Kicking the Wimp Factor: the US invasion of Panama

The 1989 US invasion of Panama was precipitated by a series of crises which together painted General Manuel Noriega as an illegitimate leader in the eyes of the American people. Although Noriega had been an asset to the CIA in his capacity as an intelligence officer in the Panamanian Defence Force (PDF), democratic processes became increasingly farcical under his command. The Reagan administration hoped for a Panamanian solution, but popular protests were consistently met with violence, while Noriega’s opponents failed to mount a successful coup. However, the situation changed significantly in February of 1988, when federal grand juries in Miami and Tampa indicted Noriega for racketeering, drug trafficking and money laundering. President Reagan saw this as an opportunity to negotiate Noriega’s resignation, but they failed to reach an agreement. When President George H.W Bush came to power in December of 1988, Noriega’s survival was becoming increasingly embarrassing for the US. However, despite the failure of a US-backed coup against Noriega in October 1989, Bush continued to oppose military intervention. On the 15th of December, Noriega declared his military dictatorship to be in a state of war with the United States. The Bush administration was unperturbed by Noriega’s declaration, which they saw as a largely symbolic denunciation of the crippling economic sanctions they had inflicted on Panama. However, the next day an American Marine Officer was killed in an incident outside the PDF headquarters in Panama City. Another American serviceman who had witnessed the event was allegedly beaten by PDF soldiers, while his wife was interrogated and sexually assaulted. Four days later, President Bush authorized an invasion to overthrow and capture General Noriega.

In an early morning television address on December 20 1989, President Bush informed the American people of his decision to invade Panama. He argued that Noriega had declared war on the United States and publicly threatened the lives of American citizens. Pointing to the death of the unarmed American servicemen, Bush argued that Noriega posed a direct threat to the 35 000 US citizens residing in Panama. “As President,” he said, “I have no higher obligation than to safeguard the lives of American citizens.” Significantly, Bush justified his actions by pointing to the anarchy of the international system: “For nearly two years, the United States, nations of Latin America and the Caribbean have worked together to resolve the crisis in Panama…I took this action only after reaching the conclusion that every other avenue was closed and the lives of American citizens were in danger.” The official American explanation was consistent with structural realism in that Noriega was seen to threaten US security. In order to maintain its position in the anarchic international system, the US had to forcibly remove Noriega from power. However, one must be careful to separate rhetoric from reality. As such, I will examine the question of whether Noriega represented a legitimate threat to US citizens residing in Panama.

In itself, Noriega’s declaration of war did not concern the United States. Only days earlier President Bush had announced that vessels carrying the Panamanian flag would be barred from US ports. The Panamanian economy was based on maritime commerce, leading the national assembly to pass a resolution describing the move as tantamount to a declaration of war. President Bush’s December 20 address explicitly linked this declaration to the events of December 16. He suggested that the attacks on American servicemen were premeditated, emanating directly from Noriega. However, a brief analysis of the events of December 16 largely contradicts this view. On the 16th of December, four US marines approached a PDF vehicle checkpoint in Panama City. PDF soldiers asked the American servicemen to produce identification papers, at which point the driver accelerated away. One of the American servicemen gave the PDF soldiers ‘the finger’, causing them to open fire and fatally wound Lieutenant Robert Paz (Grow 181). Another American servicemen and his wife witnessed the event and were subsequently detained and interrogated by PDF soldiers for several hours. The PDF quickly sent word to US officials that Paz’s death had been unintended. They also said that the officers who interrogated the American servicemen and his wife were intoxicated at the time and were not acting in any official capacity. In any case, the incidents were clearly not premeditated. The PDF had no prior knowledge that the American servicemen would approach the checkpoint, which, as Michael Grow has pointed out, was in a ‘sensitive, off-limits part of the capital at a time of acute tension between the two countries’ (Grow 181). The actions of soldiers on both sides speak more of reckless arrogance than calculated warfare.

In fact, one could argue that the United States deliberately provoked PDF aggression. Secretary of State Baker wrote that the administration specifically needed “a blatant provocation against American citizens that would arouse public sentiment and make intervention more palatable” (Grow 178). According to one post-invasion commission, this would be achieved by “searching Panamanian citizens, confronting PDF forces, occupying small town for a number of hours, buzzing Panamanian air space with military aircraft and surrounding public building with troops” (Independent Commission of Inquiry on the US Invasion of Panama 1991, p. 17). American economic sanctions were crippling the Panamanian economy and the Bush Administration clearly hoped their December 14 move against the maritime trade would be the proverbial nail in the coffin. As former pentagon official Fred Hoffman told Newsweek “They had a plan and were just waiting for an excuse to use it” (Grow 181). Grow is therefore right in suggesting that the events of December 16 were “precipitated by a war of nerves that the Bush administration had initiated two months earlier in an apparent effort to provoke Noriega into providing a justification for intervention” (151) Therefore, despite the explanation offered by President Bush in his December 20 address, the US invasion of Panama cannot be attributed to a Panamanian security threat.

For feminist theorists, the world is pervasively shaped by gendered meanings (Weber 89). As such, they point to the intersection of masculinist subjectivities in state decision-making to explain conflict. Before using this mode of analysis to examine the 1989 invasion discourse, I will look briefly at George Bush’s 1988-election campaign. Bush had been Vice-President in the Reagan administration for seven years. When he announced his candidacy for president in October of 1987, he immediately appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine with the now infamous headline – “Fighting the Wimp Factor” (Ducat 2004, p. 85). This was occasioned in part by his years of servility as Vice-President to Reagan, a role which was seen as effeminate for its lack courage and autonomy. However, there was also an air of aristocracy about Bush, which was also seen as effeminate. Indeed, in a 1988 political cartoon, Bush appeared dressed a woman, having tea and cake with aristocratic women. As Stephen Ducat has shown in his excellent study The Wimp Factor, the Republican Party machine worked tirelessly to shed Bush’s effeminate image. Bush was now framed as paternal protector, his submission to Reagan repackaged as a ‘masculine and noble fidelity to one’s comrade’ (Ducat 86). In one speech, Bush repeated the phrase “I’m not going to let them take if away from you” at least a dozen times. When he eventually became President, Bush continued to play the role of paternal protector. “As President,” he said in his announcement of the Panama invasion, “I have no higher obligation than to safeguard the lives of American citizens.”

