Rachel Levine, Memes, Beauty and Cruelty
When Donald Trump vowed to Make America Great Again what he was really promising to do was make sure that pre-existing hierarchies would once again be rigidly enforced. After all, what is Trump’s “America First” mantra/catchphrase/agenda if not an assertion that within the great hierarchy of nation, the United States occupies a place of pride at the very apex, with all other hopelessly inferior nations far below it?
Trump promised to angrily enforce other hierarchies as well. As long as Trump was in office, American-born citizens would occupy a place high above legal immigrants, who in turn are more respected than illegal immigrants.
We’re so obsessed with hierarchies that we have hierarchies within hierarchies within hierarchies. Despite what Conservatives may believe, white people have always, and probably will always occupy a place of supreme power in American society predicated on literally hundreds upon hundreds of years of slavery, Jim Crow, racism and genocide of indigenous people.
Biracial is considered preferable to African-American and light-skinned is held as more desirable than dark skin. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for Barack Obama to confront the full force of our country’s bitter, toxic and deep-seated racism as our first African-American President but it would have been even more difficult if he hadn’t been biracial, light-skinned and handsome.
Our country being what at its, Obama still got compared to a monkey by his detractors an awful lot but not as much as he would have if he were darker skinned. Michelle Obama, despite being an extremely beautiful and elegant woman, is darker skinned than her husband and is not a waif so for the past five years simultaneously racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic memes have posited her as a man.
Memes occupy a curious cultural space where self-styled edge lords and online provocateurs disseminate self-consciously transgressive memes that promote and reinforce pre-existing cultural hierarchies through cruelty and bigotry.
In right-wing memes the “Woke” crowd is invariably depicted as unattractive, “weird-looking” and gender-bending in a way that’s supposed to come off as attention-hungry and artificial. Leftist men are depicted as effeminate and hysterical and clad in tight, ill-fitting, unflattering clothes.
Women, meanwhile, are depicted as ugly and overweight, perpetually apoplectic over some perceived indignity and sexual in a sad, exhibitionist, attention-seeking way that’s destined to leave them alone and unloved while their tradition-minded peers find true happiness and contentment in marriage and motherhood.
In these toxic, ubiquitous memes, Conservative men are exemplars of rugged masculinity, unflappable in the face of female frenzy. In this hierarchy male of course occupies a place high above female and what are considered “male” traits, like stoicism, strength, logic, reason and cold rationality are held as inherently better than what are deemed traditionally female traits.
That’s why Sam Elliott became a ubiquitous star of right-wing memes despite supporting Joe Biden; nobody is more ruggedly, traditionally masculine than the mustachioed character actor, so consequently no one has more automatic authority.
There’s an unmistakable element of schoolyard bullying and cruelty to these awful, widely disseminated images rooted in a revulsion at people who look “weird" or unattractive or do not conform to traditional conceptions of gender and sexuality.
By meme standards, this one is actually pretty tame.
Right-wing memes remain a safe space for bigots to make fun of how people look, to cruelly mock people who do not fit our culture’s conception of beauty. So it is perhaps not surprising that since Joe Biden nominated Rachel Levine to be Assistant Secretary for Health she has occupied a place of prominence in right-wing memes disproportionate to her power within the administration.
As a powerful Jewish trans woman in her sixties who is not conventionally attractive Levine is cursed to face the full brunt of our culture’s sexism, transphobia, anti-Semitism, lookism and ageism, not to mention our knee-jerk hostility towards powerful, accomplished women who do not apologize for being powerful to make insecure men feel more comfortable and less threatened.
She’s a brilliant woman, a pioneer and a trailblazer who obviously got to where she is by being extraordinarily smart and good at what she does yet there is a sadly sizable contingent of the population that looks at her and just sees someone who looks weird and wants to force their toddler to transition and consequently should be viciously mocked in unmistakably personal ways.
Even after Levine leaves office I suspect the right will remain obsessed with her because she embodies so much of what they despise and see as a violation of a natural order built on a toxic set of hierarchies that are finally being challenged and confronted in a very real way, and not a moment too soon.
Pre-order The Joy of Trash: Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place’s Definitive Guide to the Very Worst of Everything and get access to original articles AS I write them and plenty more bonus stuff like exclusive cards featuring Felipe Sobreiro’s amazing artwork for the book at https://the-joy-of-trash.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders/cart
Help ensure a future for the Happy Place during an uncertain era AND get sweet merch by pledging to the site’s Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace
Also, BUY the RIDICULOUSLY SELF-INDULGENT, ILL-ADVISED VANITY EDITION of THE WEIRD ACCORDION TO AL, the Happy Place’s first book. This 500 page extended edition features an introduction from Al himself (who I co-wrote 2012’s Weird Al: The Book with), who also copy-edited and fact-checked, as well as over 80 illustrations from Felipe Sobreiro on entries covering every facet of Al’s career, including his complete discography, The Compleat Al, UHF, the 2018 tour that gives the book its subtitle and EVERY episode of The Weird Al Show and Al’s season as the band-leader on Comedy Bang! Bang!
Only 23 dollars signed, tax and shipping included, at the https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop or for more, unsigned, from Amazon here