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Francesca Borrione

Professor Renee Hobbs

COM 520

10 December 2016

On Hillary Clinton’s Angry Face and the Politics of Smiling.

The Mediated Representation of a Female Presidential Candidate

Abstract

This paper focuses on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and analyzes: 1) the

way she and her strategists portrayed the candidate over the last 18 months; 2) the way the media

depicted Hillary Clinton; 3) the propagandistic portrait of Hillary Clinton offered by her

opponent, Donald Trump. I aim to discuss “the character of candidate displays, the potential for

visual forms of bias, and the visual framing of election campaigns” (Bucy and Grabe, 2007:

670). The character of candidate displays is relevant, as part of the media narrative around

Hillary Clinton turned to be focused on her facial expressions: she was accused to be too angry,

too smiling, too distant, too cold, too fake. How did Hillary Clinton introduce herself? How did

she build up a “character” to appeal the voters? And how did the media cover her story? How did

the media portray her? How did the two campaigns portray her? There is a narrative that is

created by the candidate, and a narrative created by the opponents (or by the media?). This aspect

leads me to the second point—visual forms of bias—that would let me explore the notion of

“propaganda”. My last question would be, how did the American people react? Did the narrative

around Hillary Clinton’s smile or angry face undermine her run? The case of former VP

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candidate Sarah Palin—whose figure was objectified by the media—seems to confirm a form of

gender bias in the way female candidates are portrayed by the media and perceived by the

audience. The case of Hilary Clinton appears to be even more complex. Hillary Clinton has been

in politics for over 30 years now, and we know everything about her career and personal life. All

we know about her is a “mediated representation”. To better understand Hillary Clinton’s self-

representation as a candidate, it is necessary to recall the complex history of the love/hate

relationship with the media.

Introduction. What is Anger? A gender biased perception of emotions in men and women

It all starts with this article from The New York Times, written by Lisa Feldman Barrett,

Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University. Lisa Feldman Barrett’s article is a response

to Rence Priebus’ tweet (Fig. 1) about Hillary’s “angry face”, posted on Twitter on September,

the 7th, 2016. Hillary Clinton was accused by Reince Preibus, the Chairman of the Republic

National Committee, of looking “angry” in the MSNBC Commander-In-Chief forum she

participated. Priebus tweeted that,

Fig. 1. Reince Priebus’ Tweet. 7 September 2016.

In 140 characters, Reince Priebus summarized 140 years of gender discrimination.

Reince Priebus was trying to reinforce in his followers the idea that Hillary Clinton is not a

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reliable or a trustable person, but a politician who belongs to Washington and does not care

about the American people. Fine. That is a part of the political arena. But the use of rhetoric in

terms of gender differences makes Reince Priebus' tweet relevant as a case study. With his tweet,

Reince Priebus made popular a narrative about Hillary Clinton’s “angry face” that had already

started during the Democratic primaries. In The New York Times article, Lisa Feldman Barrett

quotes one of her research studies on the perception of women’s emotions and facial expressions:

“The implication of Mr. Priebus’s comment was a familiar one: A woman making stern-looking

facial movements must be angry or upset. A man who looks the same, on the other hand, is

focusing on the important matters at hand”. The archetypical narrative around women’s

behaviors still want them naturally maternal and reassuring; but when they are focused, women

are perceived as angry, upset, distant, and un-affective. On the other hand, if a man is focused

and serious, then he is perceived as smart and trustworthy. According to the 2009 Feldman

Barrett’s article “She’s emotional. He’s having a bad day: Attributional explanations for emotion

stereotypes”, that conducted two studies on the perception of emotional expression, the

difference in the perception of facial expression in women and men is gender biased: “women

are the more emotional sex because they are treating women’s emotional behavior as evidence of

an emotional nature, whereas men’s emotional behavior is evidence that the situation warrants

such behavior” (Feldman Barrett, Blyss-Bureau 2009: 650). Any female facial expression

appears to be perceived as related to a certain emotion, while male facial expressions reflect a

cognitive process. The conclusion is, women are instinctual and emotional, and men are fit for

the job.

