Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Scandal of the Week: Sarah Palin's Clothes

ZOMG!!1!! The RNC spent $150k on clothes for the Palins!!!111!!!

Yes, it really is a shocker that the powers that be decided Sarah Palin shouldn't look like Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail. So they bought new, fancy duds for the Palins...all of them.

This scandal has the moonbats up in arms again. How could they spend so much on clothes?! Don't they know that that money would be better spent by the government on some new giveaway for the "poor"?

Some try to argue that Michelle Obama buys off the rack.

the dress that she wore on The View was $148

Really? What about Michelle's clothes for the Democratic National Convention? Did she get 'em from Wal-Mart? Um, nooo.
My search engine was unable to find a price tag for Sen. Obama's Hartmarx suits and Michelle's Maria Pinto dresses for their DNC convention appearances. Suits similar to the ones made for BHO go for $1,500 off the rack, but these were custom-made threads, not off the rack fare. Custom-tailored suits can easily ring up at $5,000 each or more. The Burberry suits that make up the bulk of Obama's wardrobe start at about $900 per.

You can't find the price tag for Maria Pinto clothing, but here is her site. And none of it looks cheap.

Hey, $150k is a lot to spend on clothes, I'll admit that. But if the RNC had allowed the Palins to wear what was in their closet, there would have been no end to the howls about what bumpkins the Palins were. And buying fancy duds for six people costs money, not to mention the fact that for Palin, the expectations are even worse.

Here's the sexist part of the story. If Palin wore the same clothes to five speaking engagements a day, would there have been a story about how the McCain campaign couldn't dress her properly? I'm sure there would be. Someone, somewhere would have said that she'd worn the same thing before and it would have been a splashy post on HuffPo or Pandagon.

Sexist point number 2: This is almost worse than the original story.
McCain: Governor Palin, will you be my running mate?

Palin: I’d love to, but I haven’t a thing to wear.

This is one of those damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situations. You can argue about the price of dressing Palin, but it's stupid to act as though Barack Obama buys his suits from JCPenney's or that Michelle shops regularly at Thrift Town.

UPDATE: As much as it may pain her to agree with me on a subject (I don't mind agreeing with her when our opinions match), Echidne has a nice post which goes into the sexism involved with this story.
But here's the difference: We don't expect male politicians to wear a different suit every time they are photographed. We pretty much do expect female politicians to do just that, and the suits must be different enough from each other to photograph as "different." That means not just quite a few suits but also matching shoes, tops, bags and so on. All that adds up to a lot more than, say, five dark suits for a guy with the shirts and ties to match. You can probably get away with just a few pairs of shoes, too.

This rule is not a rigid one. I think it would be possible for a woman politician to campaign in just a handful of dark suits, just like the men do. But she'd be taken to task on all those fashion pages for her poor fashion sense. Someone would write an article about her boring suits. Someone else would ask if she's denying her essential femininity in the way she dresses or if she really would like to be a guy.

The hair and the face. That's where the real cost differences open up, because a male hairstyle on a woman is certainly interpreted as "political," and the female hairstyles cost a lot more in upkeep. Make-up can cost almost as much as you wish to sink into your face.

I wonder if anyone has done a study of the clothing costs of politicians. You know, the kind of "basic package" needed to start campaigning. My guess is that the cost of such a basic package is higher for women than for men.


That's a pretty good analysis of the situation.