Appearance matters in presidential politics, USD professors and students say

Does appearance matter in politics? Whenever politicians show off their speaking skills, gesture a certain way, say certain things or dress in a certain way, their overall “look” will influence voters’ decisions, according to USD professors and students.

The 2016 election saw women become candidates up and down the ballot. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton became the first major-party female presidential candidate this year, and locally, there was a congressional toss-up between Republican Kristi Noem and Democrat Paula Hawks.

“There’s obviously a level of office that women have not achieved yet,” said Sara Lampert, assistant professor of history and program coordinator for women, gender and sexuality studies at USD. “One of the things I’ve come to understand is that there are still gender dynamics when women run against each other, but the gender dynamics are often different than when women run against men.”

This can mean a lot of appearance work for female candidates — Hillary Clinton, for example, needed to appear both warm and competent to voters. Clinton also had to retain elements of her femininity while still seeming masculine in order to appear like “The Father of the Nation,” Lampert said.

“Presidential office in particular requires being someone who can stand up to foreign powers and be the father of the nation,” Lampert said. “It’s a very common way we continue to think about the presidency. When women become involved in politics, they often find themselves having to simultaneously present themselves as able to do what is perceived as a man’s job, but also assure voters that they are still feminine women, that they are not unsexing themselves. So women need to be simultaneously masculine but also feminine while running for office.”

Lampert said that, because of the societal concept of men as leaders and women as followers, women are less likely to run for office because they struggle to see themselves in a leadership position.

“Gender matters a lot,” Lampert said. “It privileges men and often traps women in what I would call a ‘double bind.’”

There have been a lot of expectations of Secretary Clinton during this campaign. This has been true for Clinton not only in 2016, but throughout her decades in politics. Clinton has had to deal with constant criticism of her fashion choices, her marriage to Bill Clinton and her ability to appear both competent and warm.

“Hillary is expected to be competent and warm whereas Donald is expected to be competent,” said Leah Seurer, a USD communications professor. “When Hillary speaks, we want to feel like she is our friend but also a great business leader. We don’t expect that of Trump, which is a double standard that she has to deal with that he doesn’t. They both have strengths and weaknesses on the rubric of what success looks like.”

Beside female politicians’ need to seem both feminine and masculine at times, there is also a need for male candidates to “man up” when running for office. This is one explanation of the behaviors of Donald Trump during this campaign cycle.

“One of the strategies that Donald Trump has deployed in this election is performing what we call ‘hypermasculinity,’” Lampert said. “He presents a lot of our culture’s very extreme ideas about masculinity by being dominating and aggressive. We saw this in the way he would interact with some of his opponents in the Republican Primary. When he would interact with other men, he would try to belittle their masculinity.”

Trump’s lack of political experience may have made him a more candid speaker and debater. For the most part, Trump hasn’t held back when he speaks and he seems to have no filter. This has made him relatable in some ways to voters, USD communication studies graduate student Emily Niebrugge said.

“He just says outrageous things and at this point it’s kind of expected of him,” Niebrugge said. “He’s really non-traditional and I think that’s why people like him, because he’s not a politician. People get really frustrated with politicians and people in government because they don’t feel like they can relate to them. I feel like a large group of people feel like they can relate to Donald Trump because he is saying things that are not politically correct, but offensive.”

The difference in experience between Trump and Clinton also contributes to their political appearance. In the town hall debates, Clinton looked more composed and approached the undecided voters with ease, while Trump famously lurked behind her as she spoke.

“Hillary Clinton is very practiced, and that’s another thing that people don’t like about her,” Niebrugge said. “They might say that they don’t like her because she looks rehearsed. Another reason people might get frustrated in the debates is that you can tell they’ve rehearsed the questions. You know they have the answers they’re supposed to say, and that’s kind of what campaigns and elections have come down to at this point.”

Candidates usually want to have their answers down pat when it comes to questions on stances and policy changes; they don’t want to look unprepared, because that may damage their appearance. Political candidates must find the line between seeming too-rehearsed and robotic and being too sloppy and left at a loss for words.

“Hillary takes more of a traditional approach,” Niebrugge said. “That town hall debate, for example, you could tell that she is practiced in those kinds of speeches. She’s done it before, she knows the traditional way to speak in front of people. If you look over at the other side on Trump, he just says outrageous things and at this point it’s just kind of expected.”

Trump has made a few lewd comments about women in his time running for office as well as before he jumped into the Presidential race. Lampert called this “misogyny.”

“There’s also a piece of it that involves a very misogynistic attitude towards women,” Lampert said. “(We see this) in the way he talks about women and the way he has behaved towards women in his past. I don’t think that’s something you can separate from his masculine style.”

Beyond the expectations of gender in politics, there is also the issue of fashion. In years past and still today, Clinton has often been called out for wearing pantsuits, and she has been asked in interviews about her dress or her hairstyle before discussing issues of foreign policy. Some voters take a “substance over style” approach to this, while others do the opposite.

“It really bothers me when we ask questions about fashion mattering,” Niebrugge said. “Does it? No. That’s not what they’re being elected for, to pick out a different shirt. Unfortunately, it does come to a lot of people’s minds.”

Thanks to the issues of appearance and gender in this election cycle, there is a lot of forthcoming research on the role gender plays in politics.

“A lot of research on women running in politics is focused on voters’ expectations, but there is not as much research done on how campaigns strategize with gender,” Lampert said. “We know that things like how you dress and talk and what style of campaign ad you use are very carefully made decisions, and we need to know more about how campaign managers factor gender into running campaigns for both men and women. I think there will be a lot more research coming out of this campaign cycle that we need to have to answer these questions.”