How to suppress women's ... well, existing

[rivkat]

Newspaper prints Situation Room photo with women photoshopped out because pictures of women may encourage attention to their physical attributes rather than to their accomplishments, which we all know can't happen to men.  Ultimately I don't think the line between "women shouldn't participate in public life" and "we should erase the evidence that women actually do participate in public life" is sustainable, as this incident demonstrates.  I've seen this described as a clash of values.  But it's not, at least in any sense anyone is bound to respect.  The paper could have declined to print the picture at all, instead of distorting the truth, without violating its commitment to avoiding pictures of women.  It's only the desire to show men being active that necessitates the distortion.

Comments

[ingridmatthews]

This is a very interesting question. Why weren't they "fuzzed" out? Terrified of uncovered hair or that their daughters might one day aspire to be Secretary of State via the sheer fact that it's possible and here's the photographic proof?

[this_caia]

They could have entirely covered Clinton and Tomason's forms so they looked like the Vermicious Knids (from Dahl's Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator). The fact that they didn't, that they went the more time-consuming route of photoshopping them out as if they were never there, gives lie to their claim that this is just about women's images.

"women should be appreciated for who they are and what they do"? Sounds to me like that applies only to women in their roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers. Identities that are defined in relation to men, home, and family. Nothing else. Nothing they might want to achieve by themselves, or for the world.

This is about women being in the room. Because they had expertise. Because they had authority. Because they'd earned it.

This was an act of symbolic violence. It was a lie.

[tehomet]

They could have entirely covered Clinton and Tomason's forms

Like with a burqa, come to think of it.

I realise it's an Orthodox Jewish publication. I'm just saying.

[this_caia]

Heh. Quite.

My mother said the same when I mentioned it.