AOC's Attractiveness Drives Us All Mad
I am in the middle of a storm, literally and figuratively. Somehow I missed that a hurricane is blowing through my town. That means I am going to make this a very quick diatribe on beauty, power, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the lies we tell about social mobility. No spell-check or editing. Sorry.
This is a continuation of my rantings on Twitter in response to a typically stupid attack on AOC:
I mean, that's just so trite that its not worth the bother. I made the mistake of responding that AOC's physical attractiveness ("pretty") drives the right to these delusional, stupid critiques.
I say it is a mistake because I should have anticipated what would happen next. It happens every time I include even a cursory physical description of a person.
This is what happens: people point out that AOC isn't "just" pretty. They argue that she is also "smart". Even when they agree with me, they want to "humbly edit" me to point out that right critiques of AOC are about how smart she is. The implication is that AOC's physical attractiveness is, at best, an amplifier of the right's true reason for hating her.
Most of those people mean well. They are just wrong. But, I know why they are wrong.
Good people with good politics do not talk about how someone looks. It's one of the primary popular takeaways from second and third wave [white] feminism: do not comment on bodies EVER.
When you cannot or will not comment on something, your language atrophies. In the case of what I will call the physical comportment of power, we do not have enough words to talk about how and why being "pretty" matters for how power operates.
People are also wrong in assuming that when I say the right's attacks on AOC are about how pretty she is, that *I* think that her being pretty is all that matters. They assume that I am reducing her to her body. It is a common logical fallacy, especially in how people consume race and gender analysis. People confuse the signifier for the object. If someone is racist it is because race exists, etc etc. It's a rudimentary, if possibly necessary, stage of enlightenment. The problem is too few people move beyond that stage.
I do not think AOC is just or only pretty. I am not going to defend myself on this. My track record on such things is public record. I let my archive speak for me.
I do think that we underestimate and misdiagnose the source of AOC's ability to drive the right absolutely nuts because we want to believe that they share the same values that we share.
This is the power of the lies we tell about society, but especially about social mobility.
The insistence that AOC's intellectual prowess and academic credentials are part of what motivates the right's relentless focus on her is about validating our own beliefs in intelligence and education.
We believe that they care about what we care about.
Let me tell you what I believe.
I believe that we ascribe "smart" and "intelligent" post hoc to power. I believe that powerful people, particularly white men, believe that their power is justified by their genetic endowments. I believe that they operate from the assumption that whatever wins, is also smart.
I believe that powerful interests pretend to believe in democratic social institutions like schools and a democratic interpretation of "smart" (i.e. one can become smart) because it serves them to do so.
I believe we learn more by observing how powerful people actually use these institutions for personal gain and social reproduction, despite what they say.
I believe that a "smart woman" and "smart non-white person" is an oxymoron in this worldview. Attacking AOC for being something that you do not think actually exists would not make much sense.
I believe that attacks on AOC's academic credentials are not evidence of deep feelings of inferiority. Power shapes emotions and emotional lives. Powerful people simply do not experience shame the way that we do and the way that we operate as if they do. It makes little sense that one who believes they are genetically endowed would feel shame when compared to AOC's superior intellect. Instead these attacks are aimed at the legitimacy of the idea of credentials. The very idea of earning some objective smartness is antithetical to the way most powerful people see themselves and others.
As someone on Twitter posited: the attack on AOC's intelligence may be part of why those attacks stick but it isn't why they attack her.
I believe that in this worldview, which is the dominant one, beauty is seen as the only legitimate capital that women are allowed possess. But beauty is supposed to serve power's interests. When beauty occurs in an "unruly body", such as a non-white person's body, then it is an existential threat.
I believe the right's attacks on AOC (and a few of the left's to be honest) are a visceral reaction to their inability to control what they see is her only legitimate source of power.
They hate her because she is pretty.
Why does centrist discourse miss this? Because we need to believe that the other side believes in things we believe in. It's a centrist imperative.
We also feel icky about pointing out that someone is attractive and that is a certain kind of power because powerful women make us squeamish. And beauty as power makes us deeply afraid for our own self-worth.
As much as we want to believe that we are above "looks", we are all subject to them.
That makes us feel bad.
When we feel bad, we will concede a lot to those we disagree with on everything else that matters. That's how we get pulled along for a ride where we do not hold the reins.
That's the power of the myths of mobility. They drag us all along even when we think we are fighting to move in the opposite direction.
My agent would want me to tell you that I expound on this a lot in my essay "In The Name of Beauty" in THICK.
I also nod to Roxane Gay's pop-up magazine, Unruly Bodies.
