothers who wrestled bears and sewed hems throughout the childhood's of each XX Factor contributor's childhood (this part I find especially strange...surely I'm not the only woman that doesn't have some sort of folksy frontier-woman relative to wax nostalgic about). I've heard all about her PTA activities and her sister's marriage and her French manicure. I can't even count how many times I've heard about her "twinkling/shining/glistening brown eyes." What I haven't heard about is her views on same-sex marriage, or social welfare programs, or health care. Of course, I've heard plenty about her stance on abortion, since it ties in so neatly with the rest of compelling personal life. But for real substance, I actually had to turn to WIKIPEDIA...for fuck's sake.
I thought maybe Dahlia Lithwick had finally regained her senses in her most recent post, acknowledge that few of the XX Factor contributors have even bothered to scrutinize her political positions, since they've been too consumed in contemplation of how Sarah Palin finds enough hours in the day to breastfeed her youngest son. But no. Instead, I find an acknowledgment, suddenly followed by a quick and defensive justification of this kind of news-media absurdity. Now that Sarah Palin's teenage daughter's pregnancy has come to light, the XX Factor contributors have jumped on it with such ferocity that you'd think Barack Obama had just made a derogatory remark about Hillary Clinton's pantsuit on national television.
This is absolutely absurd. Let's just stop right here. We can stop pretending that educated women care about things besides motherhood, aging, and fighting sexist by becoming excessively offended any time Cindy McCain's dress size is mentioned on television or in print. Because according to the women of the XX Factor, these are the issues that concern the women of America.
I don't care about Sarah Palin's personal back story. I don't. At all. I don't need to know what her children's names are or what color of nail polish she enjoys or whether or not her daughter is knocked up. And no educated voter should care about these issues either. In a perfect world, Sarah Palin's high school extracurricular activities and her preference for more caribou in her diet wouldn't matter. But for some reason, they do matter, and no one in the media will shut the hell up about them. And frankly, it's a little irresponsible. Not only because it makes it seem like all American women are just as obsessed with Sarah Palin's riveting story of raising a special-needs child, but because it also casts aside the more important issues of her candidacy, which have become overshadowed by this incessant news media melodrama about her personal life. It seemed, for a moment, that the women of Slate had finally realized that. But then they would have to acknowledge that they are part of this problem. So best to go on the defensive, and attempt to make pregnant teens and beauty pageants relevant to the political conversation of this year's election.