In The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), Charles Darwin defines a

number of different emotions, connected to specific facial expressions. The book, which seems

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to argue that different ethnic groups have different emotions and show them differently, offers

also a comprehensive categorization of emotions according to race and gender. Otherwise,

“Rage, anger, and indignation are exhibited in nearly the same manner throughout the world.”

(Darwin, 1872: 246). The emotion of anger is described as follows: “Anger, indignation: These

states of the mind differ from rage only in degree, and there is no marked distinction in their

characteristic signs. Under moderate anger the action of the heart is a little increased, the colour

heightened, and the eyes become bright” (Darwin, 1872: 246). To be noticed that when he

defines anger, Darwin refers to a generic “he”, as if anger is an emotion that does not really

belong to women. Women are maternal figures. They smile. They are reassuring. Being focused,

or serious, or concerned, doesn't belong to women's stereotypical interpretation, or to the others’

expectations. Darwin refers to a lady’s negative facial expression when distinguishing the feeling

of “indignation” from “sneering”.

Fig. 2: A “sneering” leady. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)

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“Sneering, Defiance: Uncovering the canine tooth on one side: This expression may

occasionally be observed in a person who sneers at or defies another, though there may be no

real anger (Fig. 2); as when any one is playfully accused of some fault, and answers, "I scorn the

imputation". The expression is not a common one, but I have seen it exhibited with perfect

distinctness by a lady who was being quizzed by another person” (249-250).

According to Feldman Barrett’s research, women tend to be considered on a very basic

binary level: they are emotional and maternal, and when they are serious, they are perceived as

“angry”. Not even The New York Times stays away from gender rhetoric, when in the article

“Poll Finds Most Voters Embrace Milestone for Women, if Not Hillary Clinton” the journalists

Mary Jo Murphy and Megan Thee-Brenan analyze a small poll (Fig.3), related to women's

experience in the society.

Fig. 3. Women’s Experience in the Society, The New York Times.

Consciously or not, we seem to keep depicting women as making sense only when they

are maternal, condescending, and possibly married. Because every woman needs a man to make

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sense of her life. Although the poll involves equally women and men, I doubt The New York

Times would have designed the same kind of poll with two male candidates for the

presidency. The poll is designed in a way that implicitly asks the participants to judge Hillary

Clinton not only as a presidential candidate, but as woman who plays a positive role in her

family and in the society.

It is interesting to notice how, during the first Presidential debate and weeks after the

MSNBC forum and the accusation of being “angry”, Hillary Clinton decided to fight the media

accusations by smiling (on request). She tried to reshape her appearance and appeal a skeptical

audience, or convince the undecide voter that she is different from the way she actually is

portrayed and perceived by a general electorate. And her smile was so unusual to journalists--and

to the audience--that has become object of attention. She was forced to change her approach and

look, but she did not change her political identity.

A Mediated Memory of Hillary Clinton. From First Lady to Presidential Candidate

Any discussion about Hillary Clinton’s representation—or self-representation—runs

around the idea of “mediated memory” (Parry-Giles 2014: 2). Hillary Clinton spent 30 years in

the political arena, and her professional and private life has been investigated in the smallest

detail: from her run on his husband’s side in 1992, to the years as a U.S. Senator, the 2008

presidential campaign, the job as a Secretary of State under Barack Obama’s first mandate, until

the 2016 presidential run. We know everything about Hillary Clinton, and yet all we know is

filtered by the media. And today, in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential campaign, it seems

like the Democratic candidate’s shocking defeat is a consequence of the mediated representation

of the candidate Hillary Clinton. The first woman to run for a presidential campaign in a major

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party, the most famous woman in the world, the most competent candidate to run for the White

House. A mediated image of Hillary Clinton conveys a message based on her angry face, her

fake smile, her fashion style. Her look as a first lady never fully convinced the critics, as her

public appearances and interviews never fully reached the audience the way they were supposed

to do. During the 1992 Democratic primaries, when Bill Clinton was the candidate running for

the White House, Hillary Clinton emerged as a non-typical first lady to-be. First, in 1992 during

the famous “60 Minutes” interview (Fig. 4), she addressed her husband’s infidelities: “I'm not

sitting here some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette. I’m sitting here

because I love him and I respect him” (Hillary Clinton, 1992). And then, in an interview in 1994

(Fig. 5) she stated, “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but

what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession”. By introducing herself to the American public

as a strong woman, a feminist, and a professional, she broke down all the gender stereotypes and

represented herself as a non-typical first lady.

