Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
Does Mitt Romney have sex appeal? Does he need it to win?
That this campaign has been dubbed the dullest campaign ever cuts like a knife into Romney’s most serious defect: he seems so totally boring and uncharismatic. This has led at least one person to ask if Mitt Romney can make boring sexy. If America is a "sexy [expletive]", as Meghan McCain and Michael Ian Black call our country, then will she be willing to go all the way with Romney come November 4?
These were the questions running through my head upon reading the Newsweek (Tiger Beat) cover story on Mitt Romney’s alleged wimpiness. What immediately struck me about the Newsweek “wimp” cover is that it was an attack on Mitt Romney’s sexuality above all–his manliness.
It isn’t fine that Romney has changed his view on every issue. It’s pathetic. It suggests that he lives in fear of America’s right wing. That’s the real wimp factor.
Calling a guy a wimp is like calling him a sissy. Asking, rhetorically, if Romney is too insecure to be president serves one aim: It’s meant to strike down the one quality that every man needs to have to be considered manly: confidence. In the last election cycle, Obama overflowed with confidence, so much so that he, at times, seemed petulant and cocky. Better that, though, than the alternative. No one wants to see a potential president get emasculated.
It’s important to think about a candidate’s sex appeal, because sex appeal matters, especially among women voters. Back in 2008, Obama’s sex appeal was inescapable and it’s what carried him into his historic victory.
Recall that in August 2008–exactly this time four years ago–The Nation ran a breathless essay titled “Obama as Sex Symbol” by JoAnn Wypijewski:
In politics as in pop, legions of little girls jumping out of their panties can’t be wrong. That’s the vital lesson so far of Election ’08. I watched a throng of them in November 2006, teenagers in their short skirts and breathlessness, jumping and jittering, hands to cheeks, screaming for Barack Obama.so cool he’s hot, a centrifugal force commanding attention so ruthlessly that it appeared effortless, reducing everyone around him to a sidekick, and the girls in the front rows to jelly…
He wasn’t yet a candidate. He was Frank Sinatra, so cool he’s hot, a centrifugal force commanding attention so ruthlessly that it appeared effortless, reducing everyone around him to a sidekick, and the girls in the front rows to jelly.
Then there was the Obama Girl, of course, who sang about having a crush on the future commander-in-chief. And Tina Brown, who wrote about Obama’s “heat quotient.” And Judith Warner, writing in the New York Times, about fantasies of the women she knows :
Many women — not too surprisingly — were dreaming about sex with the president. In these dreams, the women replaced Michelle with greater or lesser guilt or, in the case of a 62-year-old woman in North Florida, whose dream was reported to me by her daughter, found a fully above-board solution: “Michelle had divorced Barack because he had become ‘too much of a star.’ He then married my mother, who was oh so proud to be the first lady,” the daughter wrote me.
There was some daydreaming too, much of it a collective fantasy about the still-hot Obama marriage. “Barack and Michelle Obama look like they have sex. They look like they like having sex,” a Los Angeles woman wrote to me, summing up the comments of many. “Often. With each other. These days when the sexless marriage is such a big celebrity in America (and when first couples are icons of rigid propriety), that’s one interesting mental drama.”
And let’s not forget the thrill that went up Chris Matthews’ leg.
The point is, part of Obama’s cache during his last campaign was his sex appeal–his charm, charisma, youth, and energy. That may have been his only appeal, in fact. But that was clearly enough.
What about Romney? His perceived sex appeal can be determined by the amount of coverage it’s received–which is, by my count, pretty much none. I did find one tidbit from 2002, which seems so long ago in political time that it’s charming to read now. People magazine, of all places, listed Romney back then as one of the 50 most beautiful people on the scene.
Just don’t tell him he’s arrestingly handsome. “Nothing embarrasses Mitt more than when someone says he’s good-looking,” says Cindy Gillespie, a colleague on the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Yet now that Romney, 55, who lives in Belmont, Mass., is the GOP candidate for governor of his home state, it’s hard not to notice his blinding smile. Says Olympic skeleton gold medalist Jimmy Shea, 33: “I’d be really excited to look like him when I get to be his age.” Political critics like to paint the 6’2″ Mormon as a too-perfect Ken doll. The son of former Michigan governor George Romney amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune as a venture capitalist at Boston’s Bain Capital and has been married 33 years to his high school sweetheart, Ann, with whom he has five sons. But childhood pal Tom McCaffrey insists that while Romney’s “family looks like a Gap ad, which makes us all a bit cynical,” he is a man of “immense credibility and character—which shows in his face.”
Beyond random message board discussions of Romney’s sex appeal, the verdict seems to be that the former governor of Massachusetts is a sexless organization man with a pretty face.
