Maureen Dowd on Kagan and ‘Unmarried’: When Does a Woman Go from Single to Unmarried?
Ladyfriend/colleague Sarah Ball got us thinking about Maureen Dowd’s column in today’s Times, in which she takes on the White House use of “unmarried” to describe Elena Kagan. The question, Dowd asks, is when does a woman go from single to unmarried? “Single” carries the connotation of eligibility and possibility—single gals are fun! Like Sex and the City!—while “unmarried” implies a sad, lonely old spinster. Perhaps attractive women can be single at any age, but if you have a weight problem and bad hair, the assumption,” Dowd writes, “is that you’re undesirable, unwanted—and unmarried.”
In their eager effort to squash the rumors that Kagan is gay, Dowd writes, the White House has effectively landed themselves in a “pre-feminist fugue.” “
You’d think that they could come up with a more inspiring narrative than old maid for a woman who may become the youngest Supreme Court justice on the bench.
There are too many things that disturb us about the Kagan sexuality obsession to name, but, to begin, the strange way her friends and colleagues (and the White House) have chosen to trumpet her sexuality. Really, Eliot Spitzer, she’s straight, but you didn’t do her? Really, Harvard roommate, you’d talk about “who in our class was cute?” Really, she had an endearingly ditzy streak?
Remind us why we’re having this conversation?