Having established that Bush’s bid for the presidency was hampered by something of a masculinity crisis, I now turn to the role of masculinist paradigms in Bush’s decision to invade Panama. It is important to note that Bush was President of the United States at a time when it was largely seen to be a hegemon in decline. From the perspective of the Bush administration, a demonstration of US power in Panama would give credence to their claim of superpower status. However, Noriega’s survival was an affront to this very idea. In his memoirs, Secretary of State Colin Powell describes the administration’s outrage that “a third rate dictator” was “thumbing his nose at the United States” (Grow 180). Noriega’s defiance underscored the United States’ humiliation, as he declared, “No one is going to tell me when to go, much less the United States” (Grow 173). The survival of Noriega was also an affront to Bush’s ‘war on drugs,’ which had been central to his Presidential election campaign. In allowing an indicted drug trafficker to remain in power, Bush was seen to be reneging on his promise to protect America from the evils of illicit drugs. The US media thus articulated a sense of American emasculation, as one journalist asked “Mr. President, some of your critics say that, despite your rhetoric, General Noriega can sit in Panama for as long as he wishes, in effect laughing at you sir, laughing at the United States. Can you do anything about it?” (Grow 174).

In the US Senate, Democratic leader George Mitchell said that Bush appeared ‘frightened’, while Time magazine described him as “recklessly timid.” The New York Times similarly wrote that Bush was “hypercautious by nature, a reactor rather than an initiator” (Grow 175). Central to such criticisms was an awareness that a Latin American, who was feminised in American discourses of national security, was making a fool of the US President. The Panama crisis thus challenged the masculinist paradigm that underpinned American discourses of national security in what would we be seen as a resurgence of ‘the wimp factor.’ The extent to which Bush acted on this supposed affront to his manhood is evident in the conflict’s aftermath. According to the Wall Street Journal, Bush’s decision to forcibly remove Noriega proved that he was ‘decisive and tough,’ while the New York Times observed that the invasion had shown that he was “a man capable of bold action.” But it was perhaps Time magazine, which had once highlighted Bush’s ‘wimp factor,’ that provided the most validation for the fledgling President. On the cover of the December 1989 issue which declared the US invasion of Panama a success appeared a flexed and bulging bicep, covered in stars and stripes. The US invasion of Panama led to the death of twenty-four American servicemen and hundreds, if not thousands of Panamanians. In the United States, this was a small price to pay to kick the ‘wimp factor.’

Hegemonic Masculinity and the 2008 Presidential Election

When it came to the 2008 Presidential election in the United States, the whole world was watching. It was an election buoyed by the promise of radical change, not least because such promises came from a black man and a white woman competing in a historic bid for the Democratic candidacy. Presidential election campaigns in the United States are typically ritualised performances of masculinity wherein candidates demonstrate gender ideals perceived as requisite for the office of US President (Fahey 2007: 135). Indeed, the US Presidency is highly gendered, intimately connected to conceptions of American manhood and bound up in a logic of masculinist protection (Young 20034). ‘First and foremost’ writes Suzanne Daughton, ‘the President is the national patriarch: the paradigmatic American man’ (1994:114). The gendered nature of the Presidency stems from its relationships to institutions which have historically privileged masculinity through the exclusion of women such as politics, the military and athletics (Parry-Giles & Parry-Giles 1996:343). However, the masculinisation of the Presidency must also be understood as a discursive construct; that is, a complex intersection of political rhetoric and media narratives (Anderson 2002:107). As such, an analysis of media coverage of the 2008 election should reveal something of the discursive construction of contemporary American masculinities.

R.W. Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity is a useful framework through which media coverage of the 2008 election can be analysed. This paper will examine the concept of hegemonic masculinity before assessing its usefulness in analysing media representations of the Presidential hopefuls. Hillary Clinton will be discussed in terms of her representation as the ‘tough guy in the race’, which, I will argue, implicitly discredits femininity as a locus of power. Media insistence on the emphasised femininity of the potential first lady will also be addressed with particular emphasis on how the media reflect a tension between tradition and modernity in expectations of the first lady. Analysing media representations of Obama’s more ‘feminine’ style, it will be argued that feminised qualities of compassion, willingness to collaborate and inclusiveness have been co-opted into what I will argue is a new incarnation of hegemonic masculinity in the United States (Messner 2007).

R.W. Connell first advanced the concept of hegemonic masculinity in a 1979 paper entitled ‘Men’s Bodies’, however the concept was further developed throughout the 1980s and reformulated as recently as 2005 in an article co-authored with James Messerschmidt. Central to Connell’s formulation of hegemonic masculinity is her insistence that we speak of ‘masculinities’ rather than masculinity, as within a given society ‘there will be different ways of enacting manhood, different ways of learning to be a man, different conceptions of the self and different ways of using a male body’ (2000:10). For Connell, relationships between different masculinities are highly structured, some being dominant while others are subordinated and marginalised (2000:10). The hegemonic form of masculinity is the most revered or desired in a given culture, the culturally idealised form of masculine character (Cheng 1999:295). Significantly, the concept does not denote a type of masculinity, but a ‘configuration of gender practice’ in which the hegemonic masculinity is constructed in relation to femininities and subordinated masculinities (Connell 1995). The privileging of an idealised form of masculinity serves to maintain hierarchies of power, specifically, the subordination of women and marginalisation of non-hegemonic masculinities (Fahey 2007:134). The hegemonic masculinity ‘need not be the most common form, let alone the most comfortable’ (2000:11). Indeed, Connell suggests that many men live in a state of tension with the hegemonic form of masculinity in their culture (2000:11). For Connell and Messerschmidt, ‘gender relations are always arenas of tension. A given pattern of hegemonic masculinity is hegemonic to the extent that it provides a solution to these tensions, tending to stabilise patriarchal power or reconstitute it in new conditions’ (2005:853). Hegemonic masculinities come into existence in specific historical circumstances, therefore it is conceivable that older forms of masculinity might be displaced by new ones (Connell & Messerschmidt 2005: 832).

While Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity has found wide use within critical studies of masculinity, it has been criticised for its ambiguity. Margaret Wetherell and Nigel Edley claim that Connell has ‘left aside the question of how the forms he identifies actually prescribe or regulate men’s lives’ (1999:336-337). Hearn similarly suggests that the concept fails to elucidate the complex interplay between hegemonic, subordinated, complicit and marginalised forms of masculinity (2004:57). Demetrakis Demetriou has advanced a similar criticism, arguing that there is a blurring of what he calls external hegemony, which refers to the institutionalsation of men’s dominance over women, and internal hegemony, which refers to the marginalisation of particular masculinities (2001). For Demetriou, Connell’s formulation of internal hegemony is problematic in that it suggests non-hegemonic masculinities live in tension with but never penetrate or impact the hegemonic masculinity, effectively creating a binary of hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities (2001:347-349). This binary, Demetriou argues, fails to recognise that hegemonic masculinities incorporate diverse elements from subordinate masculinities deemed useful in the maintenance of patriarchy (2001:349). Demetriou theorises a process of hybridisation, arguing that the hegemonic masculinities’ ‘constant appropriation of diverse elements from various masculinities makes it capable of reconfiguring itself and adapting to the specificities of new historical conjunctures’ (2001:348). Demetriou’s formulation of hegemonic masculinity as a hybrid bloc that continually reconfigures itself will inform the following analysis of media coverage of the 2008 Presidential election as it goes some way to addressing the concerns advanced by Wetherell, Edley and Hearn.

Connell and Messerschmidt make the important point that the maintenance of a given pattern of hegemony ‘requires the policing of men as well as the exclusion or discrediting of women’ (2005:544). Media coverage of the 2008 Presidential election was consistent with such a process, particularly when it came to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s attempts to secure the Democratic nomination. Clinton has always been a controversial figure in American politics, derided for ‘transgressing the norms of First Lady comportment’ by pursuing her own career and largely suspected of pulling the strings during her husband’s time in office (Ducat 2004:134). According to Stephen Ducat, ‘nearly all the rhetorical assaults against Ms. Clinton directly or indirectly concerned her failure to be a properly subordinate female’ (2004:138). Indeed, in August 1992 The American Spectator published an article criticising her ‘consuming ambition, inflexibility of purpose, domination of a pliable husband, lack of tender human feelings and contempt for traditional female roles’. (Wattenberg 1992:26). Ironically, these are all qualities lauded in male Presidential candidates but were considered so insidious for a First Lady that in the 1996 election Bob Dole actually campaigned on the fact that, unlike Clinton, his wife would ‘not be in charge of anything’ (Ducat 2004: 135). While the emphasised femininity of the First Lady will be addressed elsewhere, of significance here is the media’s sudden legitimisation of Clinton’s ‘toughness’ once she emerged as a serious contender for the Democratic nomination.

In contrast to representations of Clinton as the President’s ‘connivingly careerist wife’ (Kimmel 2006:196), during the Democratic primaries she was lauded as the ‘tough guy in the race… running her campaign with all the muscular vision and authority of the macho candidates of yesteryear’ (Scherer 2007). In The New York Times, Maureen Dowd suggested that Clinton and her husband were ‘double-teaming’ Obama – a sexual connotation not lost on readers who are accustomed to images of Clinton with a penis such as the infamous Spy magazine cover (Dowd 2007). Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker similarly suggested that Clinton’s performance in the Democratic primaries was ‘unflinching and steely’, arguing that she ‘exudes pure brawn’ (2008). Online publication The Salon seemingly offered an explanation, quoting Professor Georgia Duesrt-Lahiti who said, ‘The first woman has to out-masculine the man…just think about Ronald Reagan when he would tear up. Could a woman ever tear up? No. But a man can tear up’ (Scherer 2007). The article goes on to say that Clinton ‘must be careful to avoid gender traps, like the question famously put to vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro in 1984: ‘Are you strong enough to push the button?’ (Scherer 2007). In the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette Ellen Goodman similarly praised Clinton’s ‘aggressive’ campaign, observing that female candidates ‘have to prove and prove again their toughness’ (2008). Hegemonic masculinity is a useful frame of reference here as implicit in positive media representations of Clinton’s ‘toughness’ is a discrediting of her femininity. Indeed, as indicated in the above examples, Clinton’s femininity was seen as a liability when it came to proving her credibility as a Presidential candidate. The feminisation of the Presidency was seemingly so abhorrent that Clinton was legitimised in media representations only in terms of her ‘masculine’ qualities. Media representations of Clinton which discredit her femininity serve to maintain hierarchies of power by constructing discourses which support existing configurations of external hegemony (Demetriou: 2001).


Karlyn Kohrs Campbell has described the American Presidency as a two-person career in which an appropriately feminine first lady is needed to complement her commander-in-chief husband and serve as a testament to his masculinity (1996:188). In many ways, Campbell is describing a kind of gender performance that accommodates hegemonic masculinity, described by Connell in his 1987 work Gender and Power as emphasised femininity. Emphasised femininity supports internal hegemony by accommodating the interests and desires of those performing hegemonic masculinity and by preventing other femininities from gaining cultural articulation (Cheng 1999:3). The masculinity of the American President has historically been defined in contradistinction to the femininity of the first lady. Described by Germaine Greer as ‘the archetypal lipstick-skirt-high-heels beside the archetypal suit’, the first lady has historically had almost no political agency and many would happily keep it that way (1995:20). For Ducat, ‘American male political culture has always had a First Lady problem. The vexing question has usually been: how can a woman who is sharing the life of the most powerful man in the nation be kept from sharing any of that power?’ (2004:133). Gary Wills has shown that this is usually achieved by giving first ladies ‘pet projects’ such as encouraging volunteerism which are guaranteed to ‘threaten no vested interest, generate little debate and most importantly, confer no meaningful decision making power on the First Lady’ (1992:6). However, the political disenfranchisement of the first lady has been increasingly challenged by new configurations of women’s identity.

