My local news just reported that America’s first openly transgender mayor, Stu Rasmussen, has been censured in a 4-3 vote of the Silverton, Oregon, city council (Rasmussen gets a vote) for wearing an inappropriately short miniskirt while acting as mayor at a children’s event. The council meeting was packed with media and many citizens arrived to testify.
I think I would have voted for the city council to meet with Stu in private, maybe over a lunch, and say, “Hey, Stu, great legs, but could you save the miniskirts for after work hours? And maybe not at a kids event? It’s nothing personal; no matter what your gender, we can’t have the mayor going all ‘Sharon Stone / Basic Instinct’ on city time.”
But there was a citizen’s complaint and the city had to take action. People can’t be bothered to take to the streets and protest stolen elections or for single payer health care, but hey, Stu wore a miniskirt, let’s go yak about how offended we are for the cameras.
Gender politics certainly make analysis difficult, so I try to imagine this story as applied to a middle-aged woman. The only way I can imagine the story gets as much play is if she’s of Angelina Jolie-level hotness. I’d like to believe that regardless of hotness, I feel the same way, that the skirt is certainly too provocative for business attire and the issue is too trivial to deserve so much news coverage.
Ugh. KGW just flashed the “next at 11” promo with Mayor Stu as the lead scoop. We’ve got a significant percentage of people believing the president is an illicit Kenyan usurper and this is what we’re going to delve into. No wonder I never watch TV news anymore.