But this all just goes to show how superficial how definition of manliness has become. One thing that Tina Brown pointed out in her 2008 analysis of Obama’s sex appeal is that it was androgynous. That makes Obama a perfect idol of manliness in our gender-bending time of beta-males and alpha-females. Obama is about as far from the alpha-male ideal as one can get: He is a bookish academic who wrote a lot of “very bad poetry” in his youth (even his politics are poetic, we are told). And he talks a lot. Some would call him a master sophist, defined more by his dazzling rhetoric than by his actions. Is this the new manly? Is this what passes for sex appeal? There’s something very adolescent–dare I say “wimpy”–about the poet-as-president model.
Against the current trends, Romney strikes me as a guy who embodies a more traditional version of manliness that’s absent from the culture today. He may seem boring, but behind that flat facade is a man who has provided for his family, assumed leadership roles in business, devoted himself to his religion, and committed himself to public service. In other words, he is a model of civic virtue, a man of action rather than a man of verbiage (remember Charles Krauthammer’s brilliant column comparing Obama to Hamlet?). Romney is no young Hamlet. He is an adult. Maybe this isn’t sexy, but it represents one prototype of manliness that we could use more of in the United States.
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Comments:
Jun '10
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
I think the late Anna Nicole Smith would recognize Mitt Romney's sexiness right away.
Jun '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
How much does anyone wanna bet that Mitt's getting more tail with Ann in a week than Barack & Michelle get in a month. Check the vacation flight records if you doubt me.
Feb '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
Republicans and Republican swing voters are interested in manliness, and, as you pointed out, Romney has enough manliness (especially as a devoted family man and successful businessman) - far more than our boy-wonder president.
We don't want the Vogue voters.
May '10
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
A candidate can do a lot of things for his image except one: He cannot change the shallowness, vapidity or stupidity of the overwhelming majority of Liberal-Left leaning voters.
Remember, these are the same people who liked John Kerry and thought John Edwards was a fine example of a Democratic family man.
Feb '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
Frankly, the less attention we pay to the Left's more adolescent drivel - including the covers of magazines like Newsweek - the better.
May '10
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
Actually, we old, sexless dorks find Romney reassuring and familiar.
Try as I might, I will, never be "cool", because I have absolutely no bad boy in me. Sexy public figures are not that way because they are calm, competent, and predictable, they are thrilling because they are sort of dangerous. Elvis or Tony Bennett?
Jul '10
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
After four years of a cool exciting hip celebrity, I want a boring president.
I want Calvin Coolidge, but Mitt Romney will do.
Sep '10
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
The fact that Judith Warner wrote of the women she knows who admit they fantasize about Obama that way probably tells you a lot about the size of the bubble she lives in.
I'm sure it is also something that would have made the suffragists of a century ago cringe.
Dec '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
Exactly. And may I also add as a woman that there is absolutely nothing more irresistible than a handsome, physically fit, 'well-soled' man with intelligence, an elite education, financial acumen and a penchant for both the 'big rescue' and his longtime "sweetheart."
May '10
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
Don't know what they're talking about. Obama is creepy. Like that other androgyne, Leonardo DiCaprio. Yuck.
I think smart is very sexy. I believe I've previously mentioned my mad crush on my grad school biostatistics professor. Then again, my husband is a chess master. And portrait artist. Maybe I'm not representative...
Dec '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
I hope you are!
Edited on August 2, 2012 at 12:36amApr '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
If I was not married and selected to have a blind date with Mitch, I would be ecstatic. He is not sexy because he does not have that Bill Clinton, weeell hello there little lady, glint in his eye. If he were he single, that is a who,e ither story. Obama is handsome and a great orator. His writing would get my initial respect too. He would also be an exciting date but no match with Mitch in jeans and denim shirt discussing entrepreneurs.
Edited on August 2, 2012 at 12:38amApr '12
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
If I wereUnable to edit! Got all fluffed up thinking about a date with Mitt.
Dec '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
Hey, totally understandable how that could happen. :)
Nov '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
With you all the way, Emily!
Jul '11
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
Since I'm a man, I won't comment on Mitt's "sexiness", but regarding his manliness, he's certainly got the competition beat:
Feel free to add your own.
-E
Sep '10
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
Mitt's kind of manliness isn't gone from the culture. It's just not fashionable in the media centers of NY and LA. There are plenty of men like him in the US--and they're not impressed with Obama.
Oct '10
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
Rush Limbaugh
Oct '10
Re: Mitt Romney's Sex Appeal & the Wimp Cover
So Romney still thinks Paul Ryan (of the Ryan Plan) is not a good choice for VP?