Interestingly, media representations of potential first ladies Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain reveal a unique tension between a desire to uphold a tradition of emphasised femininity and a desire to move on from the politically disenfranchised first lady of yesteryear. Commentators have criticised Cindy McCain for being ‘cartoonishly feminine’ with Ann Friedman of American Prospect declaring that it is ‘no longer in vogue for the First Lady to be only First Decorator’ (2007). However, Friedman’s suggestion that the First Lady must ‘have a cause’ is ultimately a backhanded compliment, as she suggests that the cause must be ‘a gentle one such as literacy or heart disease, with no political agenda’ (2007). Although she is clearly suggesting that Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain announce what ‘gentle’ cause they would take on in order to promote themselves as ‘the most suitable, most feminine first lady’, Friedman criticises the Republican Party for ‘acting like it’s 1950 and failing to acknowledge that modern marriage is a partnership’. Several commentators have suggested that Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain represent a tension between tradition and modernity with McCain the ‘unfailingly feminine image of conservative womanhood’ and Obama, the Chicago lawyer seen as something of a political loose cannon (Weber 2008; Shelton 2008; Puente 2008). Columnist Connie Schultz captured this tension best, suggesting that ‘Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain are two sides of the same coin; heads, she’s a prop; tails, she’s a problem’ (2008). Michelle Obama was of course the problem, but even articles praising her ability to ‘hold her own’ on the campaign trail insisted on her emphasised femininity (Healy 2008). Writing in The New York Times, Patricia Healy praised Obama’s ability to hold rallies of up to 11 000 people in key swing states, but quickly reminded readers that, as first lady , this Princeton and Harvard educated lawyer would ‘focus on her family and then on the issues facing women’ (2008). Healy doesn’t elaborate on exactly what issues these would be, but noted that Michelle Obama ‘will not have a major policy role and does not plan to have an office in the West Wing’, essentially confirming that as first lady Obama will sit somewhere between Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton. Media representations still seem to advocate a certain compliance to patriarchy on the part of the first lady, however it is clear that emphasised femininity is no longer the only femininity gaining cultural articulation. The concept of emphasised femininity articulated in Connell’s formulation of hegemonic masculinity is useful in mapping this tension between tradition and modernity, a tension which can also be seen in representations of Barack Obama.

Media representations of Barack Obama during his 2008 election campaign are unique in that they show an unprecedented tolerance towards ‘femininity’ in a male Presidential candidate. Before elaborating on this further, it is necessary to situate the concept of hegemonic masculinity within discourses surrounding Presidential elections. Stephen Ducat and Michael Kimmel have both shown that since at least 1840, the assertion of a candidates’ masculinity has been central to American electioneering (Ducat: 2004; Kimmel: 2006). The strength and conviction of leaders has typically been measured by the kind of masculinity they perform, with military service, athleticism and their ‘strong hand, firm resolve and virile restraint’ in the political realm constructing a discourse of masculinist protection (Kimmel 2006:247; Young 2003). ‘In this political environment’ writes Cornelia Fahey, ‘to suggest that a male candidate is feminine is to hurl an insult’ (2007:135). Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity is useful here as discourses of Presidential masculinity are clearly a mechanism for the policing of men and discrediting of women. However, more interesting is the fact that femininity has been used positively to describe Obama, suggesting that the hegemonic masculinity underpinning discourses of Presidential masculinity is undergoing change.

Throughout the Democratic primaries in which Obama and Clinton competed for the nomination, Obama was described as ‘the female candidate’ (Scherer 2007). In contrast to Hillary Clinton who suggested that she wouldn’t hesitate to invade Iran, Obama advocated diplomacy with Middle Eastern leaders, leading some to suggest that Clinton is the man and Obama is the woman. Scherer’s article ‘Hillary is from Mars, Obama is from Venus’, for example, suggests that Clinton is ‘the male candidate – tough, in your face, know-it-all, while Obama is warm, self-deprecating and tender’ (2007). Scherer also notes Obama’s propensity to play feminist folk songs at his rallies and suggests that ‘he does not appear to worry much about posing with guns’ (2007). In what is perhaps a reflection of the American public’s war fatigue, Obama’s calls for diplomacy with Middle Eastern leaders were not derided as wimpish but seen in terms of his ‘reputation for being good at seeing other people’s points of view’ (Killian 2007).Ellen Goodman similarly describes Obama as the candidate ‘who believes we can talk to anyone, even our enemies’, concluding that he has ‘finely honed a language usually associated with women’s voices’ (2008). While John McCain made sure not to repeat Bill Clinton’s mistake of describing his marriage as an egalitarian relationship, Obama was frequently quoted describing his wife as ‘smarter, better looking and meaner than he is’ and saying that if he ever ran against her for public office she would beat him without much difficulty (Ducat 2004: 19; Healy 2008). In the media, Obama’s relationship with his wife has been romanticised, bestowing a kind of legitimacy on their clearly egalitarian relationship (Healy 2008; Weber 2008).While it must be acknowledged that several commentators questioned his masculinity and headlines such as ‘Where’s his right hook?’ (Dowd 2007) and ‘Obama’s tough talk falls short’ (Killian 2007) abounded, Scherer, Goodman and Healy were full of praise for Obama’s traditionally ‘feminine’ qualities.

Indeed, Obama’s decision to forego typical displays of hypermasculinity was seen as endearing. The Pittsburgh-Post Gazette for example noted that Obama declined an offer to throw a football for the photographers during a photo opportunity at the University of Texas, ‘noting he’d probably be pretty bad at it’ (Carpenter 2008). The article goes on to quote a student of the University who suggested that it was ‘cool’ that Obama was not trying to project a masculine image (Carpenter 2008). The significance of the public’s acceptance of feminised qualities when performed by a man was not lost on some:

The transformative, inspirational and collaborative ‘female’ style has become more attractive, especially to a younger generation. And – here’s the rub – especially when it is modeled by a man. University of Wisconsin political scientist Kathleen Dolan sees Mr. Obama as ‘the embodiment of the gentle, collaborative style without threatening his masculine side’… ‘Both men and women are much more likely to accept a collaborative style of leadership from men than from women. From women it seems too soft’ she adds ruefully… So has the women’s movement made life easier, for another man? (Goodman 2008).

