Does anyone know what a woman looks like when she’s not being watched? Women are more or less poster girls for the Heisenberg principle: It’s like you can never know what we look like when we’re not being observed, because we’re always being observed.

We’ve had two examples getting attention in the recent press attempting to establish what women actually look like in our natural habitat. It’s as if we’re wild, exotic creatures ― as if women were as rare as the luminously fragile glass-winged butterfly or, perhaps more accurately, as rarely glimpsed as the Loch Ness Monster.

Two provocative images of women-in-the-wild have occupied the American imagination: One is of 64-year-old Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with glasses and without extreme make-up, while the other is of a 26-year-old toned blonde blogger nursing her 3-year-old son.

Let’s start with Time, because it’s sexier. And don’t go telling me this photograph is about “attachment parenting.” The article inside the magazine might concern how certain parents raise their children but to claim the cover has to do with parenting is like claiming that pictures of David Beckham in his underpants have something to do with soccer.

For some bizarre reason, the kid on Time’s cover is standing on a chair. We should be glad that he needs at least that much of a lift to reach his mother’s breast, since otherwise this kid looks mature and sophisticated enough to be Peter Dinklage’s body double on “Game of Thrones.”

In contrast, the mother looks younger than her scant 26 years. Given the fact her blog is titled “I Am Not the Babysitter,” she seems to take pride in that. Good for her, right?

Except that most ordinary, hard-working moms I know are not mistaken for the cute young babysitter.

On a tough day, they can be mistaken for Grandma.

On even tougher days, they can be mistaken for Uncle Bob.

But does it really surprise you that Time Magazine did not feature the less cover-girly, more typical, under-gym-attending, under-soothed nursing mom who’s totaled four hours of sleep in the last three months, and has the glazed eyeballs of a traveler whose connecting flights in Newark keep being canceled?

Just as non-white women could be photographed naked from the waist-up so long as it was for a spread in National Geographic and not for Cavalier because it was educational, so is the revelation of a firm young white breast being suckled merely a kind of disingenuous camouflage.

While this is supposed to be more “Portrait of Madonna at the Louvre” rather than “Portrait of Madonna at Madison Square Garden,” the image still confuses, and conflates anthropology, maternity, sexuality and publicity.

Which brings us of course, to Hillary Clinton.

Here’s somebody else we’re still trying to figure out how to observe. We’ve been looking at her as the governor’s wife, first lady, as a senator and now as a member of the Cabinet and we’re still not sure what we see. She’s like a UFO; when we’re dealing with Hillary Rodham Clinton, to maternity (and she did breast-feed Chelsea) we must add diplomacy, national security and maturity. She mixes us up.

As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton has traveled more than a quarter of a million miles and changed the world for the better, so naturally we spend a lot of time talking about whether she’s wearing eyeglasses or contacts.

In an interview in Delhi with Jill Dougherty for CNN, Clinton said, “I feel so relieved to be at the stage I’m at in my life right now, Jill, because if I want to wear my glasses, I’m wearing my glasses. If I want to pull my hair back, I’m pulling my hair back.” She went on to say, “If others want to worry about it, I’ll let them do the worrying for a change.”

The difference between the 26-year-old and the 64-year-old, among others, is this: The younger is defiant and naive, believing she’s fighting for her right to be herself (aka, what Dr. Bill Sears suggests she become), while the elder stateswoman is relieved and wise.

Clinton knows the angles, and that a picture can be worth a thousand words ― or merely a good laugh.

By Gina Barreca

Gina Barreca is an English professor at the University of Connecticut, a feminist scholar who has written eight books, and a columnist for the Hartford Courant. She can be reached through her website at http://www.ginabarreca.com. ― Ed.

(The Hartford Courant)
(MCT Information Services)