Fig. 4. 60 Minutes Interview, 1992. Fig. 5 Interview 1994.

In summarizing eight years of Hillary Clinton in the White House, Robin Givhan from

The Washington Post focuses on the clothes the first lady wore, as fashion appeared to a major

concern of the media: “Clinton tried to have a more fashionable profile but was pummeled into

surrender. She was criticized in 1993 for her inauguration hat (Fig.4) and for her purple sparkly

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gown (Fig. 5). They were too parochial. They lacked élan. But then she hosted a dinner at the

White House wearing one of designer Donna Karan’s cold-shoulder dresses (Fig. 6) and folks

raised eyebrows wondering if it was too sexy, too trendy, too too. Critics accused her of using

clothes as tools for political propaganda, from the pink suit (Fig. 7) news conference when she

was on a charm offensive with the media to the "dragon" coat when she went to confront the

grand jury. By the time she welcomed Laura Bush to the White House (Fig. 8), she was wearing

a plain black pantsuit. Fashionwise, she had thrown in the towel”.

Fig. 4. Inauguration hat (20 January 1993). Fig. 5. Inauguration purple gown.

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Fig. 6. Donna Karan’s dress. Fig. 7. Pink suit. United Nation conference.

As a presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton had to reshape her image and represent her

public identity differently. An innovator, an icon, a feminist. When in 2008 she decided to run

for President for the first time, Hillary Clinton had—just like Barack Obama—her personal

portrait (Fig. 8-9).

Fig. 8. Photograph by Brian Adams. Fig. 9. Tony Puryer, “Hillary” (2008).

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Fig 10. Shepard Fairey, “Hope” (2008). Fig. 11. Respectfully Wish Chairman Mao Eternal Life (1968)

Originally designed by Tony Puryear in 2008 after a photograph by songwriter Bryan

Adams appeared on Bazar Magazine in 2005 (Fig. 8), this iconic print (Fig. 9)—currently

featured in the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery—marked a new political era for Hillary, that had to

be redefined again in 2015, when she run for President for the second time.

The postmodern portrait failed to replicate the popular success of Barack Obama’s

“Hope” by Shepard Fairey (Fig. 10), but it also failed to represent Hillary Clinton. The main

problem, according to some critics (Puryear), was in the colors, with the sun-ray background that

was evoking a Maoist era (Fig. 11) and made Hillary Clinton look not as a leader but as an

authoritarian figure. The post conveyed a confusing message. Hillary was the subject of the

slogan (“Hillary”), while Obama’s campaign promoted an idea (“Hope”). By stressing the idea

of Hillary as a woman, and as a name, her campaign ended up objectifying the candidate.

Something similar happened in the 2016 presidential campaign, when Hillary Clinton run for

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president for the second time, and for the second time redefined her political identity with a

message (“I’m with Her”) that stressed her persona more than her ideas.

Dehumanizing Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton’s facial expressions have been object of study and criticism over the last

18 months. The positive message that she sent to the American people when in May 2015 she

announced her candidacy, had the purpose to re-introduce the candidate to a new electoral group

under a different light and to stimulate the voters to be involved in the “Hillary for America”

project. The covers of magazines and the interviews shifted from the representation of a smiling

female candidate to the iconography of the serious leader.

Instead of being depicted as reassuring and maternal, Hillary Clinton was portrayed as a

competent leader, strong and powerful. I believe this is the moment in which the narrative

around Hillary Clinton started to change. She assumed that, being a woman she only had to

promote her competencies and abilities and skills as the potential Commander in Chief. Being a

woman, and being almost 70 years old, she did not have to perform her femininity or play the

conventional role of the woman in career who is also a good mother and a devoted wife. Her

campaign focused on her skills and on a record: making her the first female president of the

United States. Her campaign strategists missed a crucial point; archetypes impose that for the

only fact of being a woman, Hillary Clinton was expected to look cooperative, maternal,

friendly, smiley.