Goodman’s analysis here is interesting in that is shows a distinct awareness for the process of hybridisation theorised by Demetriou. Significantly, while media representations of Obama legitimised particular ‘feminine’ qualities, positive representations of Obama’s egalitarian relationship with his wife or his ‘feminine’ style of communication and approach to foreign policy does not necessarily advance the women’s movement. Indeed, Shawn and Trevor Parry-Giles have argued that a ‘feminine’ political style can be used to promote hegemonic masculinity in that it can be co-opted into the dominant form of masculinity (1996:337-353). This is evident in the fact that media representations of Obama’s ‘feminine’ qualities were not so much seen in terms of a loss of masculinity, but as a manifestation of a new and sensitive form of masculinity. For Messner, ‘hardness and violence plus compassion and care is a potent equation for hegemonic masculinity in public symbology today’ (2007:467). ‘Toughness, decisiveness and hardness are still central to hegemonic masculinity’ he argues, ‘but it is now linked with situationally appropriate moments of compassion’ (Messner 2007: 466). This is consistent with Demetriou’s theorisation in that the hegemonic masculinity is appropriating qualities from subordinated subject positions in order to maintain hegemony.

Hegemonic masculinity is a useful framework through which media coverage of the 2008 Presidential election can be analysed. American mass media have been shown to be complicit in the maintenance of hegemonic masculinity through the discrediting of femininity in female Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. While the media have reflected a tension between tradition and modernity in representations of potential first ladies Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain, such representations have maintained current configurations of gender practice. Positive media representations of Barack Obama’s ‘feminine’ qualities have been understood in terms of the process of hybridisation theorised by Demetriou. Designed to preserve internal and external hegemony, the media’s legitimisation of femininity when performed by a man does not signal an advancement of the women’s movement but a reconstitution of power in new conditions. Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity is useful in that it reveals a degree of tension in the discursive construction of contemporary masculinities, while elucidating the mechanisms which serve to maintain the current configuration of gender practice.

References

Anderson, K.V. (2002) ‘From Spouses to Candidates: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Elizabeth Dole and the Gendered Office of U.S. President’, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol.5, No.1, pp.105-132.

Campbell, K.K (1996), ‘The Rhetorical Presidency: A Two-person Career’ in M.J. Medhurst (ed.) Beyond the Rhetorical Presidency, Texas, A&M University press, pp. 179-195.

Carpenter, M. (2008), ‘Obama’s Latest Persona: the King of Cool’, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 29 February, p.1.

Cheng, Cliff (1999) ‘Marginalized Masculinities and Hegemonic Masculinity: An Introduction’, Journal of Men’s Studies, Vol. 7, No.3, pp.295-315.

Connell, R.W. (1987) Gender and Power, Sydney, Allen and Unwin.

Connell, R.W. (1995) Masculinities, Cambridge, UK Polity Press.

Connell, R.W. (2000) The Men and the Boys, Sydney, Allen and Unwin.

Connell, R.W. and J.W. Messerschmidt (2005) ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept’, Gender & Society, Vol 19, No. 6, pp.829-859.

Cooper, F.R. (2009) ‘Our First Unisex President?: Black Masculinity and Obama’s Feminine Side’, Legal Studies Research Paper Series, Suffolk University Law School, http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1321479. (Accessed 1 June 2009)

Daughton, S. (1994) ‘Women’s Issues, Women’s Place: Gender-related problems in Presidential Campaigns’, Communication Quarterly. Vol. 42, pp.106-119.

Demetriou, D. (2001) ‘Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity: A critique’, Theory and Society, Vol 30, No.3, pp.337-361.

Dowd, M. (2007) ‘Where’s His Right Hook?’, The New York Times 3 May, p.15.

Ducat, S. (2004) The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity, Boston, Beacon University Press.

Fahey, A.C. (2007) ‘French and Feminine: Hegemonic Masculinity and the Emasculation of John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential Race’, Critical Studies in Media and Communication, Vol. 24, No, 2, pp.132-150.

Friedman, A. (2007) ‘First Ladies in Two Modes’, American Prospect 1 October, p.53.

Goodman, E. (2008) ‘Trading Places: Obama is winning as the woman’, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 22 February, p.7.

Greer, G. (1995) ‘Abolish Her: The Feminist Case Against First Ladies’, New Republic, June 26.

Healy, P. (2008) ‘Michelle Obama on the trail: in her own fashion’, International Herald Tribune 29 October 2008, p.1.

Hearn, J. (2004) ‘From hegemonic masculinity to the hegemony of men’, Feminist Theory, Vol.5, No.1, pp.49-72.

Killian, L. (2007) ‘Obama’s tough talk falls short’, Politico 2 August, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0807/5222.html (Accessed 1 June 2009)

Kimmel, M.S (2006) Manhood in America: A Cultural History, New York, Oxford University Press.

Messner, M.A (2007) ‘The Masculinity of the Governator: Muscle and Compassion in American Politics’, Gender & Society, Vol.21, No.4, pp.461-480.

Parker, K. (2008), ‘The Democrats Hug It Out’, The Washington Post 17 May, p.17.

Parry-Giles, S.J and T. Parry-Giles (1996) ‘Gendered Politics and Presidential Image Construction: A Reassessment of the ‘Feminine Style’, Communication Monographs, Vol. 63, pp. 337-353.

Puente, M. (2008) ‘What’s a first lady to do?’, USA Today Otober 1, p.3.

Scherer, M. (2007) ‘Hillary is from Mars, Obama is from Venus’, The Salon July 12.

Shelton, S.K (2008) ‘The President’s Wife’, New Haven Register 27 October, p.13.

Wattenberg, D. (1992) ‘Lady Macbeth of Little Rock’, The American Spectator August, pp.25-32.

