Hail to the She

TV's woman President has stature, but can she surmount the double standards?

By James Poniewozik Monday, Sept. 26, 2005

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    And who's to say it's wrong? America does hold powerful women to impossible standards. Just look at another woman trying to win over Americans on TV this fall. Before jail, Martha Stewart was a rarity among women TV hosts. She didn't flirt, cajole or beg us to like her; she just coolly, competently insisted that we respect her. Now, ankle-bracelet free, she's launched a new daytime show, Martha, and a new Martha Stewart: vulnerable, self-deprecating, coquettish and fun. She jokes about prison! She wears a tiara! Publicizing her new edition of The Apprentice, the media mogul and notoriously demanding boss now swears to anyone with a microphone that she hates firing people. One excruciating morning, she even rapped--rapped!--with hip-hop star Diddy, who seemed to have no idea how to react to his shimmying host.

    Neither do I. I liked the old, cold Martha--liked that she took her cartoonishly perfectionist self seriously and expected us to do so too. There's something sad about her trying to prove her softness, in a way that men on the comeback trail don't (and something sadder about a 64-year-old woman using Am I the Same Girl? as her theme song). If even Martha can't escape this tender trap, the need to convince us of her sweetness and girliness, what woman can?

    Maybe, someday, President Allen, who seems headed for success in her fictional world at least. At the end of the pilot, she gives a speech so melodramatically stirring that even Templeton's Grinchy heart swells three sizes bigger. Perhaps a year from now she'll be just another tall, telegenic politician who made it to the Oval Office, needing neither to prove nor apologize for her femininity. Let's just hope she never has to rap.

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