Dystopic Blonde
The media and political landscape seems to have a plethora of a certain kind of women: The Power Blonde. They have lots of agency combined with a truck load of motivation, which they then use to support authoritarianism. Like the blonde talking heads on Fox News. Or Julie Bishop or Michaela Cash. There's something sociopathic and authoritarian about the Power Blondes on the political right. Recently some of them have taken to complaining that their side of politics is gender deaf but of course, if you join the party for gender deafness. It must be hard to do feminism when you don't believe in feminism but you want the fruits of feminism.
They're not just on the right, the left has them too. It's like when you see Cate Blanchett heading up a group of actresses demanding diversity. I look at that and wonder how it is that the Power Blonde gets to head up that posse and not, say, Sonequa Martin-Green. As a man of not-whiteness, I kind of wonder a little about that sort of soft-shoe-shuffle whereby the Power Blonde is on the inside of the diversity debate and I'm on the outside looking in. Or you know, Tanya Plibersek telling us about diversity in Australian Tertiary Education or something... it kind of makes me squint a bit. I feel like I'm copping friendly fire. What can I do but pick up my guitar and play, and get on my knees and pray, I won't get fooled again.
Back in the early seasons of 'Mad Men', there's an episode where Betty Draper gets the shits with her neighbour scolding her kids so she gets her gun out and starts shooting the neighbour's pigeons. It stuck with me because as an image, it was an empowered woman choosing to do whatever the hell she liked. At the same time it was completely sociopathic. It's one of those scenes that are so shocking the episode ends without repercussions. We never see the neighbour again in the series. Presumably he moved away.
A lot can be said about Don Draper's sexism and his escapist infidelities that brings about the end to his marriage to Betty, but we are also privy to the hard-lean to the right that Betty takes as she gains more agency through the series. The irony being the liberties Don seeks are personal, so even in the most conservative, patriarchy-drenched moments, Don's personal ethos is small 'l' liberal. Betty on the other hand is progressive to the degree she thinks something should be done about improving society. She is compassionate and believes in structure. Yet her personal ethos is libertarian and fascist. She is nakedly a gun-toting maniac in that scene, and what we learn from that moment is that Betty's desire for control can only lead to a dystopian authoritarianism.
All that aside, I've recently been thinking about my own interactions with the Power Blondes in my life and a lot of them are like candidates to be made into 'Karen' memes. Combative, assertive, sometimes casually racist or classist or both racist-and-classist, wowsers, and ready to throw authoritarian barbs at any passing person. Some of them, I even dated, although I can't for the life of me figure out why they tried me from their end of things. It's not like there was ever going to be any future.
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