Quoting Myself on Kamala Harris

Back when Kamala Harris was running for president, I wished I could find the link to what I had read 10 or more years earlier about how Obama had commented on her being the most attractive attorney general in the U.S., and that there was research showing that type of thing was detrimental to a woman candidate.

Well, while I was searching around on my own blog for something else, I found it. It was from 2013, during Obama's second term. 

Quoting myself from that post,

The biggest piece of news in the whole thing, to me, was that the Women's Media Center just published research that found comments about women politicians' appearances — whether neutral, positive, or negative — all have negative effects on their poll standings.

As [the now late] Kevin Drum of Mother Jones explained it,

In the survey, Jane Smith and Dan Jones are pitted against each other in a race for Congress. Both have similar backgrounds, and after reading their bios the survey respondents prefer Jane slightly, 49-48.

Then they read a second story. In one version of the story, there's no physical description of either candidate, and Jane's lead stays pretty much the same. In a second version, there's a neutral description of Jane's appearance. Suddenly she's 5 points behind Dan. In a third version, there's a positive description of her appearance. Now she's 13 points behind Dan. A fourth version that contains a negative description has about the same effect.

In other words, any description hurts Jane.  

I don't know that there was much written about Harris's physical appearance during the 2024 election (maybe I've forgotten), but there was the usual commentary on what she wore, which women candidates endure while men get nothing on that front. 

I can imagine that even clothing descriptions are enough of a reminder of appearance to feed some of the appearance effect found in the Women's Media Center research.