Weber, C. (2008) ‘Judging a candidate by his wife’s fashion’, Financial Times 1 November, p.8.

Wetherel, M. and N. Edley (1999) ‘Negotiating Hegemonic Masculinity: Imaginary positions and psycho-discursive practices, Feminism and Psychology, Vol.9, No.3, pp.335-356.

Wills, G. (1992) ‘A Doll’s House?’, The New York Review of Books September 22, pp. 6-10.

Young, I.M. (2003) ‘The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol.29, No.1, pp. 1-25.

‘What you’ve dreamed you are’: Gender and identity in the films of Pedro Almodóvar.

The films of Pedro Almodóvar have become synonymous with what Judith Butler describes as ‘subversive bodily acts.’[1] For Butler, there is no ‘true’ gender identity, but rather naturalised notions of ‘gender’ based upon the idealisation of the reproductive heterosexual. ‘Subversive bodily acts’ are those which disrupt the culturally constructed categories of gender and sexuality and occasion their resignification beyond the binary of male and female.[2] Such destruction of categories defines Almodovar’s work. His films not only foreground those who are marginalised by the male/female binary, such as women, homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals, but they also rupture the relationship between sex and gender upon which this binary is based. I will argue that Almodóvar’s films expose the mechanisms of gender construction by inverting patriarchal filmic conventions. Furthermore, I will suggest that Almodóvar’s films subvert the binary of male and female by questioning the legitimacy of monolithic notions of masculinity and femininity. Finally, I will argue that Almodóvar’s films support Butler’s assertion that gender is ‘performatively constituted.’[3] Unlike conventional ‘leading-ladies,’ I will argue, Almodóvar’s ‘women’ self-consciously perform their identities. As one critic put it, “Almodóvar’s women take gender between their teeth and chew it to a pulp.”[4]

Almodóvar’s inversion of patriarchal filmic conventions draws attention to the mechanisms of gender construction which work to naturalise the binary of male and female. This is particularly evident in his fourth feature ¿Que he hecho yo para merecer esto?, in which he consciously subverts what Laura Mulvey describes as ‘the male gaze.’ For Mulvey, narrative cinema simultaneously offers scopophilic and narcissistic pleasure. Scopophilic pleasure involves seeing others as objects of sexual stimulation, while narcissistic pleasure arises from identification with the ‘ideal ego’ that appears on the screen.[5] “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance,” she argues, “pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.”[6] Traditional narrative cinema thus typically focuses on a male protagonist and assumes a male spectator. According to Mulvey, such films objectify women on two levels: as an “erotic object for the characters within the screen story and as an erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium.”[7] Although Mulvey’s theory is less applicable to modern cinema, in which ‘the gaze’ is adopted by both male and female subjects, her essay, which was originally published in 1975, exposed the mechanisms of gender construction in contemporary film practice. Almodóvar’s early films Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (1980), Laberinto de pasiones (1983) and Entre tinieblas (1983) undermine the male spectators’ narcissistic pleasure; that is, his ability to identify with the ‘ideal ego,’ by portraying strong female protagonists. However, it is the Spanish directors’ first international success, ¿Que he hecho yo para merecer esto? that most clearly subverts ‘the male gaze.’

The opening sequence of ¿Que he hecho yo para merecer esto?, which was released in 1984, immediately draws attention to itself as a cinematic construction. The camera swoops into a Madrid square, in which a disheveled woman is shown navigating her way through a group of filmmakers, who are busily working on location. The action unfolds against a soundtrack which Kathleen Vernon has described as reminiscent of the movie scores written by Nino Rota for Italian neorealist films.[8] The films opening credits further create an awareness of the filmic frame, as brightly coloured shots of the film’s title and credits are juxtaposed with images of the unfolding narrative. The camera follows the woman (Gloria), played by Almodóvar’s early muse, Carmen Maura, as she enters a karate studio and goes about her chores as a cleaning woman. Shots of Gloria scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees are juxtaposed almost comically with shots of men in monk-like robes practicing the martial art of kendo, grunting as they strike one another with large sticks. These cinematic caricatures of masculinity and femininity not only parody patriarchal filmic conventions, but also enhance the irony of the next scene in which Almodóvar inverts ‘the male gaze.’

When the studio empties after the kendo class, Gloria is shown finishing her work in a mirrored dressing room. Gloria, who is in the foreground, sees a naked man step into the shower stall just beyond her. She shamelessly stares at the man’s naked body, when he notices her presence and beckons her into the shower. Gloria and the man then attempt to have sex, but he cannot maintain an erection and Gloria leaves the stall dissatisfied, acting out her frustration by picking up one of the kendo sticks and striking furiously into the air. This sequence is significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, the man is framed as the object of sexual stimulation, while Gloria is the spectator. Gloria assumes ‘the gaze’ and in contrast to patriarchal filmic convention, remains fully clothed throughout the scene, while the man is naked and vulnerable. Although she is the spectator, there is no ‘ideal ego’ presented here because no pleasure arises from the audience’s identification with the discontented Gloria. ‘The gaze’ thus collapses onto itself, revealing the active/passive binary to be not only a cultural construct, but also a farce.

The film also parodies cinematic constructions of female passivity. In ¿Que he hecho yo para merecer esto?, Gloria’s husband Antonio treats her as a passive sex object. Significantly, Gloria’s economic dependence on her husband underpins her passivity. Antonio finds the idea of his wife earning a living repugnant, yet refuses to give her money for basic requirements such as food and their son’s dental care. Antonio is framed as not only selfish, but delusional, as he is obsessed with his short stint as a chauffeur for the renowned German singer Ingrid Muller. Antonio, who helped Muller forge a series of letters supposedly written by Adolph Hitler, longs for his days in Berlin and rather bizarrely sings German opera as he drives around in his taxi. His irrationality is laughable as he simultaneously complains about not having wine to drink with his meal, while railing against the inappropriateness of Gloria’s work as a cleaner. When Antonio demands that Gloria have sex with him, she derives no pleasure from the act but it allows her to acquire the money she needs. Images of this loveless act are juxtaposed with shots of Gloria’s son and mother-in-law watching a video clip on television, in which Almodóvar appears lip-synching to an Andalusian pop song called La Bien Paga – the well-paid woman.[9] Paul Julian Smith[10] and Susan Martin-Marques[11] have both suggested that this sequence draws a parallel between prostitution and marriage. According to Smith, “Just as the kisses of the woman in the song have been bought ‘for a handful of coins,’ so Gloria has thrown away her life for the meagre income provided by her husband.”[12] Gloria’s subjugation to the altogether ridiculous character of Antonio thus points to the absurdity of cinematic and societal constructions of female passivity.

Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (1988) similarly couches female passivity in comic terms. Amidst a personal crisis, the protagonist Pepa (Carmen Maura) receives a frantic phone call from an old friend named Candela, who promptly shows up at Pepa’s doorstep the next morning. Candela reveals that she is on the run from the police as she has discovered that a man she recently shared a brief romance with is a Shiite terrorist involved in a plot to hijack a plane en route to Stockholm. Candela later explains her predicament to Carlos, the son of Pepa’s lover, in terms that parody female passivity. Candela melodramatically claims to have been victimised by ‘the Arab world.’ “Many men have taken advantage of me,” she says, “I have always realised it, but only later.” Ludicrously comparing her terrorist beau with the painfully shy Carlos, played by a scrawny and bespectacled Antonio Banderas, Candela asks, “Why are you men the way you are?” Candela’s exaggeration of her vulnerability to ‘the Arab world’ and men in general similarly highlights the absurdity of constructions of female passivity and points, more broadly, to gender as a cultural construct.


Almodóvar’s films problematise the binary of male and female by questioning the legitimacy of monolithic notions of masculinity and femininity. As Vernon has suggested, although Almodóvar’s films foreground women, they stand in stark contrast to Hollywood’s ‘women’s pictures’ or ‘weepies,’ which were intended to cultivate female audiences through the portrayal of ‘women’s problems and specifically domestic issues.’[13] As Vernon has argued, ‘women’s pictures’ ‘serve up a de-eroticised image of the woman as victim, often as a mother or mental patient.’ Such portrayals ‘literally deflate the threat of female sexuality’ and ‘reduce women to images reassuring to the male viewer.’[14] Almodóvar’s films have quite a different trajectory. This is particularly evident in ¿Que he hecho yo para merecer esto? and Todo sobre mi madre (1999), in which he inverts the mother/whore dichotomy that underpins conventional cinematic representations of women.[15] In ¿Que he hecho yo para merecer esto? Gloria and her neighbour Cristal, who is a prostitute and aspiring actress, shift between the subjectivities of mother and whore. Although Gloria is married with two children and assumes the identity of ‘housewife’ in the film, the opening sequence shows her engaged in casual sex with a stranger. Gloria’s husband chastises her for spending time with Cristal because she is a prostitute, yet it is Cristal who feeds their young son one evening when Antonio eats all the food, including the scraps of ham intended for his son’s lunch the following day. Cristal, who Antonio frequently calls a ‘whore,’ thus assumes a motherly, nurturing role in a way that works against the dichotomy of mother and whore.


Similarly, in Todo sobre mi madre the mother-whore dichotomy is challenged through the characters of Manuela and Agrado. Having recently lost her young son in a car accident in Madrid, Manuela returns to Barcelona, where she reunites with her old friend Agrado, a transsexual prostitute. Although the women’s physical appearances correspond with their identities, they both assume the subjectivities of mother, as well as whore. At the beginning of the film, Manuela is shown to be a caring and attentive mother to her son Esteban. Interestingly, while they are eating dinner, she jokingly tells him to eat more food because he may need to ‘work the streets to keep her one day.’ When Esteban asks his mother if she would prostitute herself for him, she tells him that she has done just about everything else. To some extent, this conversation foreshadows the revelation that Esteban’s father, whom he has never met, is a transsexual prostitute. Manuela’s identity as a ‘mother’ thus moves away from traditional cinematic constructions. This is also evident when Manuela dresses as a prostitute to go with Agrado to a sex-workers’ shelter, where they seek employment outside of the sex industry. Manuela admits to one of the Sisters, “I’m not a whore despite how I’ve been treated sometimes.”[16] Manuela is obviously referring to Esteban’s father here and interestingly, as Mark Allinson has pointed out, ‘equates ‘whore’ with what is done to someone rather than what they do.’[17]

Manuela is also shown to be a supportive friend to Sister Rosa, who is suffering from a difficult pregnancy due to the fact that she is HIV positive and prone to hypertension. As we learn, Sister Rosa was impregnated by the same transsexual prostitute who fathered Esteban. This is an interesting subversion of the virgin/whore dichotomy, as Sister Rosa, who is played by an uncharacteristically demure Penelope Cruz, never reveals why she chose to break her vow of chastity with a transsexual prostitute whom she was helping withdraw from heroin. Agrado, who is also a transsexual prostitute, similarly surprises the audience as he/she reveals her maternal side. As Allinson points out, Agrado says that her role in life is to ‘make other people’s lives happier,’ which is in essence, the role of a mother. More importantly, when Agrado gives a young heroin-addicted actress a stern lecture about her drug abuse, she assumes a firm maternal voice. “You’ve got talent. Limited, but you’ve got it. And above all, a woman who loves you. And you trade it all for smack. You think it’s worth it? Well, it isn’t. It isn’t worth it.” In subverting the dichotomies of mother/whore and virgin/whore, Almodóvar’s Todo sobre mi madre rejects the monolithic constructions of femininity found in traditional narrative cinema. The representations of women in ¿Que he hecho yo para merecer esto? and Todo sobre mi madre thus point to femininity as a cultural construct, the effect of which is to rupture the relationship between sex and gender.