Nathan A. Heflick & Jamie L. Goldenberg’s article titled Sarah Palin: A Nation

Object(ifie)s (2011) argues that in the 2008 presidential campaign the media’s focus on the VP

Republican candidate’s appearance undermined her run. The authors refer to warmth,

competence, and morality as the key elements in the audience evaluation of Sarah Palin who as a

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consequence of the media obsession for her look was objectified and dehumanized: “The medial

prefrontal cortex is activated when people recognize faces […] and infer other’s thoughts […],

but it is not activated when people view groups that are judged as low in competence, warmth

and mortality. This suggests that (even at a basic neural level) perceptions of competence,

warmth and morality are linked to perceptions of humanness. Thus, to the extent that

objectification is dehumanizing, it makes sense that objectified individuals should be denied

warmth, morality and competence” (Heflik and Goldenberg, 2010: 155).

Unlike Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton was not objectified for her appearance, but the media

obsession for her behaviors, and the focus on the verbal and nonverbal language contributed in

the misrepresentation of the candidate. Hillary Clinton was challenged on her presidential look

and confronted on her warmth (when she was not smiling enough). Hillary Clinton’s

competencies for the job were never discussed, but just like Sarah Palin she was judged on her

appearance. The negative perception of her as a woman—whose facial expressions and approach

disrupted an archetypical gender narrative—ended up influencing the voters’ impression of the

candidate. When she was serious, she looked angry. When she was smiling, she looked fake. The

media conveyed the narrative of a figure, and with the TV as her worst enemy, Hillary Clinton

failed in representing herself as authentic and true. All those elements contributed to the

progressive dehumanization of Hillary Clinton.

She may be smiling in a poster, but she is not smiling in the video. From the lesson of

2008, we could say that, as stated by Kingsley, in the 2016 presidential race “the visual identity

for Hillary Clinton’s campaign needs to maintain a [...] balance: simple enough for clear

communication, without being too hip”.

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Fig. 12a. Fig. 12b.

Fig. 12c. Fig. 12d.

Fig. 12e. Fig. 12f.

Fig. 12g. Fig. 12h.

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The first video from the “Hillary for America” campaign, was on air on April, 12th, 2015

(Fig. 12 a-h). The video does not summarize any specific key idea, but it only works as Hillary

Clinton’s introduction in the 2016 race. Its short message ("I am running for President") speaks

to a wide group of Americans: see the stories that are edited in the first 50 seconds. Young

women, couples, African Americans, Latinos, LGBTQ community, the working-class people.

This first political ad speaks about diversity and to minorities; they are the subject of the

message, and their concerns are the object of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Hillary Clinton’s first

message as a candidate speaks to the ordinary Americans. Working class, middle class, educated

women, young immigrant girls. Hillary Clinton speaks to them after they speak to the audience.

Hillary Clinton sends a hopeful message to “everyday Americans”. In a red & blue tailleur that

evokes the colors of the American flag, a quasi-smiling Hillary Clinton asks for ordinary

people’s support. The poster (Fig. 13) instead shows a smiling Hillary Clinton, which gave me

evidence that the problem is that the TV as a device does not like her, and that she

underperforms because she does not look “natural” when she is on video. The same issue costed

Richard Nixon the presidency in 1960.

Fig. 13. Hillary for America. First political ad. April 2015.

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At the beginning of the presidential run, Hillary Clinton’s campaign portrayed her as a

reassuring, smiling woman, elegant but not fancy, a serious and positive politician how is able to

lead America through the future. The logo clearly signifies steadiness and progressive ideals,

with illustrative blue arrows. Mark Kingsley points out this aspect: “Communication doesn’t

happen in a vacuum. Ideas are built upon existing ones and people discern meaning through

degrees of difference. Does it look like something I’ve seen before? Can I bring my previous

experience to bear here? One of the secrets of communication is understanding the role of

routine. You either break from routine, follow it, or slightly tweak it” (2016). Paradoxically, the

more Hillary Clinton tried to go back to the visual and the message of her first political ad, the

more she was accused of looking fake. The positive message that Hillary Clinton conveyed over

the primaries drastically changed as she identified in Donald Trump her major opponent.

