Disappointing Dowd

After criticizing the Dems for being “girlie men,” the consummate woman in a man’s world still doesn’t seem interested in changing it.

By Lauren Pruneski
Tuesday January 24, 2006

In her January 18 New York Times column, Maureen Dowd decided that the best way to criticize the Democratic Party was to feminize it. Calling Al Gore and John Kerry “girlie men” and equating the Democrats with “Desperate Housewives,” she argued that the Democrats do not have enough fight in them and their attacks will never yield success “as long as they’re perceived as the party in skirts.”

Dowd may be right to observe that political power structures echo gender ones—that the Republican party builds its success on a “reputation for machismo” and that liberals, in contrast, are perceived as effeminate and ineffectual—but she is wrong to accept these structures without challenge or critique. Working through a lens that still sees women in skirts, afraid of power or action, Dowd is a key player in the G.O.P.’s “gender games,” and her column inadvertently suggests that tough guys with guns are the best political model, no matter how much she says to the contrary.

It may seem surprising that Dowd, a liberal female columnist known for her vicious attacks on men in power, could put forth an argument so complicit in gender stereotyping. But her recent work has demonstrated that, for all her progressive politics, Dowd is not much of a feminist. Too many of her arguments are based on gender stereotypes that are limiting and disempowering, and she is too eager to accept the “gender games” that men, after all, have put in place.

Consider Are Men Necessary?, her reflection on the state of the modern American woman. In a reductive style typical of her columns, Dowd writes about a smart woman’s inability to find a man as if that alone defined the progress of feminism and relations between the sexes. Most disappointing is the story she tells of a colleague who, upon winning the Pulitzer, worried that it would now be even harder to get a date. A kind of Dowdian allegory for successful single women, this anecdote sends a frightening message to women at the start of their careers: that no matter how hard they work or how successful they become, they’ll never have it all. In Dowd’s world, evidently, having it all means having a man. (Or being a man?)

For many smart young women, however, it is Pulitzers – not men – that define success. To borrow Dowd’s penchant for pop culture, my generation has come of age with shows like Sex and the City and The L Word and a host of movies that glorify the independent woman, and while we may have families in our future, traditional or alternative, the notion of marriage is not what it used to be. And feminism, though not the bra-burning movement of our mother’s time, is far from dead. “There were moments when I felt Dowd and I live on different planets,” wrote Katha Pollitt in The Nation. “The young women I know—most of whom, contrary to stereotype, have no problem calling themselves feminists—are so far ahead of where I was at their age, so much more confident and multicompetent and worldly-wise.”

But Dowd is either ignorant of this progress or looking the other way. Her thoughts on the modern woman are burdened by a longing for tradition and a belief that men, especially those in power, are necessary. To her would-be followers, to aspiring female journalists and artists and politicians, she has made the argument that success is not truly independent of men and that it comes at the expense of tradition. What’s worse, implied in this argument is the idea that smart women should be concerned with losing tradition, or, perhaps more importantly for Dowd, worried about the fact that they may find themselves dateless on Saturday night. Not the message you’d expect from a woman who’s otherwise unafraid to take on her country’s most powerful.

Dowd has never exactly proclaimed herself a feminist, but she does display a sort of fearless determination to remain a woman in a man’s world and to write about that constantly – and that is a position that could lend itself to feminist criticism. So, it seems that we have the right to be a bit disappointed when she fails to meet our expectations for what an intelligent, accomplished woman could be.

But Dowd refrains from the kind of arguments that need to be made about men and women in power, favoring simple observations that make for better punch lines. Her biting, caustic humor and sassy, rambling monologues—which can chew over numerous hot topics almost simultaneously—have earned her both critics and admirers; her clever blend of pop-culture commentary with critical coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, work for which she won a Pulitzer, was as innovative as it was controversial. And while few would argue that she can’t throw a good punch, most would contend that her accomplishment ends where the bruise begins. For even though Dowd makes us laugh, she does not make us think. At her best, she can convince us that Seinfeld is a cultural microcosm, but she cannot discuss, in any meaningful, critical way, the complexities of Condoleezza Rice’s position or the implications of Republican machismo.

Dowd thus falls short of being a model for smart women and feminists of any variety, not because she lacks brains or cleverness, not because she lacks recognition or success, but because she lacks the guts to wage a real critique of her culture. Like her columns, which observe and comment without making a case for change, Are Men Necessary? observes, jokes, and complains about the problem of disorienting, limiting relations between the sexes without offering a critical solution. Why not suggest that women live up their independence, or adopt an alternative political and social agenda that’s free from the male norm, or fight to make a career compatible with a family? Why not take a real, hard look at where women really are in the world, and at the state of feminism today, and then decide if young, intelligent women are really doomed?

It’s in our best interest to follow Maureen Dowd’s path but not her example—to embrace her ambition and accomplishment but not her antiquated notion of femininity, her fear of going out on a limb for her sex, or her willingness to believe that women, for all their fighting, have not made great strides in the world of men. Dowd’s is a tough act to follow. But someone’s got to do it, and someone’s got to do it better.

 
Lauren Pruneski graduated from Wesleyan University in May 2004. She works for the National Georgraphic Society and has written for the Washington City Paper.