i admire carly fiorina as a woman, i detest her as a politician
december 21 2015
Cognitive dissonance reverberates when I watch Carly Fiorina. I wasn’t alive during the women’s movement of the 1970s, but I am aware of and grateful for the women who paved the way for my generation. I aligned myself with feminist ideals far before I even knew what the word meant — it seemed clear to me that men and women deserved to be treated as equals, and I admired strong women in the movies like Barbra Streisand, Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn. When I look at Fiorina’s achievements, they seem consistent with those ideals.
And yet, we stand on opposite sides of the political arena. Is feminism really as black and white as we’d like it to be, and how do we reconcile liking someone as a person but hating their politics?
During the Republican debate, I stared at my screen with the same sort of confused expression Ted Cruz has patented. I found Fiorina’s views to be of the Yosemite Sam cowboy camp, a specific type of worldview that immediately recalls the Bush era. I understand why many older feminists find her repulsive. Without the groundwork they laid down 40-odd years ago, there would be no Fiorina, and yet her stances on women’s issues are of the Mad Men era. But when I look at her accomplishments, I can’t help but feel she represents what those women were fighting for.
She became the C.E.O. of Hewlett-Packard, rising to the top of an industry that has a notorious diversity problem. At the second G.O.P. debate she walked onto a stage with 10 men, most of whom were more politically experienced and one of whom is blatantly sexist, and walked out a winner.
She doesn’t apologize for her ambition, she doesn’t back down to male aggression or dumb herself down so people will like her better. That's a feminist attitude. That’s rarely seen on TV, where both real and fictional women are consistently modulating their behavior based on the men around them.
It’s true she’s not Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan, she’s not even Mary Tyler Moore. But I admire this sister not because I want her to be president (I don’t) but because she’s herself. It’s not cute. She has no desire to dot her letters with hearts, to talk with a baby accent or to defer to men via self-deprecation.
There’s no way I would ever vote for Carly Fiorina, but I wouldn’t mind breaking as many glass ceilings as she has and doing it in heels.