With Cowgirl County in the NYT magazine, Salon.com senior writer and author of Big Girls Don’t Cry, Rebecca Traister knocked the it out of the political rodeo with a fresh perspective on the Giffords-Palin controversy:
Whether or not you believe there is any connection between the first assassination attempt ever made on an American female politician and the gun-slinging rhetoric of the first Republican woman ever nominated for the vice presidency, what’s undeniably true is that despite the vast philosophical and intellectual chasms between them, Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin have something in common: they are both cowgirl politicians. In this, they are symptomatic of the too-narrow ways in which the United States is willing to accept women as leaders.
I couldn’t find my boots and hat, but I found Willie Nelson’s Mammas don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys…and with a little tweaking, the lyrics could Traister’s theory of those “too-narrow ways” just fine.
Them that don’t know him won’t like him
And them that do sometimes won’t know how to take him
He’s not wrong he’s just different and his pride won’t let him
Do things to make you think he’s right.
America has no tales of Amazons or of Atalanta; our national narrative does not chronicle the defeat of an armada by a virgin queen nor a teenage Joan leading her army into battle. American history includes no Cleopatras or Hatshepsuts; no Trung Sisters, who defended Vietnam from the Chinese in the first century; and no Catherines, great or otherwise. The mythos of our founding revolves entirely around fathers, save for the seamstress Betsy Ross and the querulous spouse Abigail Adams.
What we do have, to serve as the foundational fantasy of female strength and individualism we’ve agreed upon as embodying American power, are cowgirls: Continue reading ““Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys” but voters like “cowgirl politicians”!”