I never can quite grasp what exactly it is feminists seem to have against women being attractive. I don’t get why they get so angry if a man thinks a woman is hot. I just don’t get it. I know I’m just a tool of the male patriarchy and all, but personally I’m not the least bit offended if a man thinks I’m sexy. It’s a compliment!! And it doesn’t bother me any to hear people talk about how hot Sarah Palin is, either. You know why? Because she is hot. But for whatever reason, feminists decry this as sexism. They’re so, so against women being seen as attractive. And one of the things they’ve slammed Sarah Palin for over and over again is her attractiveness. She wears skirts! But… but… but… Hillary wore pantsuits! The horror! And not to mention she likes her husband… she didn’t abort her disabled baby… she even (gasp!!) supports her teenage daughter’s pregnancy!! And, worst of all, women like her.

The feminists’ collective heads are spinning.

At Salon.com, we’ve got a couple of examples of feminists getting their panties in a wad over Sarah Palin’s sexiness. Hey, don’t be hatin’!

First, we have Cintra Wilson, with a really good one.

McCain’s running mate is a Christian Stepford wife in a sexy librarian costume. Women, it’s time to get furious.

Sarah Palin may be a lady, but she ain’t no woman.

I confess, it was pretty riveting when John McCain trotted out Sarah Palin for the first time. Like many people, I thought, “Damn, a hyperconservative, fuckable, Type A, antiabortion, Christian Stepford wife in a ‘sexy librarian’ costume — as a vice president? That’s a brilliant stroke of horrifyingly cynical pandering to the Christian right. Karl Rove must be behind it.”

Palin may have been a boost of political Viagra for the limp, bloodless GOP (and according to an ABC/Washington Post poll she has created a boost in McCain’s standing among white women to a 53 over Obama’s 41). But ideologically, she is their hardcore pornographic centerfold spread, revealing the ugliest underside of Republican ambitions — their insanely zealous and cynical drive to win power by any means necessary, even at the cost of actual leadership.

…

Sarah Palin, in this light, makes so little sense that she makes perfect sense. She speciously represents a new power paradigm of the Nice Mommy: the opposite of Hillary (the Mean Mommy), the opposite of Oprah (black, and therefore foreign), the opposite of Martha Stewart (another Mean Mommy). In her support for women on women’s issues, she has done everything but volunteer for her own circumcision. She tacitly promises a roll backward into old-fashioned sexual roles — like Old Testament-style old. Her morality is fixed, predictable and inflexible. There are those who will find comfort in the fact that they will know exactly what can be expected from Palin: Free will subordinated to obedience of an airtight, evangelical interpretation of the demands of God, country and Republican men.

…

It is a kind of eerie coincidence that Sarah Palin is being sprung on the public at the same time as the bimbo/frat-boy titty comedy “House Bunny,” which features a poster of a beautiful young lady with Playmate-style bunny ears, big, stupid eyes and her mouth hanging open like someone just punched her.

Sarah Palin is the White House bunny — the most nauseating novelty confection of the evangelical mind-set since Southern “chastity balls,” wherein teen girls pledge abstinence from premarital sex by ceremonially faux-marrying their own fathers.

You see? This brilliant woman figured it all out. The insipid movie The House Bunny was really Karl Rove pulling the strings behind the curtain. It was a subliminal message. And sure enough, right after it came out, BAM! Sarah Palin. Mmm-hmm. That’s right.

Next up, we have Rebecca Traister.

Palin’s femininity is one that is recognizable to most women: She’s the kind of broad who speaks on behalf of other broads but appears not to like them very much. The kind of woman who, as Jessica Grose at Jezebel has eloquently noted, achieves her power by doing everything modern women believed they did not have to do: presenting herself as maternal and sexual, sucking up to men, evincing an absolute lack of native ambition, instead emphasizing her luck as the recipient of strong male support and approval. It works because these stances do not upset antiquated gender norms. So when the moment comes, when tolerance for and interest in female power have been forcibly expanded by Clinton, a woman more willing to throw elbows and defy gender expectations but who falls short of the goal, Palin is there, tapped as a supposedly perfect substitute by powerful men who appreciate her charms.

But while the Republicans would have us believe that Palin can simply stand in for Hillary Clinton, there is nothing interchangeable about these politicians. We began this history-making election with one kind of woman and have ended up being asked to accept her polar opposite. Clinton’s brand of femininity is the kind that remains slightly unpalatable in America. It is based on competence, political confidence and an assumption of authority that upends comfortable roles for men and women. It’s a kind of power that has nothing to do with the flirtatious or the girly, nothing to do with the traditionally feminine. It is authority that is threatening because it so closely and calmly resembles the kind of power that the rest of the guys on a presidential stage never question their right to wield.

The pro-woman rhetoric surrounding Sarah Palin’s nomination is a grotesque bastardization of everything feminism has stood for, and in my mind, more than any of the intergenerational pro- or anti-Hillary crap that people wrung their hands over during the primaries, Palin’s candidacy and the faux-feminism in which it has been wrapped are the first development that I fear will actually imperil feminism. Because if adopted as a narrative by this nation and its women, it could not only subvert but erase the meaning of what real progress for women means, what real gender bias consists of, what real discrimination looks like.

Sigh.

