Hillary's Women

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Watching Hillary Rodham Clinton’s speech at the democratic convention I was struck by the contrast between the facial expressions of the young women in the audience and those of Hillary’s contemporaries. The women of my generation looked like this:

We were beaming, chipper, elated. Our guy won, and the woman who lost to him was rocking the house. We felt proud of her now that she was no longer a threat to an Obama presidency and we could take a moment to revel in the girl-powerness of it all.

This is how the women of my mother’s generation looked:


For the first time, I truly understood what they had lost. Hillary's women wanted more than someone who shared their opinions (many candidates could have laid claim to that territory) they wanted a peer, someone whose views were shaped by the same forces that had shaped their own. I am a die-hard Obama fan. My support for him began with the thrill of his oratory, a desire to stomp on the racial lunacy that divides this nation, and a steadfast belief in his integrity. But in the end, I've realized that my support comes down to a much baser sentiment. He is six years older than I am and I want to see him in the White House. I want my generation to have its turn to lead before we become the next generation.

In the faces of Hillary’s women I saw the disappointment of the entire feminist movement, the movement that has never quite seen its dream come true. If Obama becomes president there are countless members of the civil rights movement who will live to see that their struggle had value. That's all these women were asking for.

I watched Hillary’s speech not in Denver, not on television, but on YouTube five days after she spoke, something my own mother – who died 11 years ago today – could not have imagined. I am one of those young women, if at 41 I’m even allowed to call myself young, who has faulted Hillary for not being the kind of woman I wanted to see as a leader. She seems so uncomfortable in her own skin, so dogged by questions of cookies and headbands and pants-suits, so unclear about how to embrace her power. My generation demands an ease of presentation, a security of identity that Hillary could never pull off. Many of us, myself included, are missing a sensitivity chip when it comes to appreciating the battle wounds of the women who paid such a high personal cost to ensure that we have the opportunity to make choices about the kinds of work and the kinds of relationships we want for ourselves. It’s no wonder that these women, Hillary's women, wanted one of their own as commander-in-chief. They have suffered for a very long time, without reward, for the happy-faced blond waving an Obama flag next to them.