As the United States presidential election heats up, and as more primaries come and go, the remaining candidates are now going to new extremes to secure their respective parties’ nominations. The pressure is particularly high for the Republican party, which has fallen to pieces since former-reality-boss-turned-wannabe-boss of-the-country Donald Trump announced his candidacy. “Establishment” politicians within the party want a nominee with plenty of political experience whose beliefs are not as off-kilter as Trump’s; at this point, they are left with two options: Texas senator Ted Cruz or Ohio governor John Kasich. Although Kasich is the more typically establishment candidate in terms of political values, ultra-conservative Cruz has been Trump’s biggest competitor in the primaries, since he has won several crucial states such as Texas, Iowa, and most recently, Utah.
Winning in Utah is no easy feat for any candidate, as they have to please the state’s largely Mormon population, but Cruz certainly played dirty to clench his victory there. An anti-Trump Super PAC called Make America Awesome ran multiple ads that encouraged Mormon voters to vote for Cruz, since Trump goes against many Mormon beliefs, including use of profanity and overt sexuality. The most notorious ad featured a nude photo of Trump’s wife Melania, from early on in her modeling career, warning Mormon voters that “[she] could be your next First Lady” if they didn’t vote for Cruz. There was outrage concerning this method of presidential attack advertising, with writers such as Vox’s Emily Crockett angrily responding: “[The ad] attacks Trump not by attacking him directly, but by impugning the character of the woman he decided to marry.”
Trump defended his wife, but also retaliated by threatening to “spill the beans” on Heidi Cruz, the wife of his competitor. In addition to this threat, Trump retweeted a photo of Heidi Cruz and his wife side-by-side which said  “No need to ‘spill the beans’- the images are worth a thousand words”. What was already a terrible instance of slut shaming had escalated into a full-fledged “wifegate” or “battle of the wives,” where the physical traits of two different women became details that voters needed to factor into their decisions for presidential candidate. Ted Cruz responded to Trump’s tweets by stating that “real men don’t attack women,” but writer Emma Green from The Atlantic was quick to point out that he is no fine gentleman either; he has not quite acknowledged his connection to the anti-Trump Super PAC that circulated the ad, and he had previously suggested that Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton deserves “a spanking” since she “[said] something [she knew] to be false.”
Ironically, the leader and spokeswoman for the Make America Awesome super PAC, the very group that made the nude Melania Trump ads, is a woman, Liz Mair. Why would she want to run ads that slut-shame women? Mair has claimed that the point of the Melania ad was to have female Mormon voters recognize an image of “female subservience” that serves to “titillate men” and upset women.
However, isn’t that what slut-shaming is at its core? For Laurie Penny, in her book Unspeakable Things, the culture of the Internet and the press of today functions on the notion that “women are supposed to be looked at, but never listened to.” It feels terrible to see Penny’s statement play out in our personal microaggressions with male colleagues and acquaintances online, or even in celebrity culture, where it has somehow become acceptable to glorify looks and slut-shaming is only occasionally condemned. To have these insensitive approaches to viewing women brought into the center of the current political arena, especially given that one of the candidates this year is a woman, is truly disturbing.
The women being pitted against each other by their husbands have each fulfilled their own visions of success that go way beyond being a potential First Lady. Heidi Cruz earned an MBA from Harvard, and has been a successful banker who recently worked as a managing director of Goldman Sachs in Houston. In the Vox article, Crockett also highlighted many of Melania Trump’s achievements, including how she studied architecture and design at the University of Ljubljana, speaks five languages fluently, and runs successful jewelry and cosmetics lines. Nevertheless, all of these impressive feats are greatly undermined with the use of her nude photo shoot, Trump’s side-by-side photo, and all of the negative stereotypes that come with it.Â
It has been a historic election where outsider candidates like Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders, are challenging long-standing definitions of what it means to be a Democrat or Republican. However, this election has also pushed so many boundaries of political correctness, particularly with Trump’s campaign being based on xenophobia, false claims, contradictions, and threats of violence. At this rate, how much lower will he and the remaining candidates go in order to win their party’s nomination?
Sources:
Penny, Laurie. Unspeakable Things. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. Print.
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/25/11306096/melania-trump-heidi-cruz-feud
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/21/11279018/melania-trump-slut-shaming-ad
Thumbnail image obtained from:
http://www.torontosun.com/2016/03/24/trump-cruz-feud-over-their-wives