Bitch is the New Black?

During the United States Presidential campaign we had our first female presidential candidate and our first black presidential candidate. Tina Fey went on SNL and asked people Why are they abandoning Hillary for Obama? Is it that most people think Hillary is a bitch? “Ya she is,” Tina say’s “and ya so is this one,” pointing to Amy Poehler her co-host. “Bitches get stuff done…. So I am saying, Texas and Ohio it’s not too late. Get on board….Bitch is the new black.”

I know many ‘bitches’. In fact I work for one. She is my attending Neurosurgeon Dr. Tina Duhaime who is a fervent supporter of Hillary Clinton. And she shares many of the same ambitious qualities and status within her field that Hillary Clinton does in hers. First becoming an extraordinary skillful neurosurgeon and then being one of only three females to be elected as an active member of The Society of Neurological Surgeons. But why is it that I could so readily accept Dr. Duhaime as my President and not Hillary Clinton?

It is because Dr. Duhaime also possesses feminine qualities which Hillary Clinton does not. Even while rejecting the “touchy feely” aspect of medicine for “outcomes and results”, I am always struck by the consolation and empathy that comes through during every one of Dr. Duhaime’s interactions with patients and their families. To ascribe that as a feminine quality is not being sexist. Just as I would not find it sexist if someone was to dismiss the new choice for James Bond because he was not manly enough.

This aversion to Hillary because of her lack of feminine qualities also resonates with most European women. When I asked my female friend in Paris why she didn’t like Hillary it was not because of her support to invade Iraq or her plan for Universal Healthcare, which she supports or because Hillary was a women. It is because “she acts like such a man”.

This response I found odd coming from a European women, especially considering recent elected European female political leaders Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel don’t necessarily strike me as womanly. In the United States the closest women we had as our Queen was Jacqeline Kennedy Onassis. I don’t know a man in the world that would turn down an evening with her sipping Negronis at Bemelman’s Bar at the Carlyle on any day of the week. In an ideal world it seems what we’d all prefer is for our women leaders not to be alpha males, but to be strong and carry with them great feminine qualities which men could all learn from.

That is why we will continue to love you Tina Fey. That is why I will continue to adore you Dr. Tina Duhaime. Tracy Morgan another SNL cast member who a few weeks later responded to Tina Fey’s proclamation would never shy away from calling either of you two his girl. So what I want to say is that we love these powerful women not because bitch is the new black, but because being a feminine bitch is.