Enough to give you a headache before Nov, 2012

The 2012 Presidential election is still far, far away, but I have already tired of the coverage. I woke this morning to some talking heads debating whether mentioning that Michele Bachmann had migraines was sexist.

Wow! Is this really what we should be discussing? Is it sexist to discuss her medical conditions? This is a tricky area. Quicksand is all around. I don’t think that the fact that she suffers from migraines is sexist, although the reasons that it has been brought up, or how it is covered may very well be sexist.

I’ve had migraines before that have sent me to the hospital, once even resulting in a 2-day stay. I remember the neurologist stating: You didn’t have a stroke, and you likely don’t have a brain tumor, but we need to do some more tests… as I struggled to focus on only one of the three images of her that were waivering in front of me like heat waves rising from asphalt, as I sat in a dark room with noisy, liquid light pouring in from the hallway. If only they could turn the sound off, I thought, I might be able to focus….

I’ve had headaches strike with such sudden anger that I wasn’t sure when I arrived at home if it were really the place that I lived; once, upon leaving my office at the onset of a migraine, I had someone write down directions so that I could find my way home as I couldn’t remember the names of any of the streets. Other times, I couldn’t look at a traffic light to tell whether it was green or red and realized that I shouldn’t have been behind the wheel. There have been episodes where I thought my teeth would fall out if I spoke. Times when my brain was so attuned to the slightest sound that I was certain that I was feeling the vibrations of filaments in the light bulbs, each soundwave auguring further into my head.

I hope that this give some insight to one who as never experienced a migraine, and yet, I feel as if I fall far short of describing how excruciating the migraine experience can be. This is not a headache that two aspirin will make better so that you can continue on with your day as the annoying pressure between your ears subsides. If you think that you may have a migraine but, like a trooper, you played through the pain, you’ve only had a headache.

I’ve never made it through a day of work with a migraine and I’ve had less important decisions to make than the President. So, do I think that migraines are a reason to disqualify one from being president? Well, that depends.

If one has an occasional migraine — some people have them years apart — then they probably are not an issue. However, if they are weekly — as the original article citing an unnamed source claimed — then they are an issue. I may think that Michele Bachman is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or I may think that she is bat-shit crazy, but that has no bearing on her migraines. The extent of her migraines — triggers, duration, frequency, and even treatment — are things that need to be made public if she continues in the primary. To a voter, those should have some bearing determining her fitness to be president. They may not be disqualifying, nor should they be the only criteria, but they should be considered.

Certainly there are still a lot of sexist attitudes towards women running for office in the US. Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin both were subjected to sexist remarks, reporting, and judgements in the 2008 campaigning, for things that never would have been considered newsworthy for a male candidate. Any article that implies that migraines are evidence that women are disqualified because they have hormones, certainly needs to be questioned about the biases within the reporting. An occasional migraine does not guarantee that a person cannot perform a certain task, but if frequent, or requiring treatment that would render the person unable to make judgements throughout the day (or night — remember that 3am call criteria from 2008?), then they are certainly an issue and any candidate should disclose such issues and how the disease is managed.

Is the reporting of her migraines sexist? I don’t think so. Could individual news article about this subject be sexist? Certainly. As with any other news article, it is up to the reader to employ his/her crap detector and critically read about the issue. Sloppy reporting and minimal information from a candidate should not excuse the issue, nor should it be the end of a campaign. While an individual report may reflect the biases of the journalist and his organization, it doesn’t mean that the information is not newsworthy and subject to critical debate.

>Kiss My Fat Ass, Laura Ingraham

>Anyone who read this blog during the most recent election knows that I’m not a Republican. This is not an ode to Meghan McCain, about the current strife over identity and direction in the Republican Party, or even about Ann Coulter or Laura Ingraham. I know little about Ms. McCain, Coulter, or Ingraham, other than that one is a famous daughter of a political family, one a cultural critic whose approach to her ideology (and reproach to those who disagree with her) is too distasteful and disrespectful for me to read, and the last I recognize in name only as a conservative media personality. I could not have told you prior to this week if Laura Ingraham opinions appeared in print, on broadcast media, or on the Internet — or all three.

Meghan McCain recently has written on her blog on The Daily Beast criticizing Ann Coulter and the Republican Party, claiming that they are out of touch, offering little to younger voters. Laura Ingraham, taking umberage with McCain’s comments did not attach her views. Rather, she commented about McCain’s body size, calling her ‘plus size’. McCain’s response on The View yesterday: “Kiss my fat ass!”

Kudos to Ms. McCain for clearly identifying two important points: 1. personal attacks do not cultivate intentional, effective discourse; and 2. it is ridiculous to buy into the current unrealistic media images regarding body size. McCain is a size 8 – 10.

To attack McCain’s appearance because her opinions differ is unbelievable for someone with a national audience — or anywhere. What does one’s appearance have with one’s capabilities? Nothing! Ingraham, continuing her childish spat with McCain today, called her a idiot and a pawn of the liberal media. Unable to sustain her comments from a few days ago, and apparently unable to counter McCain’s comments about the failure of the Republican Party to attract young voters, Ingraham continued her ad hominem attack on McCain. She has not moved forward any sort of reasonable debate with McCain and others who have criticized the Republican Party. It would appear that she doesn’t care too. Perhaps Ingraham has unwittingly proved McCain’s point of why some conservatives are out of touch.

That Ingraham would even suggest that McCain’s weight has any bearing on her opinions, her writing, or her capability to comment on current political or cultural events is so beyond the pale of acceptable debate. One’s weight should not have any bearing on one’s professional capabilities. Haven’t women been fighting this type of thing for years – that women must conform to certain stereotypical ideals in order to be acceptable? Had a man said what Ingraham said, he would have been vilified, perhaps asked to resign from his job (cf: Don Imus). In most workplaces, a man would have been fired if his opinions of a women’s appearance were made known.

Yet, women often put up with this. We are barraged by unreasonable, unrealistic images of what we are ‘suppose’ to look like and are considered failures if we don’t. As someone who works in a young company, I am one of the ‘older’ people in the office (I’m in my late 40’s). Rarely is anything said about men in my office — most of them much younger than me — having gray hair. While nobody has said anything discriminatory to me regarding my quickly silvering hair, I have had many women ask me why I don’t dye it. “Aren’t you afraid what people will think?” “Will you dye it if you have to look for a new job?” “People will think that you don’t care what you look like.”

What? I’m always neatly clothed, even for a work environment that is jeans and tee shirts, wear makeup in the office, have nicely styled hair. How could anyone think that I didn’t care about my appearance?

Like gray hair, weight is an issue. I’ve heard comments from men who have had beer bellies for 10 years and hair growing out of their ears regarding women who have a bit too much weight on their backsides, or heavy legs, or flabby arms. And we let them get away with it. We don’t stand up against it. We do it to ourselves.

Women shouldn’t put up with anyone verbalizing these ideas. We especially can’t let other women do it. We can’t perpetuate these weight-obsessed images with negative comments about how we look. We need to fight back for ourselves and our daughters — size 8 is nowhere near a ‘plus size’. And is it necessary to call any size a ‘plus’? Being healthy and accepting of one’s body type — whatever it may be: curvy, slender, buxom, athletic — is what we should celebrate. Not adhering to some unhealthy media image is the right thing to do.

Join me in echoing Meghan McCain’s retort to Laura Ingraham, telling all who think that it is funny, snarky, or a legitimate response to disagreement to suggest that one’s capabilities are determined by the size of one’s skirt: KISS MY FAT ASS.

You can read Meghan McCain’s response to Ingraham here.