Joe Scarborough Does The Unthinkable And Tells Hillary Clinton To Smile

So Joe Scarborough tweeted this last night and, of course, the internet went haywire. The only thing on the planet that girls hate more than being told to smile is their menstrual cycle. If you asked a chick if she’d rather be told to show some teeth or told she has cancer, she’s probably going to chose the latter. If you don’t believe me, here, I’ll show you…

(Salon) — I only described MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s subtweet of Hillary Clinton as annoying to keep the trolls out. But let’s be honest, it’s subversively sexist. Call it casual sexism, call it ever day sexism, call whatever you’d like, but it’s flippant, cavalier and annoying at best and sexist in all likelihood.

(Gawker) — Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough has a helpful little message for former Secretary of State and current presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Smile, babe! Scarborough, a dear old friend of Donald Trump, sent out the tweet (that was just trying to be helpful you know look so much prettier when you smile!) during Clinton’s triumphant victory speech.

(Mashable) — At this point, men have to know better than to tell a woman to smile. Hillary Clinton had an incredible night during Tuesday’s primaries, locking down Florida and sealing a surprise win in Ohio. But Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, thought she could have acted, like, a little happier about it.

(ThinkPro) — This is far from the first time media members have used gender-encoded language to describe Clinton. In early February, Journalist Bob Woodward of Watergate fame said Clinton “shouts” too much, and MSNBC’s Morning Joe commentators launched into a lengthy discussion that touched on many of the common tropes about Clinton: “screaming,” acting “unnatural,” and being “feisty.” The sexism of the 2008 campaign was so heavyhanded that it inspired the Women’s Media Center to draw up a guide to gender neutral coverage of female politicians for reporters. Research done by a WMC affiliate found that simply mentioning a female candidate’s appearance, whether to disparage, praise, or notice, hurts her election chances. The center has also identified certain words, like “feisty” and “scold,” as female-specific dogwhistles that can impact public perception. Clinton has said she has learned to stop worrying about the attacks. “It is just never ending,” she told Diane Sawyer in an interview. “You get a little worried about, okay, people over on this side are loving what I’m wearing, looking like, saying…I’m done with that. I’m just done.”

Now I totally agree that you have to be a magnificent asshole to tell some random girl in the street to smile. I don’t understand how anyone thinks that would ever work in getting a girl talk to you, but I’m told that it happens to women so I believe them. But that’s entirely different than criticizing a politician’s presence on stage. You can’t scream sexism just because you don’t like the word or phrase. Scarborough could have said she looks unlikeable, she looks mean, angry, like a dickhead, whatever. The message is still the same. We judge and critique every other candidate’s appearance. Rubio sweats too much, has huge ear lobes, wears high heels and acts like a robot. Trump is a drunk baby who got into the snack draw, ate all the Cheetos, and put a corn husk on his head. Ted Cruz looks like Dwight cut the face off a Ted Cruz CPR dummy and is wearing it as a mask. They all look like assholes, Cruz in particular should smile way less because he looks like a rapist. Hillary Clinton? She looks like a mean bitch. You should be able to criticize every politician’s body language during a speech without starting a viral hashtag just because you used a word chicks don’t like. “Hillary, you should pretend to be more likeable” wouldn’t cause the uproar but throw in smile and all hell broke loose. At least he didn’t say moist in that tweet, then we’d have an all out sex war going.

PS – A sex war sounds awesome. Not an actual war between sexes, but like an intercourse fight. Hot as shit.