Say "Yes" to This Mess?

 The above ad from the College Republican National Committee kind of looks like an attempt at outreach to women, doesn't it? The actors in the ad are all women. It covers things women really care about, like the budget and pretty dresses!

 Seriously? The Rick Scott "dress" wanted to piss-test welfare recipients at a cost to the taxpayers of a bunch of money that companies he was associated with would collect on.  Dresses are very rarely associated with Medicare fraud.  If Rick Scott were a dress, he might not look all that pretty. Particularly not to women voters. But let's just be silly and ask--why is a gender essentialist and condescending ad like this the way the College Republicans decided to support their guy? Is this one of those tone-deaf deals like the "Diversity Bake Sales" where they kind of thought more people would be in on the joke?

I just think it's dickish. You wear a wedding dress one time on one special day. The policies of a governor can last for a long time. A politician isn't a "brand" or a "pricetag", and the analogy is insultingly reductionist.

But this kind of "relating to women via women things" instead of actually boasting policies that women can feel good about isn't startling or new. Just recently, a Florida politician tried to explain away his decision to hold a men's only fundraiser by likening it to "women stuff"--a lingerie party! (Goodness knows I would only wear underwires and itchy lace to bed just for me because it feels so good--how I am not incorporating babydoll teddies into my day-to-day regime is beyond me--you know how us hens do get together and just for some reason select to spend large money on small garments that seem to have been put together by a team of engineers with cleavage rehabilitation in mind because sisterhood and chardonnay. I challenge all of his assumptions, I do!)

Another brilliant mind in the women's outreach vein did an ad that likened Obama to a very bad boyfriend because us sisters have all been there, haven't we? (Everything about that message is kind of lying and wrong, on so, so many levels.)  So been there and done with that "boyfriend thing" though, GOP.

Honestly, maybe the GOP should just try and outreach caterpillars. They could hardly do worse than they have been doing with women.

But in case you were confused--the Republican Party is still made up of a diverse bunch of stock photo people. Of which some are even women. Because they care.