I assume most of the photos in Runner's World feature people in their workout gear. I've never read it so I don't know. When she was on Oprah she went to her gym, because they were showing a video of her everyday life in Alaska, in shorts. And they showed her working out. So in that context, if she wants to show how fit she is (assuming she posed for it for that reason and not to try to get votes because of her attractiveness or whatever) then that's why she posed that way. Same as a male politician who would do the same thing. Nothing wrong with posing for a photo in that context-male or female. Should you think twice about possible future implications of it? Yes-but I would imagine most people wouldn't think it would end up on the cover of Newsweek. So to take that photo out of that context and to say "how do you solve a problem like Sarah and she's bad for us" or whatever they said-well to me the two combined sends a certain message-and the photo is taken out of context within the purpose of that message. For that reason or to just get publicity and to sell magazines, they knew what they were doing either way. I'm not saying she doesn't do the victim thing and get mileage out of that.
If a similar posed photo of Obama (or any other male politician) existed and some magazine did that for a similar purpose..well I wonder if it would even be done first of all, but maybe then there would be some sort of equality. An odd "equality" but one all the same.
I guess there is a question as to whether or not Newsweek even got the photo legitimately. I've heard the question raised.
You make some good points, MrsS. I thought of the context factor too when forming my opinion. Still, I think it's foolish for a politician who wants to project any degree of gravitas to do something like this without considering all potential implications, including future uses of the photo.
Granted, I'm very cynical when it comes to assessing Palin's motivations for doing pretty much anything (and with good reason, I'd argue), but I can't see her
not thinking of the mileage she would get from the attractiveness of the photo, even if her primary purpose was purely to promote a healthy lifestyle.
It seems to me that this is another in a long line of poor decisions she has made. I think she tends to act in a very calculating way when promoting herself, but a great deal of the time, she severely misjudges what the public (other than her core followers) are willing to embrace or tolerate from a politician. And then when her decisions don't pay off, she tends to blame everyone but herself. In fact, the entire purpose of her book seems to be to refute all the things that went wrong in her political career, in a medium where she gets the final word without being challenged.
On the subject of male politicians being held to the same standard, I vaguely remembered
shirtless Obama pictures, so I went to the trouble
of looking them up. They were taken in Hawaii, and they appear to be paparazzi-type pictures taken from a distance, and not official pictures that were posed for. From what I can see, they've made the cover of one publication, a local Washington magazine. It's no Newsweek, but then again, I'm not sure that a national news magazine would use paparazzi photos on their front cover.
To wit:
The real photo on the right, and the magazine cover on the left. It kind of makes me laugh that they altered the colour of the swimming trunks.