Having established that Almodóvar’s ¿Que he hecho yo para merecer esto?, Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios and Todo sobre mi madre reject the binary of male and female, I would like to suggest that Almodóvar’s films support Judith Butler’s assertion that gender is ‘performatively constituted.’ In her influential work Gender Trouble, Butler argues that “gender ought not to be construed as a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylised repetition of acts.”[18] Gender identity, she argues, is created through ‘sustained social performance,’ therefore “genders can neither be true nor false, neither real nor apparent, neither original nor derived.”[19] This notion of gender as a performance can be seen in several of Almodóvar’s films. In Tacones lejanos (1991), for example, the three central characters Becky, Rebecca and Manuel attend a drag show by an artist called Femme Letal, According to Butler, drag performances are ‘subversive bodily acts,’ in that they ‘subvert the distinction between inner and outer psychic space and effectively mock the notion of a true gender identity.’[20] This is certainly evident in the character of Femme Letal. At one point, Manuel asks Letal whether he is male or female, to which he replies that he can be ‘a woman or a man depending on the performance.’ Interestingly, like Esteban’s transsexual father in Todo sobre mi madre, Letal is heterosexual, which further subverts the ‘myth’ that sex, gender and sexuality exist in a single relationship to one another.

Manuela’s relationship with Lola, Esteban’s father in Todo sobre mi madre similarly ruptures the relationship between sex, gender and sexuality, while highlighting gender as a performance. As Manuela explains to Sister Rosa, she met and married Lola in Argentina, her place of birth, before he became a transsexual. Lola spent some time working in Paris, before they were to reunite in Barcelona, but when Manuela arrived in Barcelona she learned that while in Paris, both her husband and Agrado had gotten breast implants. “Apart from the tits,” Manuela explains, “her husband hadn’t changed that much, so she accepted him the way he was.” Lamenting Lola’s controlling ways, she recalls wondering ‘how someone could be machista with such tits.’ Crucially, it is not Lola’s ambiguous gender that drives Manuela away, but rather his/her heroin abuse and attempts to control her. The fact that two beautiful heterosexual women, Manuela and Sister Rosa, chose to have sexual relationships with Lola points to the categorical relation of sex, gender and sexuality as a farce. These relationships are deviant because of Lola’s ambiguous gender, yet as Butler has suggested, gender is neither original nor derived, because in all forms, it is a cultural construct. Manuela and Sister Rosa thus desire Lola, regardless of his performance.

This notion of gender as a performance is however, most evident in Agrado’s monologue towards the end of the film. At this point, Agrado is working as an assistant to the aforementioned heroin-addicted actress (Nina) and her lover (Huma), who are both performing in a production of A streetcar named desire. Agrado is forced to entertain the crowd one evening after the performance is cancelled because Nina has overdosed on heroin. They call me Agrado, because all my life I have only ever wanted to make life agreeable for others. Besides being agreeable, I am very authentic. Look at this body: all custom made. Eyes eighty thousand (pesetas); nose two hundred…tits, two, because I am no monster, seventy each. Silicone: lips, forehead, cheekbones, hips, ass…It costs a lot to be authentic, Lady, and for these things, one shouldn’t be stingy, because one is more authentic the more you resemble what you’ve dreamed you are. As Ernesto Acevedo-Munoz eloquently observes, Agrado’s performance ‘offers no actors, no play and no theatrical mise-en-scene,’ but rather a “recognition of identity based on the instability of transition, of acceptance, of authenticity centered on reinvention, on ‘what you have dreamed of yourself.’[21]


The films of Pedro Almodóvar rupture the relationship between sex, gender and sexuality. As I have shown, films such as ¿Que he hecho yo para merecer esto? and Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios invert patriarchal filmic conventions and parody cinematic constructions of femininity, in order to draw attention to the ‘constructedness’ of the male/female binary. In their representations of women Almodóvar’s ¿Que he hecho yo para merecer esto? and Todo sobre mi madre reject monolithic notions of femininity, particularly in relation to the mother/whore and virgin/whore dichotomies. These films, I have argued, problematise the binary of male and female by drawing attention to the contradictions inherent in our culturally constructed notions of gender. Finally, I have suggested that Almodóvar’s films can be read in relation to Judith Butler’s influential thesis of gender as a ‘sustained cultural performance.’ This is most evident in his films Tacones lejanos and Todo sobre mi madre, in which those who are born male or female are equally able to perform the identity of ‘woman.’ Almodóvar’s ‘subersive bodily acts’ thus denaturalise ‘gender,’ revealing it to be a cinematic and societal construct. As Almodóvar said of Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios, “Theatre; it’s just theater.” [22]


[1] Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp.101-180.
[2] Butler, Gender Trouble, p.31.
[3] Butler, Gender Trouble, p.179.
[4] Neva Chonin, ‘Auteur and provateur: all about Almodóvar’, San Francisco Chronicle (September 1 2006)p.1.
[5] Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema.’ Issues in Feminist Film Criticism, Patricia Erens (ed.), (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), p.32.
[6] Mulvey, ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, p. 35.
[7] Mulvey, ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, p. 33.
[8] Kathleen M. Vernon, ‘Melodrama against Itself: Pedro Almodóvar’s ‘What have I done to deserve this?,’ Film Quarterly, Vol. 46, No.3, (1993), p.30.
[9] Paul J. Smith, Desire Unlimited: The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar (London, New York: Verso, 2000), p.54.
[10] Smith, Desire Unlimited, p.54.
[11] Susan Martin-Marques, Feminist Discourse and Spanish Cinema: Sight Unseen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p.31.
[12] Smith, Desire Unlimited, p.54.
[13] Vernon, ‘Melodrama against itself,’ p.32.
[14] Vernon, ‘Melodrama against itself,’ p.32.
[15] Mark Allinson, A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar (London: I.B Tauris, 2001), p.74.
[16] Allison, A Spanish Labyrinth, p.74.
[17] Allison, A Spanish Labyrinth, p.74.
[18] Butler, Gender Trouble, p.179.
[19] Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 180.
[20] Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 174.
[21] Ernesto R. Acevedo-Munoz, ‘The Body and Spain: Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother,’ Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Vol. 21, No. 2, (2004), p.35.
[22] Pedro Almodóvar quoted in Smith, Desire Unlimited, p.101.