Pop 89: Primed

By Madonna Hamel

There’s a form of torture that involves steadily dripping drops of water on a prisoner’s forehead. The drip drip drip primes the prisoner to eventually snap. Women who go against popular culture’s grain, and get insulted for doing so, often feel primed. The older we get, the more drips hit us on the head. Unasked for advice, unsolicited explanations, threats: drip, drip, drip. 

Last week a 56 year old gay, black, male, so-called “progressive” news-show host made a comment that sounded like something your old uncle would say about a 51 year old woman running for president. According to Don Lemon, “Nikki Haley is past her prime” because, “a woman’s prime is 20, 30 maybe 40.” (Drip.)  

When Lemon’s two female co-hosts challenged him on his remark he actually told them to “Google it!” (Drip.) Yep, a man told women to research their lives. He then held up his hands, a classic beleaguered male gesture, and said: “don’t to shoot the messenger.” (Drip.) He said it like: Hey, I’m just keepin’ it real, ladies. (Drip.)  

Lemon’s delivery is often condescending, even smug. But I’ve appreciated his consciousness raising around racism, an enormous and often deliberate blindspot among whites. We live in a world where white is the rule, the measuring stick, the norm. And every other shade is the exception to the rule. I lived with a black man who recited to me a ditty from his childhood: “If you’re white, you’re alright. If you’re brown, stick around, if you’re black step back.”

I’ve suffered similar expressions aimed at women, expressions hurled from bars, the back row, the street, passing vehicles. Expressions hurled at me mostly when I’m alone, as if daring to walk alone deserves demeaning insults too creepy and too horrific to repeat. Insults that are fly-by assessments of my body, commenting on whether or not I measure up to standards of what constitutes prime meat. (Drip.) Truly, Mr. Lemon, it’s amazing we haven’t shot the messengers.

I decided to see how women news-show hosts were responding to Lemon’s dismissive remarks. One was quoted as saying: “I think it made most women cringe.” Another, claimed to have “just laughed it off. It didn’t bother me.” She seems to have missed the point, perhaps because she is not the butt of the insult; she’s still in her prime, according to Lemon’s standards, which means she’s still able to have babies and is darn cute. To her I say: “that’s a brief window honey. By laughing you are letting the prejudice against older women continue. And you are fulfilling the ancient expectation to not make a fuss. You won’t make others uncomfortable by getting angry, which, is considered unattractive in a woman.”

And then there’s the young white male reporter who praises his guest, an older female magazine editor, for “laughing it off”. “Good for you”, he says, “why buy into the negative female stereotype of getting all-offended.” (Drip) Getting all offended? Who devised that stereotype? Is that like: “getting our knickers in a twist,” “getting all worked up for nothing”? We don’t do ourselves a favour by acting like one of the boys. Because, we’re not. They don’t give us a pass on our age, our physical appearance, our voice.

Condescending young men can be more damaging to women than the insulting old boys. Martin Luther King’s remarks about well-meaning moderate whites comes to mind: “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that our greatest stumbling block in our stride toward freedom is the white moderate who is more devoted to order than justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” Too many men prefer calm, orderly women. They want us to laugh it all off. And so women continue to cringe and seethe on the inside, while outside, they emit the occasional hysterical laugh or wear a tense, plastered-on square smile.

I expressed all this, or tried to, in my local library the other day. One well-meaning man suggested I talk to his wife because “she feels the same as you do.”

“Why,” I wanted to ask, “She already knows this!”

Instead I asked: ”So what do you say to her?”

“Oh I know better,” he laughs. “I don’t say anything.”

What does that mean? That he knows better than Don Lemon? That he knows that a women’s prime is equal to a man’s? Or does he mean: I know not to talk when my wife “gets all-offended”?

I’m not here to appear pleasant in the presence of insult. I’m not settling for “cringing” - that inward squirm that keeps my despair and disappointment to myself because to express outrage would be unfeminine. I’m ready to defend the rights of others, and it’s sad if men aren’t willing to do the same for us women for fear of looking unmasculine. I’m not letting the blame deflect back on me for “getting all-offended”, as if I were the problem. Sometimes I laugh; I just don’t laugh at my own expense. Sometimes I snap.

When the rioters surged on Capitol Hill Mr. Lemon remarked that “If those rioters were black they’d be shot.” I agree. And I’d bet money, Mr. Lemon, that if Nikki Haley were a man you wouldn’t have a problem with his age. Of course, she’s also Republican, so there’s that. But, what if she were a black woman? Or how about a black, gay woman? Or even better, a black grandmother? Everyone knows it was the grandmothers who walked to work every day during the Montgomery bus boycott and signed the voters petition and got knocked to the ground marching over bridges so that you could be a prime-time news-show host, Mr. Lemon. There’s the answer! Get a black grandmother in the president’s office and behind the news-show desk, and put an end to all this damn foolishness!