I love how feminists automatically assume that, if a woman is not 100% in line with their sacred beliefs, it must be that she’s a whore for the patriarchy, a tool for men to use and play with. Diverse thinking for me, not for thee. They know all. The rest of us women need to just shut up and get with the program.

Right?

Also interesting is how quickly they over-sexualize Sarah Palin. There’s a big — huge — leap from, “Wow, that Palin chick is hot!” to “fuckable, Type A, Christian Stepford wife in a ‘sexy librarian’ costume”. Everything Sarah Palin does is on behalf of men, and really, she’s not even the one doing anything, according to these women. She’s just the face of the movement, there to smile and look pretty for the drooling Republican men (and women — even I drool over Sarah Palin). She couldn’t possibly come up with any of this on her own merit, could she? She couldn’t possibly have been chosen because she is a smart, successful, gutsy woman. Nope… she’s just a pretty face who’s memorized GOP talking points.

It just floors me how quickly feminists dumb down any women who disagree with them… and then just as quickly turn around and claim they’re fighting for women. So women only count if they agree with radical feminists 100% of the time? Jeez. No wonder so many women eschew modern feminism.

Melissa Clouthier has a great take on hyper-offended feminists:

Sarah Palin represents a “real” woman. She clearly likes men and fraternizes regularly with one hot one, her husband. She embraces the life-growing ability of her uterus and has used it for its intended purpose often in her twenty years of marriage. Far from being a freak of nature, she’s pretty normal for us fly-over folks. Sex, kids, men–conservative women tend to like these things. A lot. Two neighbors within yards of my house have five kids each. Don’t mess with these women. They are tough. And sexy. And smart (college educated). And, yes, Christian.

…

Newsflash feminists: You do realize that this plays to a serious stereotype about women, right? Far from the sisterhood, feminists like to talk about, women are known for eating their own (pardon the pun). Territorial and catty, petty and jealous, heaven help the woman who is more beautiful, younger, smarter and gets the hot guy. And what have the feminists done? Displayed venom about their infringed territory, taken to disparaging Palins form and style, and generally degraded her. They sound jealous and threatened. And all women are diminished by their shameful behavior. Camille Paglia has been a notable exception.

And Maxed Out Mama is just hilarious. And also right on the money. How very, very right she is.

They are, believe me, they are. When we flyover women dress you, you like to be dressed, if you know what I mean. Wink, wink. Believe me, hon, most American men remain slaves to their pocket rockets right through life. It is our job to make sure that they enjoy their time in service and to lengthen their service life. Pun intended.

So this is our platform, if it must be about sex:
Join us in the great sexual debauchery of Flyoverland. We, the women of flyover country, ask NYC and Boston and DC and even perhaps SF to send us your hordes of tired, huddled, feminist-taunted and feminist-daunted men. Because we like men, and we like sex, and that, my little puzzled denizens of Metrosexualdom, is and always has been a winning cultural and political platform.

Let’s not kid ourselves – the only people who won’t vote for lots of enjoyable sex are proctologists, due to the impaired profits.

Feminists are just such walking contradictions these days. They get so offended if a woman is sexualized… yet if it’s a female who has different ideals than they do, they automatically sexualize her and demean her. They decry abstinence and love the idea of constant guilt-free sex with whoever a woman wants to have sex with (if it feels good, do it!). Yet a woman who really truly does love sex, with the same man, over and over again, resulting in a new life, is a hideous notion to them. They say women are the intellectual equals of men, yet women aren’t allowed to have diverse opinions on hot-button topics like abortion.

I think it all comes down to serious insecurity and self-loathing. Living with such misery every day can be draining. And when a woman comes along who is attractive, who loves her husband and is devoted to him, who is not afraid to reproduce, who is pro-life, who has principles and sticks to them, who is opposite of everything they believe in… well, it’s like holding up a giant mirror. All of their shortcomings are reflected in Sarah Palin. And so they attack her.

And notice they don’t attack her policies. It’s all vitriol and hyperbole.

Cintra Wilson doesn’t understand why women aren’t furious about Sarah Palin. It’s because the average American woman has very, very little in common with feminism anymore. Most feminists don’t speak for the American woman. They speak for themselves and never entertain the notion that there are other points of view which have just as much merit as their own do. Sarah Palin resonates with so many women because they see themselves in her. Sarah Palin is an everywoman. And she speaks to them. Yet feminists can do nothing but shriek in outrage because Sarah Palin is — gasp!! — attractive and pro-life.

I just can’t help pitying these women. It must be so exhausting and sad to live your life with such a narrow, negative view of the world. And I know I say it all the time, but I’ll say it again.

Men are not the enemy.

Just because Sarah Palin does not toe the feminist line, it doesn’t mean that women don’t have anything in common with her, and feminists need to learn that lesson, and quick. They’re losing relevance faster and faster. Women in flyover country, the bulk of the United States, have a lot in common with Sarah Palin. Belittling and insulting anyone who doesn’t agree with your point of view, all with a gigantic dollop of condescension piled on top, will not endear anyone to your side.

But, what does it matter? These types of attacks will only make Sarah Palin more attractive to the American woman. Feminists don’t seem to get it. Every attack they make on Sarah Palin is an attack on every day women and the values they hold. It might not hurt feminists to open their eyes a little and realize that their viewpoint is not infallible.