By Seila Rizvic

Becoming a successful female in a male-dominated world is a difficult thing. If you are able to get through the constant, overwhelming media messages that try to condition you into being submissive, silent and small and are able to come out the other side a psychologically healthy and functional adult, kudos to you, many of us are not so lucky.

The women who have been able to accomplish great things in their lives have always inspired other women and girls to do the same. Unfortunately, the inspiring messages these women send are often drowned out by the media’s messages that they’re a spinster/slut, too hot/too ugly, mannish, bitchy, old, fat etc. It’s an appalling trend and feminists writers and activists have been reporting on it for years. Recently, Jezebel writer Erin Gloria Ryan wrote a piece entitled “Can We Please Stop Setting Weight Loss Goals?” in response to Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill publicly announcing her weight loss goals on Twitter. I, and many other women I’m sure, share her frustration.

We somehow expect actors, pop stars and models to be ridiculed for their weight, though there’s no reason they should be subjected to such scrutiny either. But when women are able to gain success in their field as politicians, policy-makers, activists or business professionals –fields where their appearance has absolutely no bearing on their ability to practice their job – and are STILL subjects of public criticism regarding the way they look, it really illustrates perfectly the misogyny that pervades the media. It’s even more frustrating when women seem to be publically subjecting themselves to this kind of disparagement, like Senator McCaskill did in her tweets. The mainstream media does it enough, we don’t need to be doing to ourselves.

Just last month, German Prime Minister Angela Merkel was all over newspaper headlines after  having been called an “unfuckable lard-arse.” This attack didn’t come from some backward political pundit or journalist or even from some no-name bitter minister from the opposing political party. It came from another head of state. Sure, a  head of state that has been known to spout some pretty offensive nonsense, but that’s no excuse.

Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister in question, is a member of the international community and the head of the fifth most populated country in Europe, and to speak of another high-ranking politician in that way really shows, without even going into the fat-phobic issues surrounding this, an utter lack of respect for women in general. What’s worse, this isn’t Merkel’s first time being on the receiving end of inappropriate behaviour of heads of state. Remember the shoulder-rubbing incident, between Bush and Merkel at the 2006 G8 Summit? Completely inappropriate.

Angela Merkel isn’t the only one who has had to deal with this kind of nonsense. Female politicians are constantly being treated differently than male politicians, most commonly through having to deal with criticisms based on their appearance. When Hilary Clinton is described as not being feminine enough, as looking too old and too fat, we must wonder why the same concerns are not discussed for a male candidate/politician.

It’s not just those running for election who are up for critique either, former federal appellate judge Sonia Sotomayor was at the center of a controversy involving the question of whether or not she was too fat to replace David Souter as a Supreme Court Justice. A similar uproar was heard when Obama appointed Dr. Regina Benjamin as the U.S. Surgeon General. The media questioned whether she was too fat for the position.

Rather than celebrating the fact that these women were entering fields that had previously been off-limits to people of their race and gender, the media undermined their professionalism, their dedication, and education by reducing them simply to a body that we believe we have the right to pass judgment on. We don’t have that right. Nobody has that right. We need to start seeing women in positions of power as people worthy of respect, in the same way we need to start seeing ALL women as worthy of respect.