Defying the Purity Test Placed on Women in Leadership
On Hillary Clinton, what we’ve learned from the past, and embracing Kamala Harris' future.
Hi everyone! Thanks to those of you who were able to join our last-minute get together over Zoom this past weekend. It was so great to be able to put some names to faces from our community (and also get dragged in the comments by our managing editor Aly Sarafa for making very well-meaning scheduling and “This essay will be short, I swear!” types of promises I cannot keep lol.)
I’m still basking in all the joy from last week’s DNC extravaganza but realized I had yet to write about a very meaningful moment from day one of the DNC: Hillary Rodham Clinton’s speech. I missed the first day of DNC events due to work, but I watched her speech from home and was flooded with a mixture of emotions upon seeing and hearing her take the national stage again. It had been a long time coming.
In 2003, I was twenty years old and starring in the television show Joan of Arcadia. Mary Steenburgen played my mother on the show, and she knew I was a budding young civics nerd who loved to get civically engaged: I volunteered for Heal the Bay on my summer breaks and signed up to be a poll worker at my local election center in Los Angeles the minute I turned eighteen. So Mary knew I would probably love to attend the event she was co-hosting at her home with then-Senator Hillary Clinton.
I watched the senator speak to a crowd in Mary’s living room completely off-the-cuff, no teleprompter or index cards. I was in awe of her candor, the effortlessness with which she could make people feel so at ease. How she could crack a good joke in one breath while spouting the most complex statistics and political policy in another. I was riveted, and I was hooked.
Years later, I co-chaired Clinton’s youth outreach program for her 2008 presidential campaign alongside my friend, America Ferrera, and I worked on Clinton’s 2016 campaign as well. Both runs were devastating, eye-opening experiences and not just because she ended up losing; they exposed me to a kind of misogyny and sexism I had not fully understood before, the realization of which would change me forever.
In 2008, I was there in the room during the debate when then-Senator Barack Obama chided with a smirk that Clinton was “likable enough,” and I remember thinking of all the times I had been made to feel unlikable by men in the entertainment business. That same campaign, I was out on the road getting out the vote with Chelsea Clinton on college campuses. College students repeatedly told us how much they hated her mom. I was always amazed by the grace with which Chelsea listened to these unfounded comments said right to her face. When asked why they hated Clinton, many often didn’t have an answer. “She just seems like a bitch,” one young woman said to me on the Cal State University campus, echoing the all but universal sentiment (especially in 2008) used to undermine any woman in a position of leadership or one fighting to get there. Why? I thought. Why is even the most qualified, experienced woman considered untrustworthy and incapable of leading at the highest levels when we never hold men to these same standards?
We don’t need to rehash the well-documented, rampant sexism of Clinton’s second go-round in 2016 that contributed to her loss. But I will tell you that when news came of Trump’s victory, I was eight months pregnant inside the Javits Center in New York City at Clinton’s would-be victory party. Instead of celebrating that night, I felt something break in me that would not be repaired for years—not until last week at the DNC.
It would take years to forgive or reconcile with those who sat out that election because of the impossible double standards they had held Hillary Clinton to and what the next four years would bring about (Charlottesville, the extreme mismanaging of COVID, the literal attempted coup on January 6th incited by a former United States president, and so much more). Years later, Biden would win the election and would earn votes from friends of mine who did not vote for Hillary, despite the fact that he also supported the 1994 crime bill, and also voted for the war in Iraq, and also and also… so many other similar decisions they despised Clinton for. Why him and not her? (This, my friends, is the question I have asked of so many things for my entire life.)
So many women in this country and around the world were so angry and fed up with what Clinton’s loss represented and the purity test women are constantly being subjected to: that in order to succeed in positions of leadership, you must be absolutely perfect—you must vote for everything and represent everyone while somehow also voting against everything and representing only specific interests. All things, all at once, all the time—something men across the board, from Bernie Sanders to Biden, have never had to face. (This is one of the reasons America Ferrera’s powerful speech in the Barbie movie resonated with so many women across the globe, because it’s true, and we’ve all experienced it.)
This same kind of purity test was put to Elizabeth Warren and her 2020 presidential campaign when progressives—who found Clinton to be not nearly progressive enough—started calling Warren—the single most progressive candidate of all time—a lying snake for daring to call out Bernie Sanders as, in fact, someone who may actually have a misogynistic bone or two in his body after all. Many just could not and would not accept it. Somehow Warren HAD to be the liar, the deceitful one who couldn’t be trusted with the presidency. Why him and not her?
Years after Warren’s primary defeat, Clinton’s two runs, and all the tireless efforts of the women who came before them like Shirley Chisholm, it has been extraordinary to see the campaign of Kamala Harris somehow, so far, be almost immune to this purity test, even though much like Clinton, she is far from a perfect person or candidate. Anything thrown at her doesn’t fully seem to stick in the way it did for the women candidates who came before her. In fact, in some ways her campaign has been able to weaponize sexist attacks against her and throw them back at their creators.
