Though Margot Robbie’s delightful tributes to Barbie on the red carpet have become a fun staple this season, seeing a possible homage to Barbie on a presidential debate stage this year was definitely a surprise. During the final, pivotal primary debate on Jan. 10, five days before the Republican Iowa Caucus, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley sported a dress that could be described as blush pink topped off with pearls. That wasn’t an accident and she could just ride the Barbie wave all the way to the White House.
Here’s what I mean.
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While I haven’t come across data indicating that Hillary Clinton’s famous pantsuits cost her the 2016 election, there is plenty of data confirming that men like women who epitomize traditional attractiveness and femininity, particularly women candidates. There’s no perfect formula for achieving this, but Haley’s campaign has been sending signals that they at least know that for women candidates to have any chance at the presidency, there is a formula — and it does not involve pantsuits.
Others have previously dissected Haley’s style choices in far more detail than I will here. For me the real story is why her sartorial preferences matter — particularly for women and specifically women of color.
In a nutshell, women of color must spend lots of energy achieving an appearance that will help us succeed at work, but even more importantly, will not hinder us. CBS personality Julie Chen, who is Chinese American, has talked openly about being spurred by racially biased criticism to have surgery on her eyes to advance her on-camera career. As I’ve previously written, my transition from appearing on cable news to becoming a screenwriter, was driven in part by the constant pressures I faced as a Black woman because of my hair texture.
It is even more grueling for women in politics. Hillary Clinton has talked about how much earlier she had to rise before her male opponents due to her hair and makeup routine. (Ironically, I volunteered to discuss the Clinton study on air, makeup-free, for a cable network but was blocked from doing so. Go figure.)
Then there’s the wardrobe issue. While men in politics can get away with wearing versions of the same exact suit each and every day, female candidates not only have to worry about what clothes to wear (pants, dress or skirt), but also what shoes to wear (heels, flats or sneakers); which labels are appropriate (wearing high-end designers may signal either that you have taste or that you are out of touch with the average voter); and what color to wear or not to wear. (White is a nod to the suffragettes. Black is dignified, serious and safe and blue and red are safe standbys when color is preferred.)
Even for women who are not candidates, it can matter. Michelle Obama relied on sheaths and fit-and-flare dresses, as well as sweater sets, to soften her image and make her more relatable to a wider swath of Americans who may have found her earlier persona as a power-suit-wearing wife with a Harvard Law degree “intimidating.” So it is no coincidence that at the most pivotal debate in Iowa, Haley sported a ladylike dress that bore just enough pink to be noteworthy to little girls who may like Barbie and aspire to be president someday, as well as adult women columnists who write about such things. But neither was it the kind of pink that screams: “I care too much about fashion for you to take me seriously!” (For the record, I take fashion seriously, but plenty of serious people do not.)
Earlier in January, Haley similarly wore an elegant dress at a CNN town hall, following her biggest campaign gaffe to date (regarding the cause of the Civil War). She wore another at her recent Fox News town hall. In each case, she looked appropriate, but she also didn’t look like her predecessors. Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris — all formidable, substantive female presidential candidates before her — have been known for pants uniforms that seemed to signal, “I can compete with the boys.” Instead, Haley has been using fashion markers of traditional femininity to signal that she can perhaps do something more effective: tame the boys.
When Vivek Ramaswamy tried to dismiss her as Dick Cheney in three-inch heels back in November, she pithily replied, “I’d first like to say, they’re five-inch heels, and I don’t wear ’em unless you can run in ’em.” And she wasn’t wearing a pantsuit when she said it either. Though wearing the color white, which Clinton also wore in key moments to pay homage to the suffragists, Haley was wearing a suit that showed her legs — or perhaps more importantly her stilettos.
Even for those of us who may disagree with Haley on many things (in my case, her clumsy discussion of race recently), it is refreshing to see a woman who is rewriting the rules on what a leader can look like.
Of the many challenges women presidential candidates continue to face, the biggest perhaps is the image Americans have of a president. A 2022 survey about the ideal president found that 55 percent of Americans said a president’s gender doesn’t matter, but that leaves a large number of Americans who believe that it does. When asked directly about gender preferences, those preferring a male president outnumbered those preferring a woman by a 2-to-1 margin. (Apparently these people missed Issa Rae’s pitch perfect President Barbie!)
It’s not that shocking. Voters are being asked to move beyond more than a century of status quo. Yes Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon were quite different, but if you ask someone who knows nothing about American history to distinguish the 46 portraits of our country’s leaders over the years, they might be stumped at seeing any difference at all. The exception of course would be the portrait of President Obama.
So now Haley finds herself in the unenviable position of trying to do what Obama did. Namely, she must challenge ethnic and racial stereotypes but without calling out the bigots espousing them — such as the birthers attacking her that previously attacked Obama — because if she goes too far, then the bigots’ friends won’t vote for her. Only unlike Obama she must do it, like Ginger Rogers, backwards and in high heels.
Some say she’s threading the world’s smallest needle. I say she’s walking the world’s skinniest tightrope, in the highest heels on a windy day. Though being attractive is helpful to all candidates, data indicates it matters much more for women. A well-known Northwestern study found that male and female voters were more likely to vote for women who were seen as attractive and competent. For men, competence was the priority, followed by being seen as “approachable.” Yet another recent study found that being seen as too beautiful is a liability for women business leaders.
So all Haley has to do to get to the White House is be attractive, but not too attractive, competent, yet approachable, while defying every single negative stereotype held about women, racial minorities and those from immigrant families, without ever acknowledging that most of those stereotypes are rooted in prejudice, so as not to offend those voters who espouse them. Most of all, she must never display public displeasure at any of those stereotypes, prejudices or indignities and she just has to do that in high heels and a smile.
It’s an awfully tall order, but so far the boys haven’t knocked her off that tight rope yet and as Barbie reminded us, never underestimate the power of a well-dressed woman.