“Smile. You Just Had a Big Night”. The Democratic Primaries and the Politics of Smiling

The Democratic debates on TV had an impact on Hillary Clinton’s self-representation

and highlighted an aspect that would become extremely relevant in the presidential run: by

analyzing the debates, it becomes clear that a discrepancy between image bites and sound bites

exists, and that if Hillary Clinton can win on the verbal message she conveys, she fails in the

nonverbal communication. I compared the audience’s real-time comments to the two democratic

debates with the tweets of media experts and political analysis, and the response to Hillary

Clinton’s performance was the same: she does not smile, she is scary, she looks self-centered and

emotionally un-affective. If in the first debate (Fig. 14) her nonverbal language did not convince

the audience, and the choice of a mustard coat did not appeal (the color was too cold and

reflected an idea of coldness that Hillary Clinton did not want to promote), in the second debate

she changed her strategy. The comments in the YouTube session (Fig. 15-17), as the debate

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between Clinton and Sanders was on air, clearly show Clinton’s struggle to in changing the

perception of the audience about her persona.

Fig. 14.

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Fig. 15-17.

Clinton’s smiling strategy looked so unusual to journalists that it became object of

attention. On March, the 15th, 2016, during the primaries night, FOX News’ Brit Hume and

MSNBC’s Joe Scorborough tweeted (Fig. 16) about her “angry face”. The media had a true

obsession over Hillary Clinton’s appearance:

Fig. 16. Fig. 17.

When a follower contrasted Brit Hume, the anchorman replied by insisting on “the

expression on her face” (fig. 17). But what is it about being told to smile?, Fortune asked in a

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response to Joe Scarborough’s tweet: “There’s the idea that smiling makes women look

“prettier,” and the implication that appearing attractive to men is one of our responsibilities.

Then there’s the condescension of being told the correct way to feel. (You should always be

happy!) Of course, a smile also makes you look friendlier—or perhaps I should say, more docile.

It’s a way of neutralizing a woman who might otherwise be read as a potentially threatening

presence” (Frya). Is the obsessive focus on smiling a political strategy created by the opponent

with the intent to weaken Hillary Clinton’s presence?

Tonya Reiman, an expert of nonverbal language writes for Inside Edition: “she smiles

just to mask whatever emotion she doesn't want you to see… This is known as a social smile.

There’s not much movement around the eyes and the lips aren't really elevated”. Reiman argues

that Hillary Clinton actually smiles as a mechanism of self-defense, contrasting the idea that the

politics of smiling was decided by Hillary Clinton’s strategists. Whether her smile was the

instinctive response to an uncomfortable situation or was the thoughtful strategy of her campaign

manager, Hillary Clinton did not represent herself for who she is and struggled in building a

public persona that looked authentic. The mediated representation of Hillary Clinton failed her

once again. That being said, the obsession about women’s smiling and angry faces is more than

the reaction to an archetype that wants women happy and maternal and reassuring. It is a

deliberate strategy to weaken women’s role and skills. Instead of fighting the politics of smiling,

Hillary Clinton’s campaign followed the opinion of media outlets, and put her candidate in the

awkward position of performing a role that simply did not fit her.

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Fig. 18. Hillary Clinton in the first debate.

If Hillary Clinton's smile is defined as “subversive, the necessary accessory to a

rhetorical and visual thrashing of Trump” (Kingston, 2016), when on September, the 30th, The

Atlantic’s David Frum questions whether it is sexist or not to discuss about Clinton's smiling

strategy, he implicitly confirms the existence of a ‘smile-issue’. It is also interesting that his

article comes after two tweets (Fig. 19-20) that were retweeted by his followers multiple times,

creating a Twitter trend.

