Hillary is us

Feminists want to see in Hillary Rodham Clinton what they want to see in themselves. With expectations so high, can the potential presidential candidate do anything but let women down?

By Rebecca Traister

Read more: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Feminism, Jane Fonda, Rebecca Traister, Life

Photos: AP Photo/Wide World

A photo composite of Hillary Rodham Clinton in front of a March for Women's Lives rally in Washington.

Oct. 16, 2006 | This September, in the gilded reception room at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, Jane Fonda smiled gamely as she greeted reporters and guests. The actress was there to receive an award from the Center for the Advancement of Women. I asked her what she thought of the idea of Hillary Clinton running for president. Her smile faded abruptly, replaced by a dark pause and tensely set jaw. "Well," Fonda said, "her position on the war disappoints me a lot, and that's a biggie."

Fonda quickly added that Clinton would respect "women and women's bodies," but insisted she would never vote for a candidate just because she was a woman. "We've had plenty of female presidents and prime ministers where I would've rather had a man of conscience, a male feminist," she said. But would Fonda support Clinton for the presidency? "If she's the Democratic candidate, of course I will." Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

To be fair, Clinton is probably not banging down Fonda's door for a plug. After all, a picture of young Barbarella attending a rally in the vicinity of young Vietnam vet John Kerry circulated in 2004 as anti-Kerry propaganda. But jumping on a girls-for-Clinton bandwagon would seem to be so smooth, so historic, so romantic; Fonda's hem and haw suggests that the former first lady and current senator from New York is not the apotheosis of the feminist project that so many women had hoped she would be.

Clinton puts liberal women, especially those who comfortably call themselves feminists, in a very awkward position. At last a woman is favored to run for president of the United States. And not the kind of woman one might have guessed would grace a major-party ticket. Clinton is not a Republican whose politics make Margaret Thatcher look like Barbara Jordan. She is a politician who once appeared to be feminism's fantasy made flesh -- smart, direct and driven to defend bold social causes like children's welfare and women's equality.

But pick apart the pretty tapestry that features Hillary as Eleanor Roosevelt reborn, Shirley Chisholm recalled, and Pat Schroeder redeemed, and you'll find a knottier weave: recognition threaded with betrayal, idolatry with disappointment, approval with anger. You'll certainly find ardent feminists who are true Hillary believers. But you'll also find plenty whose moods blacken at the mention of the New York senator's name.

In the fall of 2005, I attended the premiere of "Commander in Chief," the now-defunct network television show in which Geena Davis played the president. At the party at Caroline's Comedy Club, it was embarrassingly difficult not to get choked up, as hokey as the show was. In part, that was because of the visceral, painful reality that as a nation, we have never respected women enough to elect one as our chief. Yet here we were, able at last to imagine one on television, on the brink of imagining one in real life: Hillary Clinton, whose path from iconoclastic first lady to senator to president might have been so deeply satisfying.

But somewhere along the way, Clinton's personality became political, and her politics became deeply suspect. "There is an assumption that because she's a woman, because of the excitement about the potential of a woman running for president, because of her first lady status, that women will automatically adhere to her in a strong way," said Kate Michelman, former head of NARAL Pro-Choice America, who is currently working to overturn the South Dakota abortion ban. "I don't think that's true. Hillary, along with every other candidate who aspires to this nomination, has to earn the women's vote."

Earlier this year, author and filmmaker Nora Ephron, who covered the nomination of Shirley Chisholm for president in 1972, wrote that Clinton has "as much authenticity as Naugahyde." For American feminists who have long pictured themselves running arm in arm toward Pennsylvania Avenue with a woman like Clinton, coming to grips with the politically slick senator has been hard to take. But ambivalence about Clinton reflects our confusion about what authenticity in feminism (and in ourselves) means once it mates with the practicalities of the political world.

Ann Douglas, a Columbia University social historian who profiled Clinton for Vogue in 1999, told me that women see in Clinton what they want to see in themselves and in the body politic. She referred to an old Tony Curtis anecdote about a fan who approached him and asked, "Are you who I think I am?" It's the same with Clinton, Douglas said. "We say, 'I want her to be who I think I am.' I want her to hold up my own ideals of myself." With expectations so high, can Clinton do anything but let women down?

Next page: The truth was, Hillary was the real deal: Smart and driven, with good politics