Welcome to Viable, a weekly (ish) email newsletter that will spend the final 100 days of this high-stakes, high-drama election cycle exploring modern gender politics through the lens of media history. I’ll pull from my notebooks, my past projects, my syllabi and, of course, the latest news to help us all better understand how the press defines (and redefines) what’s possible for women in public life.
Why am I doing this?
After spending 2020 finishing my last book and then cranking out papers and essays and posters about news coverage of women politicians, I planned to sit this cycle out. My day job just got bigger, my fall syllabi need updating and I’m deep (lost?) in the weeds of another book. Yet, here I am, launching this Substack. 🤷♀️
Why? Because even before Kamala Harris entered the race and JD Vance’s musings about childless cat ladies hit the news cycle like a runaway Mack truck, the 2024 campaigns were rife with rhetoric about the roles of women and men in American society. At the same time, the political arena is becoming more diverse, and the news media — long dominated by white men — often (but not always) struggles to provide comprehensive coverage.
I grappled with some of these dynamics in a column I wrote last week about the importance of pushing beyond vague news narratives focused on the “viability” of women candidates. Here’s a quick excerpt:
The viability question comes packaged with observations about a candidate’s “likability,” “broad appeal” and “strength.” Can she win over moderate suburban voters? Does she look presidential? Is she authentic? These factors do matter, especially when the narrow path to victory winds through a few swing states — think back to 2016, when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and lost the election — but they also carry a specific type of misogyny, one that’s cloaked as pragmatism and deeply internalized across the political spectrum.
In the days since the column dropped, I’ve thought a lot about the next few months and also the last few centuries. The overlap of gender, politics and news is about far more than demographics. Women and the power they wield have long been associated with the domestic sphere, but throughout history their roles, their rights, their health and their futures have been plunged into the public discourse over and over again. Mass media often drives these conversations, spinning stories about what a woman can and should be. In election years, it all seems to get more intense.
It’s likely we are, as many others have observed, at a hinge point in history. I have no idea which way the door will swing, but through this newsletter I’ll attempt to provide some historical context. In the weeks ahead, I’ll explain how 1988 could have been the year both major parties ran women candidates, how Boston Globe readers used an advice column to organize around reproductive justice in the 1970s and how the 1957 Mrs. America pageant made my grandmother a quasi-celebrity who was both liberated and suffocated by the news coverage she received. Also: a few Q&As with my wicked smart colleagues, some media literacy tidbits and links to what I’m reading.
Stay tuned and please share this with a friend who might want to subscribe.
Housekeeping 🧹🧹🧹
All issues through Election Day are free. If you want to post comments, you’ll need to put a few bucks in the tip jar by purchasing a paid subscription. (Just because you pay doesn’t mean you can post whatever you want. Civility rules are in full effect.)
I’m a Substack newbie, so I appreciate your patience while I navigate its quirks.
Closing Quote
“Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.” — Virginia Woolf.