How 'mamisma' can change politics
Harriet Rubin
Is America ready to elect a female president? Of course we are. The most macho countries — Chile, Liberia, Germany — have recently elected women chief executives as symbols of change. So how can a female candidate in America tap the desire for change and avoid tripping on the stereotypes of gender prejudice? Can she appear presidential before we have a model of what female presidential power is?
Even the most powerful woman in politics can't yet hold her own against the most powerful man, it seems: When Bill and Hillary Clinton take a stage together, he makes her disappear, like a magician and his assistant. How then would she look on stage against Republican Sen. John McCain? She'll have to draw consistently on her "mamisma," not machismo. (After all, there are already too many alpha male Democrats in play.) And I'm not talking about machisma or female ferocity.
Mamisma is femininity defined by mature and maternal qualities. It lets a female candidate make men look like wimps while doing the taboo-dance, enticing people to fall in love with her.
The history of female leaders — queens, presidents, prime ministers — reveals that they sell mamisma hard. Israeli's Golda Meir, for example, was no conventional object of desire. She seduced by making her desires plain, like any good mother. In Munich, Steven Spielberg's historically inspired account of Israel's plot to avenge the murder of its Olympic athletes, Meir takes five minutes to persuade a young man to abandon his pregnant wife and promising career for her own desperate mission. That is mamisma.
Take a look at Nancy Pelosi on the occasion of her swearing-in as House speaker earlier this month. She was engulfed by children. Is it accidental that the most famous medieval icons depict a Madonna embracing people whose faces beam with childlike innocence? It's no accident: It's mamisma.
The beauty of mamisma
Mamisma makes a strong woman appear ultimately non-threatening — a quality we have not seen much in our youth-intoxicated culture.
But the world is changing. In France, never a bastion of powerful women, presidential candidate Segolene Royal, 53, is selling herself as the mother protector of the nation. She's taking a page from the playbook of great queens and women who behave like them.
After their youthful sexuality fades, mamisma women stand toe to toe with powerful men. They often refer to love and trust as bold alternatives to the hard edges of powers that be.
Queen Elizabeth I sought her subjects' love; she assumed she had their respect. Eleanor Roosevelt became a saint by insisting that the bottom line of government is love. By contrast, fired Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina wore toughness like a set of dentures; she denied there was anything womanly about her. That is anti-mamisma.
Mamisma works because after age 50, the laws of power change. Law No. 1: After 50 a woman is praised for what she had been blamed for, as legendary anthropologist Margaret Mead believed. A woman's youthful mistakes may be re-evaluated as signs of her bravery and vision.
Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid is today hailed for the same weird designs that earlier guaranteed her rejection by potential clients. Hillary Clinton might remind us that she was an early champion of health care reform and that she suffered attacks from all sides for it. Advisers may warn candidate Clinton to sidestep this chapter in her past. But if she were to forget this advice and follow the rules of mamisma, she would promote the fact that surviving the onslaught is her war-hero record. McCain, too, fought in an unpopular and losing war.
The second law of mamisma: The differences between Mars and Venus are fading in that sizable demographic, the baby boomers, the majority of whom are 50 or older. The sexes don't simply grow older at different speeds; men mature into femininity. While men become more emotional, rounder and softer in physique, women tend to bulk up. They are acknowledged as stronger than men after age 50 because "women age more slowly," says Eric Walsh, a geriatrician at Beth Israel Medical Centering New York. Women also become the primary caretakers, as men become physically the weaker sex.
The right words
This is a new playing field. A mamisma woman will not gear her message to either gender, and she will wrap tough platforms in emotional language: To stand against sending more troops into Iraq, Pelosi would emotionalize the discussion, noting that Bush is trying not to appear weak, the criticism his father suffered.
The third law of mamisma is that, as University of Chicago scholar Wendy Doniger points out, "Men would marry their mothers if they could." Why? Because they like being reminded that they are great. It's the ultra-maternal message. A female candidate would likewise remind the electorate that a golden future awaits — a message more seductive than better homeland security.
Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine in the 12th century led a revolt away from her John McCain-like husband, King Henry. While he was out selling people on crusades, Eleanor built a court of love which appealed to the child in everyone, the very opposite of her husband's vision. The youth of Europe joined her in droves. This extremely alternative vision let Eleanor escape the secondary roles as wife and helper, assert her independent sovereignty and dispense her own justice and her own patronage.
Eleanor's original ideal of courtly love informs our culture to this day. As in Eleanor's time, there is a constituency that wants to feel the love.
Mamisma is anti-Machiavelli: seduction over divisiveness. Is it a good thing? In a world run like a PlayStation war game, maturity would be a nice antidote. After all, who wouldn't want a return to the seriousness and authority of the Founding Fathers...even if this time around, they just happen to be women?
Harriet Rubin is author of The Mona Lisa Stratagem: The Art of Women, Age and Power, which will be out in May. She is also a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
