Imagine a 30-something male politician reassuring us that he will put off fatherhood while serving in elected office. It’s risible. No one worried that having another child would impede Vice President JD Vance’s work. Men in the public eye are almost never defined by their parental status. Nor are they defined by their bodies’ internal functioning. Men remain impervious to the kind of bodily surveillance women routinely endure. Senator Mitch McConnell, 84, has been absent from his post for nearly two months while managing to keep details of his medical status shrouded in secrecy.
Until now, female candidates for president — including Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris — have all been well past their reproductive years. They may have been mothers or stepmothers, but these women did not need to answer any queries about future child-rearing. But Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, is at the dawn of a new age, and she knows it.
And so, rather than deny or ignore her biology, and rather than take the more defensive (if understandable) stance that her body is her business, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is acknowledging that she has been and will be the subject of discussion, scrutiny and inspection. This is true for all women in the public eye (and, frankly, all women).
The congresswoman’s telegenic, stylish persona has attracted unusual amounts of attention and critique for years. Remember the flak she caught for wearing a “Tax the Rich” gown to the Met Gala in 2021? Knowing she can’t stop this, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez owns the narrative about her body. She has shared her makeup routine in a Vogue video, discussed the meaning of her trademark red lipstick and hoop earrings, and now is displaying her fertility choices with the same confidence. Her Sunday video even combined a glam session with the makeup and hair team backstage at ABC and her injection routine, pairing two types of bodily rituals. “We need to show more depictions of women having full lives,” she said on Instagram. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is refusing to disappear the reality of maintaining a female body.
Women remain, as linguists say, the “marked” sex, the nonstandard, defined as the opposite of the male norm. There is no one effortless way to look as a congresswoman, no uniform of business suit and tie that allows her to blend in. Most female politicians handle this by approximating male attire with some tweaks. Usually that involves a blazer, pearls, and very discreet hair and makeup — ideally, none of which gets talked about.