Fig. 19-20. David Frum tweets after the first presidential debate.

I could track dozens of journals, newspapers and magazines discussing Hillary Clinton’s

smile during the presidential debates; The Altantic, U.S. News, The New York Times, The

Washington Post are just some of the major newspapers that focused on Hillary Clinton’s smile,

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building up a narrative that I believe had an impact on the presidential run. At the end of

September, The Daily Mail started questioning if Hillary’s smile “could cost her the election”,

since the social networks and Twitter in particular played a role in this campaign. Donald

Trump’s strategy to basically run his campaign and convey important messages on Twitter

necessarily forced the media—and Hillary Clinton—to use Twitter not only for brief messages

but for propaganda. When Hillary Clinton approached Twitter, Twitter was already “owned” by

Donald Trump.

Even if I avoid the analysis of the tweets and only track the titles on the newspapers, I

still can confirm that Hillary Clinton’s major struggle in this campaign was related to her

political image. When, in the first debate, she showed her best smile, the tweets (fig, 21-23) of

journalists were particularly harsh:

Fig. 21-23. Journalists’ tweets after the first presidential debate.

“Don’t cough. Train your eyes straight ahead lest those rumours of neurological problem

persist. Don’t be a policy wonk. Don’t over-prepare. Avoid prepackaged zingers. Smile. Don’t

lecture”, Kingston stated when discussing Hillary Clinton’s issues with her presidential look.

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This short passage summarizes the stress and pressure about Hillary Clinton’s appearance, not to

mention the narrative around her health. The presidential debates should have questioned Donald

Trump’s skills to be president, but the media only highlighted the candidates’ performance. The

tweets of spectators (fig. 24) seem to highlight that the main theme were Hillary Clinton’s facial

expressions.

In this campaign more than in the past, image bites dominated over sound bites, telling a

nonverbal, visual story about the candidate that did not match with the verbal message she tried

to convey. The political discourse, and the discussion about the country’s issues did not interest

anyone.

Fig. 24

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Conclusions. A Failed Mediated Representation of Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump used the media coverage about Hillary Clinton on his advantage. The

more the media were questioning Hillary Clinton’s smile and angry face, the more Donald

Trump would portray her as “unfit”, “sick”, “corrupted”, “crooked”. Although the mainstream

media was largely favorable to Hillary Clinton, they somehow portrayed a candidate that was

just too competent and not enough reliable. The focus on her facial expression and her

presumptive detachment from the everyday Americans made them believe that she was not a

trustable person, that she is not someone who cares for all the Americans. In this sense, Trump’s

campaign was successful in catching Hillary Clinton’s faults. Her comments on “the basket of

deplorables” became a negative trend, and clearly the FBI investigations and the Clinton

Foundation scandals affected Hillary Clinton’s image. The frames from some of Trump’s

political ads tend to portray Hillary Clinton as the queen of a dark world dominated by Wall

Street and big, bad corporations. The carefully chosen frames of Hillary Clinton (from the

hearings in front of the Congress after the Benghazi attacks to the U.S. Embassy) reinforce any

stereotype about anger (Fig. 25-28) and smile (Fig. 29-30).

Fig. 25-26 Donald Trump’s last political ad. 4 November 2016.

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Fig. 27-28. Donald Trump’s last political ad. 4 November 2016.

Fig. 29-30. Donald Trump’s political ad.

With these two political ads, Donald Trump campaign counts on the visual memory of

the American; people still have impressed in their minds the images of Hillary Clinton’s

testimony before the Congress after Benghazi. The ads use a (un)popular moment in Hillary

Clinton’s political career to mark that moment and make it indelible in the mind of the people;

and they insist on specific image bites to repeat to the voters that she is the image of corruption,

corporations, the politics of Washington. The ad also edits some of Hillary Clinton’s speeches—

her voice is also altered—to emphasize the negative message.

