It’s not that I’m against Ben Bernanke. Well, that’s a lie. Even when he was re-appointed by Obama I was unsettled. It reminded me of the arsonist who is a firefighter, lights the fire, then puts it out and wins a medal. Correct me if I’m wrong – I’m so not a finance girl – but wasn’t he in charge of the country’s finances a year and a half ago when we all fell into the abyss? And, wasn’t he the one who didn’t see it coming who had all the information to see it coming? Now, he’s a hero? A Person of the Year? Only in America can you make a comeback like that. In most companies, you would be fired if you didn’t see the hammer coming down and tanked the company – whoops I mean country.
But it’s not even that it’s Bernanke. It’s that in 1986 when they changed the cover from Man of the Year to Person of the Year, I thought we had a fighting chance as women to be in the running. Not so much. There hasn’t been another woman since Corazon Aquino in 1986, and frankly, I was hard pressed to understand why it was her anyway. She was not a woman who built her own ladder of success; she rode on the coattails of her husband. Granted he was a dead husband, who died to make his country better, but her? He gets assassinated and because she follows to take over for him, she gets Person of the Year. Don’t get me wrong, if my ex-husband was assassinated (it could happen, but let’s not go there), I would never have gone back to the country where the deed occurred to take over for him. She was brave, yes, but what did she actually do when she got there to be Person of the Year? There were tons of braver people this year than her. Person of the Year is not about bravery.
Back to the point. The point is this. Why are women never Person of the Year? Is it because the kinds of careers that build Person of the Year winners are not available to women? Is it because we don’t want those kinds of jobs and don’t seek to obtain them? Is it because Time Magazine is built on a masculine agenda instead of a gender neutral agenda? All of the above? I don’t really care which it is. I just want them to go back to calling it what it is; Man of the Year and stop pretending it’s something else.
The guys can have a Man of the Year if they want. Frankly Rhett, we don’t give a damn. It really means nothing, and let’s face it, women have never needed the limelight (or is it we have been raised to humbly reject it?) so it’s not like we start lobbying for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year like we do for the Academy Award’s Best Actress and stuff that really matters. My mind wanders here to the Sports Illustrated bathing suit issue, and we all know that I need to drop that right here.
But here is an interesting thought. How about a Time Magazine for women? What if we did our own magazine that highlighted stories that highlight women’s participation in them? Hillary Clinton. The head of Germany whose name I can’t remember because I never read it in anything? We could get the editors at Bride’s Magazine to do it. I know them pretty well. They are really smart and like a well-oiled factory from Detroit, they could adjust a few rivets and put out a Time Magazine for women instead of Bride’s Magazine for brides. They could then recycle all the Bride’s Magazines from the last three years and the brides coming into bridedom wouldn’t even notice. I believe that Bride’s Magazine has a high recycle value with renewed subscribers that only last until their own wedding is over, statistically one year after they subscribe.
This is one of my ideas that really should be considered. I’m not kidding. Let’s do it on the news stations as well. One channel of news by women for women. There are no women at the top in news except on the camera, and let’s face it, it’s not about their political acumen. I hate Barbara WaWa who has yet to ask a follow-up question that doesn’t include some narcissistic something or other about herself. That’s another story.
Anyway, we have the power. We are more than half the country’s population and in many cases we handle the money. Women unite! I’m very busy with my blog, Christmas shopping, and trying to find out how to avoid the traffic in LA so I don’t have time, but one of you out there does.