The right mocks her for laughing too much? Her campaign rolls out a series of TikTok videos with fun music that feature her laughing A LOT. Trump says Harris only recently “turned” Black when it was convenient for her and that she’s a DEI hire? Heavyweights at the DNC scorch earth with searing one-liners about Blackness, like Michelle Obama saying “Who’s gonna tell [Trump] that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs?” (which is then turned into a hilarious and incredible mashup video that goes completely viral). They criticize Harris for eating Doritos while on the campaign trail? At the DNC, the popular Gen Z-led party, Hotties for Harris, projected Doritos onto walls, raining down around a dance floor where hundreds of people danced to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.”
In fact, so much of all of it feels different this time than it did when Clinton and Warren ran. Groups that didn’t show up for these women so overtly and proudly now “understand the assignment” and are helping to rake in millions of dollars for Harris’ campaign—there’s White Women for Harris, White Dudes for Harris, there’s even Swifties for Kamala (ft. Sen. Elizabeth Warren herself)! To watch this outpouring of support for a woman who is absolutely ready to serve as president, who is still just a human being trying to win within a political system that has inherently told her she doesn’t belong, has been bittersweet to say the least. It has healed in me, and in so many others, what cracked in ‘08 and broke in ‘16 (which, unfortunately, was not a glass ceiling).
Almost a decade later, former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton took to the stage at the DNC and got her flowers—no, a full, robust, much-deserved bouquet. Like many, I felt more of that lingering anger continuing to heal while watching her speak. I began to let go of (some of) those cracks, of the feeling of being robbed of ever knowing what kind of a leader she would have been. To have the privilege, for once, to argue with others about her governance as a reality instead of a hypothetical. (Guess what guys! We’ll never know! Great job!) It furthered that sense of something shifting in the air, that maybe we as a nation had finally gotten to a place where we could really see a woman for who she is, flaws and all, and still elect her anyway, because we know she’s the best choice for our country (and because that’s what we’ve done with every other male candidate since this country’s creation, often without ever questioning their imperfection to this degree).
Hillary took to the stage at the DNC in her signature once-mocked-now-cherished 90’s ironed hairstyle and white pantsuit glory to a resounding, extended standing ovation, applause that was deafening, and a show of appreciation which left Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz’ wife, Gwen, in tears. We were all Gwen that night, watching that speech from Hillary. I texted America (Ferrera, though if someone has a list of every phone number in the U.S., that could help us with phone banking…) and other friends who had also been a part of her campaigns, including Chelsea Clinton. “…when a barrier falls for one of us,” Hillary said in her speech, “it falls and clears the way for all of us.”
While we may not have gotten Hillary as our first female president, we have her as a torchbearer to light the way toward what can still be. In Hillary Clinton, we can heal from some of the past, and perhaps most importantly, heed the warning of 2016 and what could come next if we don’t keep our eye on the prize. In our excitement and joy for Kamala Harris as president, we must not repeat the mistakes of 2016 by taking a victory lap before the race is over. We were so sure of ourselves then, so positive we had beat the odds, and that no one would pick a self-described pussy-grabber over the historic choice of the most qualified candidate we’ve ever had (who also happened to be a woman). We were dead wrong.
So I’ll leave you with this: take it from Hillary Clinton, and me, and anyone that was a part of those campaigns—stay focused, keep showing up every single day, and take nothing for granted. Sign up to be a poll worker at your local election place. Check your voter registration frequently and remind others to do so. (Voter registration purging is on the rise in terrifying numbers—just look at what’s going on in Texas and Georgia.) Donate financially if you can, or donate your time by signing up to phone bank and get out the vote. Perhaps one of the more difficult options but also one of the most rewarding: talk to a friend or family member who is on the fence about voting or has been pulled into disinformation and harmful rhetoric surrounding the election and Harris.
Harris’ campaign slogan is, “When we fight, we win,” but this past weekend at our first paid subscriber Zoom hangout, community member
shared something so powerful and so true that isn’t talked about nearly enough: When we win, we fight. Yes, we must first fight to get Kamala Harris elected, but then we must fight like hell to get what we want and need from her as our elected official, whether that’s a ceasefire in Gaza and a return of the hostages, paid family leave, or abortion rights reinstated. We need Kamala, and Kamala needs us. Together, we can hold each other accountable and help our country get there, all while making history in the process."Something is happening in America, you can feel it," Hillary said on stage at the DNC. "Something we've worked for and dreamed of for a long time." That time has come, it is now, and how lucky are we to get to be alive on this earth to see it happen.
This essay is dedicated to my friend and sister, America Ferrera.
I’ve gathered some of my favorite behind-the-scenes memories, both from my personal archives and some from articles, from the many years and many states where I have traveled and campaigned, including the crazy story behind this video I shot with Hillary Clinton and America (Ferrera). These extra BTS moments are an added bonus/thank you for our paid subscribers who were with me every step of the way last week at the DNC. If you’d like to check them out (plus get full access to subscriber Zooms, all essays, and archived Further Ado episodes) upgrade here, and enjoy this blast of nostalgic past below.