A Washington Post article titled “Debating While Female” edited by Janell Ross has

three prominent scholars in the field of Women and Media Studies discussing about the people’s

perception of Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate and a professional. Voters already hold

preferences for male officeholders and rely on stereotypes to infer candidates’ traits, issue

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competencies, and ideologies (Luton, 2012: 304). With women, there is the expectation that they

will always be friendly and polite.

So, Hillary Clinton is supposed to be cooperative and pleasing. “And we already know

that, instead, she’s always accused of sounding shrill” (Borisoff). Sociologist Jennifer Lawless

remarks that, “half the country simply hates her (Lawless). Therefore, Hillary Clinton can never

win. I can’t say for sure that the media’s ‘dehumanization’ of Hillary Clinton undermined her

run—many elements contributed in weakening her candidacy—but I consider the obsession

about Hillary Clinton’s facial expression as a form of gender discrimination. No one stressed

Donald Trump about smiling or his presidential look, and no one paid attention to his suits, but

Hillary Clinton was supposed to look smiling and attractive without losing in credibility. The

report from Hayes and Lawless’ book Women on the Run (fig. 31), is from 2012 but it is still

valid to make a point out of the importance that appearance has on the voters’ choices.

Fig. 31. Public perceptions of female candidates’ experiences (Hayes and Lawless, 2016: 3)

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Voters seem to expect women to be feminine and tough, matching the stereotypical male

imaginary; that being said, not only male but also female voters casted their vote for Donald

Trump, proving that either the American voters are not sexist at all or that they all are. Or maybe

voters simply “hold preferences for male officeholders and rely on stereotypes to infer

candidates’ traits, issue competencies, and ideologies” (Luton, 2012: 304).

After November, the 8th, Clare Foran in The Atlantic praised Hillary Clinton’s iconic role

in reshaping the role of women in politics and in the American culture: “As a presidential

candidate, Clinton was vanquished. But as a feminist icon, she lives on. She’s the women who

withstand the painful misogyny of American society. She’s telling your daughter to raise her

hand in class, even if the boys make fun of her. She’s pantsuits and she’s the more than 3 million

members of the Facebook group Pantsuit Nation. She’s every qualified woman who had an

unqualified man beat her out for a job”.

This passionate defense of Hillary Clinton not as a politician but as a woman succeeds as

a honest, authentic portrait that finally re-humanizes Hillary Clinton.

Is the article propagandistic? Yes. Is it emotional? Of course. And probably that is the

narrative that her campaign needed to build. That is where the campaign failed. They jumped on

the train of the media’s discourse around the “presidential look”, they tried to change Hillary

Clinton’s message too many times in 18 months, they lost the focus by following Donald

Trump’s campaign and speeches, redesigned Clinton’s political image around enthusiastic

celebrities, sold-out concerts. They could not fight the negative ads and confused the voters, that

ended up voting for the person that they perceived close to them. A man of the people. Someone

who cares. It does not matter whether it is true or not. It matters if the message succeeds. Donald

Trump has become the king of the post-truth era. Hillary Clinton fell.

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The new humanization of Hillary Clinton as a losing “champion” (to recall the message

from her very first political ad), an intangible figure running in woods as depicted by a recent

SNL sketch, makes Hillary Clinton look nicer, kind and ironic. Now that she is not forced to

perform. She had to lose the election, before she could reconnect her persona with the American

people.

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References

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Darwin, C. 1872. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. London: Murray.

Donald Trump’s Final 2-minute Ad. 2016. 5 November. https://youtu.be/shqblcQW2RI.

Feldman Barrett, L., and E. Bliss-Moraeu. 2009. She’s Emotional. He’s Having a Bad Day:

Attributional Explanations for Emotion Stereotypes. Emotion. Vol. 9. N. 5. 649-658.

DOI: 10.1037/a0016821

Foran, C. 2016. “Will Hillary Clinton's Defeat Set Back Women in Politics?”. The Atlantic. 27

November. http://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/508340/

Fraizer, C. 2016. “The Iconic Hillary Clinton”. The Atlantic. 13 November.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/hillary-clinton-icon/507503/.

Frum, D. 2016. “Is It Sexist to Comment on Clinton’s Smile?”. The Atlantic. 30 September.

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