Dear Michelle: Boycott!
This week’s G8 summit in L’aquila, Italy, will convene not only the world’s leaders but, in a bow perhaps to older days when summits required travel over great distances and therefore entire retinues were in tow, also their spouses. The G8’s first ladies have received an appeal from a small group of European social scientists, urging them to boycott in protest over the way its host, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, treats women.
Right on.
Here in the United States, we’re all too familiar with men in positions of power willing to risk a whole lot for sex with (mostly younger) women who aren’t their spouses. The list is nauseatingly long, and includes governors Mark Sanford and Eliot Spitzer; presidents Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy; and senators John Edwards, John Ensign and Gary Hart.
Like Spitzer, Berlusconi has a penchant for prostitutes, allegedly paying young women to attend parties. But Berlusconi’s treatment of women goes beyond the personal to the political.
It’s not just that Berlusconi has behaved badly. He systematically discriminates against women by sexually objectifying them. At one end of this continuum of treatment is his reference to the women of his country as decorative objects, when saying to American businessmen that they should invest in Italy because “we have the most beautiful secretaries, stupendous girls.” At the other is his lawyer’s remarking that even if the prime minister had spent the night with an “escort girl” at his Roman palazzo on U.S. election night last November, as alleged, it was not a crime because he was “only the end user.”
The sexual objectification of women appears as a benevolent form of sexism, disguising itself as appreciation. But make no mistake: The reduction of a woman to a sexual object, or likening a member of a minority group to, say, a chimp or a gorilla, is the very ground upon which overt and institutional discrimination is built. Violence against these dehumanized targets is then more easily justified and excused. Advertiser’s and street whistler’s objectifying attitudes toward women are damaging enough. When displayed by the prime minister of Italy, they are incalculably more so.
Berlusconi, a self-proclaimed lover of women, does not seem to understand or to care about any of this, to the great embarrassment of half of Italy, and often to amusement of the other half. Will the G8 first ladies be able to convince him to cut it out?
The proposed boycott is a unique opportunity for our own impressive first lady, Michelle Obama, to show leadership on behalf of women around the world. In standing publicly against the sexual objectification of women, she is uniquely positioned to not only take aim at this insidious brand of discrimination, but also to redefine her own role while she’s at it. Perhaps it’s even time also to disband the “first lady” concept, which dates back to 1849 and Dolley Madison, altogether.
How to do that? Veronica Lario announced the end of her marriage to Berlusconi, which is certainly one way to shun the moniker. Another is for the rest of us to get over our tendency to demote even highly accomplished women by focusing almost exclusively on their physical appearance, and let them be strong, independent partners of their strong, independent spouses.
Better yet, vote them into office.
Tomi-Ann Roberts is the Winkler Herman Professor of Psychology at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.
