What Do Women Want? Read Online Free PDF

one old friend put it) must have meant to her. Hillary Rodham Clinton remains an appealing figure to me because her life shows the strange compromises gifted women make. She has already changed her politics, drifted away from her parents’ reactionary Methodist attitudes. What lay ahead were other complete makeovers. Looks, name, ideals—everything would have to change for the greater glory of Bill Clinton and the pillow power he bestowed.
    If Hillary Clinton used to come across as angry and unsettled, as constantly remaking her image, it was probably the case. How could she not be angry in Arkansas? Like an ancient Chinese noble-woman with bound feet, she had to deform even her anatomy to get where she needed to go. She hobbled her own fierce ambitions to transplant herself to Arkansas and defend his ambitions. She temporarily gave up her maiden name, reneged on her end-of-the-sixties indifference to female fashion, and compromised her passion for social justice and her native disgust with hypocrisy. Then, while he used her feminism as a shield to cover himself and his philandering, he proceeded to make a mockery of everything she believed in. Since he had always been clear about his ambition to be a top Arkansas politician and then president, his path never changed. Hers changed constantly—and with it her hair, her eyes, her name. At some point she must have had to decide that all these changes were worth it. How else can a smart woman justify such metamorphoses? Hillary had to recommit herself over and over again to life with Bill. No wonder she demanded certain paybacks—like running health care reform and his public life. She would have felt demolished otherwise. One sympathizes with her strength to make demands. But the power struggle of the marriage inevitably impacted the power politics of the nation, and that is what was so radically new about the Clinton presidency.
    Now, as senator, Hillary is far more relaxed and affable. She’s grown and so has her husband. Good for them. I admire people who can change, who refuse to be stuck in old patterns. Nothing transforms a couple like the deaths of parents, and nothing makes a couple evolve like surviving infidelities. Not to mention having a daughter and watching her grow to womanhood. I like the Clintons more for having changed with all these changes.
    George Bush the First used his first day in the presidency to publicly congratulate antiabortion marchers—even while intimating that First Lady Barbara Bush did not agree with him. George Bush the Second went further. He hobbled our choices at home while prating hypocritically of the rights of women in Afghanistan and Iraq.
    No such stand for Bill Clinton. He and Hillary were joined at the hip intellectually, however much stress their marriage might be under. Their presidency redefined public and private. That is why it is so important historically. Both Clintons’ policies are in lock-step, even though their marriage may have been chronically on the rocks. And as for Dubya and Laura, you cannot but think that she thinks he’s a dunce but shuts up about it. She has her own friends, her daughters, and her own life. She probably tells him to pretend he reads. And he’s smart enough to listen to her.
    “We cared deeply about a lot of the same things,” Hillary told an interviewer for the campaign film The Man From Hope in 1992. This revealing quote, edited out of the final film, makes the deal of the marriage clear. “Bill and I are really bound together in part because we believe we have an obligation to give something back and to be a part of making life better for other people,” Hillary went on (as quoted by Bob Woodward in The Choice ). The tragedy of their story is that such idealism had to be replaced by a ruthless commitment to politics, and this deformation of principle clearly came much harder to her than to him.
    Hillary Clinton’s image problem always had several root causes. One was undoubtedly the