For an important analysis on race, class and unruly bodies I recommend Sabrina Strings:
I also recommend reading about disability and unruly bodies. This is a good place to start on what it might look like if we developed a richer language for bodies and power:
WRITTEN BY
Sociologist. Writer. Professor. MacArthur Fellow. Books, speaking, podcast: www.tressiemc.com
More from Tressie McMillan Cottom
|
Sociologist. Writer. Professor. MacArthur Fellow. Books, speaking, podcast: www.tressiemc.com
Why The Right Hates AOC
She's the anti-Trump
The right wing propaganda mill is obsessed with bashing her because they're afraid of her.
AOC is every good thing that Trump pretended to be, and they're afraid that not even Trump supporters will be able to deny it unless they're inundated with propaganda against her 24/7.
If Trump supporters had any integrity at all, they would at least support her in principle.
AOC has no PAC sponsorship. She received no support from any establishment politicians. So regardless of what you think of her or her policies, nobody owns her. She works for her constituents, and not for some corporation or special interest group.
AOC graduated cum laude from Boston University with majors in economics and international relations, and somehow this makes her obviously stupid.
She worked two jobs to help pay her mom's medical bills, and somehow this is a character flaw.
Trump's inexperience was painted as a virtue, while AOC is being slammed for hers. Never mind that she's just 29 years old. She is the youngest woman ever elected to congress, so she literally has as much experience as is reasonably possible to expect.
They claim that Trump has "life experience," and that's true. He's a trust fund baby, a draft dodger, and a scammer who never had to work an honest day or take a real risk in his life.
AOC has experience dealing with medical bills, tuition, and other issues everyday Americans can relate to. She's proof that it's still somehow possible for an American who isn't wealthy to have a voice, and she's using hers to tell it like it is.
The rich have too much and the poor don't have enough. The labor of the 99% (which probably includes you) is being undervalued, and the proof of this is in the insane amount of wealth that the 1% has managed to accumulate. When the three richest Americans have as much wealth as the poorer half of all Americans, or approximately 160 million people, that's a problem.
Anthropogenic climate change is real, and no one is paying her to say so. The Pentagon acknowledges that climate change is the number one threat to the political and economic stability of the world, and that it poses a direct threat to several military bases and personnel. [1] Climate deniers like Trump are undermining the US Armed Forces.
Unlike Trump, AOC is articulate, intelligent, and actually working in the interests of the people.
If you want to drain the swamp, AOC is the kind of person you want in office.
An individual's purported ideology is meaningless if they don't have any integrity. AOC says she wants campaign finance reform and she put her money where her mouth is by holding herself to the same standards she wants to see implemented. Her campaign was funded by the people, and as a result, she can speak and work for the people. This is supposedly what America is all about.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can't be bought and has no dirty laundry. The right is afraid of her because they can't control her. At this point, they probably can't even comprehend her. A middle class woman with a working class background who got elected by the people based on her merit? Who actually has a platform that's grounded in reality?
AOC is what happens when the system actually works the way it's supposed to, and this is frightening to Republicans because the will of the American people is clear. Most Americans want universal healthcare.[2] Most Americans want the wealthy and corporations to pay more taxes. [3] Most Americans do not want economic equality, but they do want fairness, [4]and our economic system is not fair.
A platform based on denying the will of the people is undemocratic, un-American, and unsustainable, and Republicans know that they can't fool their constituents forever. I can barely feed my family because the people who are even poorer than I am have too much money? Really?
She's been criticized for halting the construction of an Amazon factory that wouldn't have been in her district, but would have affected it. As a person who lives in the area and has worked for Amazon, I didn't want it, and neither did most of my neighbors. It would have been under what is already one of the busiest subway lines on earth, and we don't want 10,000 more minimum wage jobs that deliberately keep their lowest tier workers under 30 hours a week to avoid having to provide them with access to affordable healthcare, or any benefits at all. No paid sick days, no paid vacation, no nothing, and their scheduling makes it very difficult to get a second job. Almost all of my coworkers were on food stamps.
These aren't the kind of jobs that the city needs, and what AOC did is called representing her constituents.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the best of what Trump pretended to be.
America is supposed to be a representative democracy. Regardless of your views, the system comes first, and our system is broken. Nobody gets what they want anymore except for the rich, because virtually every politician is in someone's pocket.
AOC is a rare exception. Why she isn't supported by the same patriots who back Trump is a complete mystery.
|
Footnotes
[1] Pentagon Warns of Dire Risk to Bases, Troops From Climate Change
[2] 62 percent of U.S. want federal government to ensure health care for all, poll says
[3] Americans want the wealthy and corporations to pay more taxes, but are elected officials listening?
[4] People Don't Actually Want Equality. They Want Fairness. — Evonomics
ILLUMINATION-Curated
ILLUMINATION-Curated hosts outstanding stories of advanced writers covering 100+ topics.
WRITTEN BY
Harry Seitz
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment