Subject: Conductor’s Mane Distracts

Last evening (11/12/11) I attended a concert of the Minnesota Orchestra where Ms. Hicks conducted Shostakovich’s 5th symphony (“Inside The Classics” series). It was a great concert, a magnificent concert. Ms. Hicks is a brilliant conductor; however, her long hair swaying wildly is a distraction. A MAJOR distraction. She passionately and moves her head alot during the more dramatic moments of the symphony and thus her hair gets tossed back and forth like a frantic metronome. I can’t tell you how many times my concentration was annoyingly interrupted in the concert due to her hair. Advice: get a chic updo and give the audience the musical movement instead of the hair movement. If you don’t believe me, have someone sit in the audience and videotape Ms. Hicks as she conducts and tell me how one’s eyes gravitate to her hair. It reminds me of when one is in a bar or restaurant where multiple TVs are playing. You know the scene: as much as we want to give all our attention to the friend(s) we are with, our eyes are involuntarily averted to the TV images, over and over again. Ms. Hicks distracts the audience to involuntarily watch her hair flipping, swaying and dancing about instead of the real reason we are in Orchestra Hall – to hear the magnificent musical art performed by the world-class Minnesota Orchestra.

I don’t know how I feel about being compared to a TV in a bar, but I do know that I receive far more comments about my appearance than a male conductor would. There, I’ve said it. As much as we like to tout our enlightenment when it comes to gender equality, I know I’m being judged on slightly different criteria than my male colleagues.

Every now and then there’s some kind of uproar over concert attire, as we saw with the Yuja Wang-orange dress debacle this past summer. I’ve taken my fair share of critiques for what I wear onstage (for the record, and for those of you who have not been to one of our concerts, it’s usually flowy slacks and a sleeveless top); I think part of it has to do with the fact that women don’t have a uniform like men do, so we have automatic leeway, which makes some people uncomfortable.

I received some harsh criticism from a very unhappy gentleman in Raleigh, NC last year over the fact that I wasn’t wearing a jacket and baring my arms; I pointed out to him that the soloist I was performing with was in a strapless sating gown, but that didn’t seem to dissuade him from ranting about the “inappropriateness” of my attire! There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose. I discovered several years ago, after tearing a rotator cuff, that it’s much easier, physically, to conduct without the impediment of a jacket, or any sleeves at all. Why not do what’s most comfortable?

But this really was the first time I was criticized for something that is a part of my physical being rather than something I put on. I don’t know about all you ladies out there with lengthy tresses, but putting long hair in an “updo” (or up at all) for longer than an hour or so gives me headaches. It’s just easiest to wear it long. Again, a comfort thing. I couldn’t imagine anyone complaining about James Levine’s fuzzy halo impeding one’s view of the woodwinds, or Christoph Eschenbach’s bald pate reflecting the glare of stage lights, both of which I’ve witnessed.

While I appreciate that the audience is watching me some of the time, I would hope that they’re looking at the orchestra as well (and I will note that there are plenty of women in the Minnesota Orchestra who wear their hair down during concerts. And move their heads around, to boot. Just sayin’…). And, finally, I always feel like it’s a double standard; if I dress too conservatively, as I did very early on in my career (short hair, boxy suits), I run the risk of being called “dowdy” (yes, this did happen, believe it or not) – and when I embrace my femininity (long hair, fashionable attire), I’m deemed “distracting”…or worse. Long story short; a girl can’t win, so you might as well be comfortable.

It’s at times like this that I turn to Anna Russell. And you should, too.

I’m amazed by how few of today’s classical music fans seem to be even vaguely aware of Anna Russell. I’ve met an awful lot of people who have at least a passing acquaintance with PDQ Bach and who can practically recite their favorite Victor Borge routines by heart, but who have never had the pleasure of hearing the woman I consider to be the greatest musical comedian of all time.

Wildly creative, musically quite gifted (though she takes pains to not appear so,) and blessed with a sense of comic timing that I would kill for, Russell was the complete package, and the best part of her performances was that you could walk in knowing nothing about classical music and still laugh your head off. (By contrast, an evening with Peter Schickele is really only funny if you already know quite a bit about what he’s satirizing.)

I’ll admit, I’ve shamelessly cribbed from Russell’s style more than once during Inside the Classics concerts. My summation of the plot of Daphnis and Chloe last spring, for instance, was inspired in large part by her “analysis” of Wagner’s Ring cycle.

Click here if you can’t see the audio player.

I even threw in a “Remember Daphnis?!” at some point later in the show just to directly reference her bleat of “Remember Wotan?!” that sent the audience above into such peals of laughter. My version didn’t have exactly the same effect – like I said, I’d kill for that woman’s timing. But having the opportunity to stand on a stage a few times a year and try to get a live audience to laugh about classical music has only deepened my respect for what Anna Russell was able to do with seemingly no effort at all.

There are still a few good musical comedians out there today – Sarah’s a big Igudesman & Joo fan, and I’m partial to the Mnozil Brass. But there may never again be anyone who can make me laugh so hard just by describing the foibles and traditions that haunt my chosen profession…

…oh, just read it:

Lady musicians are having a heyday. The Cleveland Orchestra now has 11, the San Francisco 17, the Houston 25 and the American Symphony 44. Trombonist Betty Glover, 43, adds class to the brass of the Cincinnati Symphony; Helen Taylor, 24, plays a mean English horn for the Houston Symphony. The rare bird in the Los Angeles aviary is Barbara Winters, 28, who, to produce the needed penetrating sounds from her oboe, must pit her trim 120 lbs. against male fellow oboists who average a burly-chested 200 Ibs. To maintain the exceptional breath control necessary to control her contrary instrument, Winters swims and works out daily at a gym. “It leaves me almost no time for social life,” she says. “I’d hate to think what I would do if I were married.”

Oh, good lord. My parents always told me that the ’60s were all about equality and progressive thinking. Guess not…

Orin O’Brien, 31, the newest member of the New York Philharmonic, scurried into Philharmonic Hall one rainy night last week and, ignoring the musicians’ locker room, got dressed in a washroom… Miss O’Brien, who is as curvy as the double bass she plays, does not mind. On tour, the men make up for it by falling all over themselves to carry her bags, and save her a seat on the bus.

As curvy as the bass she…? Wow. I’ll have to try that one out on our new female bass player and see what she thinks of the compliment. Though I think I’ll be sure to try it at something slightly greater than arm’s length. (Ms. O’Brien is still plying her trade with the NY Phil, by the way.)

As casually offensive as the author’s language seems today, the really bad stuff is all from male musicians who clearly think they’re being reasonable and acting in the best interests of working women.

Lady-Killer Zubin Mehta, 30, who appreciates a well-turned ankle as much as a well-played musical phrase, has different reasons. He has enforced a limit of 16 women in his Los Angeles Philharmonic, because “a woman’s life in the orchestra is not as long as a man’s; she is just not as good at 60 as a man is at 60…” Most musicians agree that women are all right in their place—just as long as that place is not the first desk, a position that gives them authority over the other players in their section. When that happens, egos get bruised… The majority of conductors avoid such problems by refusing to promote women to the first desk.

Ugly, ugly, ugly. And once again, this was in 1966, not 1926! No one’s ever accused symphony orchestras of being on the cutting edge of anything, but I’ll admit, this article took me aback. I was born a decade after it was written, and I’ve literally never met a musician who admitted to believing that women were anything but the absolute equal of men on the concert stage. (I have met more than a few who still seemed to think that making unsolicited passes at the attractive ones was somehow okay, but that’s a different issue. There are creeps in every line of work.)

For the record, the first female musician appointed to the Minnesota Orchestra (nee Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra) was Australian violinist Jenny Cullen, hired by the MSO’s second music director, Henri Verbrugghen, in 1923. And I’m sure that the men of the MSO reacted to the hire in a completely calm and professional manner…

…or not.

She got the job only because she was having an affair with the boss. At least, that’s what the men said — even though the boss was fond of saying she looked like “a shy vegetable.” They alleged that [Cullen] had violated immigration laws and union rules… They threatened to shut down the season.

Sigh. Shoulda seen that coming, I guess. I can, at least, report firsthand that no such sexist garbage attended the hiring of our Ms. Hicks as the orchestra’s first female staff conductor several years back. In fact, if memory serves, her selection from an impressive crop of finalists (all the rest of them male) took about ten seconds of deliberation for those of us on her audition committee. (Yes, I was on Sarah’s audition committee. Funny how life works.)

The Time article makes note of the Boston Symphony’s innovative use of screens to hide the gender of auditioning candidates from those passing judgment. It was, of course, exactly those screens that eventually allowed women to become the nearly equal (by numbers) force that they are in today’s music world. By the looks of things, they’ll outnumber us Y-chromosomers on the concert stage within a generation or two. And when they do, well… I can only hope they’ll treat us a heck of a lot more kindly than we’ve treated them over the years.

Throughout my conducting career I’ve faced the dreaded “How is it being a woman in a male-dominated field?” question, and my customary reply is that 1) I choose not to make a big deal of it and 2) musicians are fine with anyone on the podium as long as they are prepared and competent.

My reasoning lies in my belief that we largely create our own realities; if I choose to ignore the potential minefield of the woman-as-authority-figure model, and assume that others will as well, that’s the way it will be. If I act like it’s no big deal, everyone else feels like it’s no big deal. Classic group psychology.

On the other hand, if I ever became hyper-conscious of long-held assumptions about gender and leadership, it would probably cause me some anxiety, which would then affect both my work and relationship with the ensemble or organization in question.

In terms of the inroads women have made in the conducting field, to paraphrase – we’ve come a long way, baby. But as far as we’ve come, there are constant reminders of the underlying discomforts that still exist.

Case in point; the recent firing or conductor/Baroque specialist Emmanuelle Haïm. Slated to conduct a run of Mozart’s Idomeneo at the Opéra de Paris, she was dismissed and replaced by Philippe Hui two days before opening night. What ensued was a she-said/they-said unusual in the music world in that the Orchestra made a public statement in response to Haïm’s declaration. Haïm claimed that the musicians were unwilling to work with her to achieve a different (Baroque) aesthetic. The orchestra countered that they were disappointed in the lack of precision in both musical ideas and in conducting style/gestures, and that all they care for is the quality of a performance.

A vote of no confidence from an orchestra is rather extraordinary. In her defense, neither a contracted rehearsal period nor musicians unaccustomed to the very particular technical and musical needs of historically informed performance is conducive to an amicable work environment. In the orchestra’s defense, Haïm is a self-taught conductor who, while generally highly regarded for her musical expertise in the Baroque repertoire, is admittedly not a technically adept conductor.

The situation is fully outlined in this article from Le Monde; for the non-Francophones, a translation of most of the article here.

What struck me about this commotion is the inclusion of an obvious fact that the author of the article decided to add at the end of a paragraph (I’m using Charles T. Downey’s translation from Ionarts):

The orchestra, “called out” by Mme Haïm, broke its customary silence — a very rare thing — by the means of the commission elected by the musicians, which declared on January 22: “The musicians were delighted to try a Baroque approach, [but] there was great disappointment in the lack of precision as well of musical ideas in the conducting style.” In other words, the orchestra, which wanted only “to guarantee the excellence of the performances,” denounced a lack of competence, for this production, of one of the few woman conductors in the world. (emphasis mine)

We don’t need to be reminded that there are not a whole lot of female conductors in the world. Anyone not living under a rock is aware of this. So, assuming that the goal was not simply an unnecessary statement of the obvious, I can only infer that this phrase was added as some sort of snide insinuation.

Yes, I’ll admit, I’m probably more sensitive to gender slights than your average male conductor. It’s simply a matter of experience; I’ve been on the receiving end of backhanded commentary and dealt with interactions fraught with undercurrents of chauvinism countless times. Again, as I said earlier, my response is to completely ignore it, and when one ignores it, one at least has the possibility of neutralizing an unfriendly environment.

But when publicly presented in international media, it seems gratuitously provocative (a conductor declared incompetent – and she’s a WOMAN!). And let me be clear here; it’s the author of the article that rankles me. I know nothing about the actual situation and can only assume a conductor would be ousted only because a production was in serious jeopardy and was artistically compromised.

I strive to dispel any notion that my gender marks my work. In fact, most of the time I pay it no heed (yes, even in the four-inch heels). And, again, when one endeavors to disregard traditional societal norms, with enough time one can establish new norms. Media insinuations like this one merely do a disservice to the very real work we’ve undertaken to eradicate those boundaries and assumptions.

Just when you think we’ve made progress, all you need to do is scratch the surface to discover the underlying bias. Plus ça change… (and do read down through all the comments; the vitriol is extraordinary.)

While Sam and the Orchestra have been occupied with the Composer Institute this week, I’ve been preoccupied with Humperdinck…well, actually, this Humperdinck.

I’m always surprised how well-known Hansel and Gretel is – not because of the piece itself, which is beautiful – but because of the exposure many seem to have had as children (it is, after all, a “fairytale opera”). It’s a funny matter of personal experience, I suppose – for many, H&G; is their first contact with opera; for me, it was Samson et Dalila, but I guess that makes sense for a 7-year-old obsessed with Placido Domingo (I don’t think Humperdinck is really his bag). In the interim decades, I’ve heard H&G; quite a few times but never studied it (except for the omnipresent Prelude and Dream Pantomime, both of which I’ve done over a half-dozen times).

So, as I hadn’t been around for any of the previous iterations of this production with the Orchestra, my first real involvement with the complete work came this past summer, when I initially delved into the score.

One of the most fascinating discoveries I’ve made in the score is how unsympathetic a character the Mother is (yes, yes, I’ve pondered musical stuff too – don’t get me started about use of percussion in the Witch’s Ride and how triplets in the tambourine intimate magical/evil). But, wow, this woman is painted as such an unsympathetic character; her first entrance is marked with hysterics; she knocks over the jug of milk herself and takes it out on Hansel and Gretel; then in a typically manic-depressive switch she has suicidal thoughts while falling asleep at the kitchen table after she chases the kids out of the house; she has no idea how dangerous the woods are or that there’s a hungry ogress or that witches ride broomsticks (why does Father know all these things??); and in the happy reunion at the end she merely has a single line (“Children, dear”) while Father has quite a few lines – and the kids, quite tellingly, call him first (“Father, Mother!” – although maybe I’m simply reading too much into that?).

Our “Mother”, Lola Watson, and I shared a few laughs at our first rehearsal about how mentally unbalanced the character seems, and the possibility (as some have interpreted) that the Mother is the Witch. While that seems a little far-fetched in context of the opera, I wonder what a feminist fairytale scholar’s take on that notion would be? A tantalizing alternative to ponder as I peruse the score this morning for the umpteenth time.

In any case, I’m delighted to be taking a break from operaland to attend the Future Classics concert tonight – the next 6 days holds nearly 23 hours of staging/orchestra/sitzprobe/full-run rehearsals for H&G;!

I other news: it seems like every year that there’s an article like this about women in the conducting field. I’ve kind of stopped reading them because they always say the same thing; we’ve made inroads (cue JoAnn Falletta and Marin Alsop), but it’s still hard out there for a chick, orchestras are conservative in nature and change moves at a glacial pace, etc etc. It always bugs me that the finger is pointed at orchestras as bastions of old-school conservatism; look at the fact that there are only thirteen female CEO’s of this country’s 500 largest publicly traded companies.

Speaking of Marin Alsop, the Baltimore Symphony opens their regular subscription season with my friends Time for Three. They are absolutely fantastic, and great guys, to boot.

And speaking of conductors, I leave you with a virtual tour of the posh backstage pad of New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert.

Q: Ok, so first violin is generally more prestigious (and difficult) than second violin, and being a “titled” player is more prestigious (and difficult) than being non-titled. So, is it better to be a titled second violinist than a non-titled first violinist? How does the pecking order work?

A great question with no clear answer beyond personal preference, I’d say. It’s true that the Principal Second Violin will almost always make a bit more money than a section player in the firsts. (Emphasis on “a bit.” Except for the very most prominent players in the orchestra, titled players don’t make nearly as much overscale as you might imagine.)

But playing second violin can be a hard and thankless job. They play fewer melodies and more backing textures than any other instrument group in the orchestra, and that can really mess with your playing technique if you’re not careful. So for many violinists, being in charge of a section is less important than being challenged every day by first violin parts, which can be wickedly difficult. Case in point: this past year, our orchestra’s longtime Principal Second, Vali Phillips, voluntarily moved into a section chair in the firsts. He seems quite happy, and while his replacement at the head of the seconds, the estimable Gina DiBello, now technically outranks him, it certainly doesn’t mean that my admiration of Vali’s skills has diminished in the slightest.

So I guess what it comes down to is finding the right balance between the challenge of playing your instrument and the challenge of leadership. There’s no single answer that works for everyone.

Moving on, Ruth Ann Marks has a question about a different sort of orchestral hierarchy:

Q: On New Year’s Day I watched two televised concerts: one by the New York Philharmonic and one by the Vienna Philharmonic. I was struck by the gender difference between the two groups as I did not see any women musicians playing in the VPO! (However, I believe that the VPO actually has at least one (?) official female member.) From the internet I have gleaned that the reason for the VPO’s lack of female musicians relates to their assumption that men produce a unique quality of sound. What is your take on this? I find this argument contrary to my experience listening to the Minnesota Orchestra; when Jorja Fleezanis is concert master, I feel that the MN Orchestra is at its best. (And Sarah Kwak is pretty amazing too!)

(Yes. Yes, she is.) Without getting too deep into the specifics of the Vienna situation (you can read the whole sorry history of their continuing exclusion of women elsewhere,) I think it’s safe to say that every musician I know would laugh at the outmoded and absurd idea that an all-male orchestra is in any way preferable. Yes, the Vienna Phil is one of the world’s great orchestras, and has nearly no female players. But the Berlin Phil is at least Vienna’s equal, and they’ve got tons of women in their ranks. (As does nearly every other great orchestra in the Western world.) The one just has no connection to the other.

Interestingly, it was this argument that women were incapable of performing at a high enough level to be admitted to major orchestras that led, in part, to the process of “screened” auditions that so many orchestras (especially in America) now use. If women couldn’t compete at a man’s level, went the theory, then there should be no harm in having the orchestra make it’s hiring decisions without being able to see the candidates. Not surprisingly, it was around this time that women started to be hired in abundance.

The Minnesota Orchestra is currently made up of 2/3 men and 1/3 women, which actually surprised me when I counted, because I thought it would be closer to 50/50. (Our orchestra admitted its first female member, violinist Jenny Cullen, way back in 1923, much to the dismay of many of the men in the orchestra at the time.) Our violin sections are overwhelmingly female, and our cello section has a solid majority of women as well. So from the audience, our band probably appears to have fewer men than we actually do. But brass sections are nearly always dominated by men, as are bass sections. (We’ll be getting a new female bass player in the fall, our first since I’ve been in the orchestra.) And oddly, our viola section is overwhelmingly male, which is quite unusual, and I don’t really have an explanation for it, except to say that it’s definitely not that way on purpose.

In any case, Ruth is certainly right that Jorja Fleezanis and Sarah Kwak stand as living refutations of the notion that women lack the qualities necessary to play in, or lead, an orchestra. And eventually, even the Vienna Phil will get over themselves and join the modern world…

I have to confess that I have a soft spot for Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart (as well as Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann). Nannerl was the older Mozart sibling and one half of the brother-sister act that toured the capitals of Europe to tremendous acclaim. History has it that she was a brilliant pianist, with a talent “scarcely inferior to her brother’s”; in fact, as late as 1765 (when she was 14), she had top billing in their concert advertisements.

But all good things must come to an end, or at least they do for a young woman in polite 18th century society, where it would be improper for a girl of marriageable age to be performing in public. In 1769, at the age of 18, Nannerl was forbidden from further concertizing and remained in Salzburg as brother Wolfgang continued his triumphal trajectory. Leopold, ever the controlling father, rejected suitor after suitor; Nannerl did not marry until 33 and settled in St. Gilgen with her husband, children and step-children. Years later, after her husband’s death, she returned to Salzburg to live modestly as a piano teacher.

There’s a quiet tragedy in Nannerl’s story – but I always wonder if I see it as such through 21st century lenses. After all, in Nannerl’s world, it was all that could be expected. It was probably extraordinary enough that she lived the childhood of a traveling musical prodigy (and that’s certainly what she was). Who knows how her talents would have developed if she had been allowed to continue her musical career?

It all touches home for me. I’ve written several posts on my take on being a woman in my particular field; it’s hard enough navigating the minefields of gender in the 21st century, much less the 18th. Change comes slowly; I’m reminded of the fact that women did not have the right to vote until 1920 – only a (long) lifetime ago.

And I think of the writings of Rousseau:

“The Education of women should always be relative to men. To please, to be useful to us, to make us love and esteem them, to educate us when young and to take care of us when grown up, to advise, to console us, to render our lives easy and agreeable–these are the duties of women at all time and what they should be taught in their infancy.”

And:

“Women, in general, possess no artistic sensibility…nor genius. They can acquire a knowledge…of anything through hard work. But the celestial fire that emblazens and ignites the soul, the inspiration that consumes and devours…,these sublime ecstasies that reside in the depths of the heart are always lacking in [women's artistic endeavors].”

Nannerl would have been fighting a losing battle.

Two things changed my mind. First off, I got stopped on the street in downtown Minneapolis today by a bearded guy who was very enthusiastic about my work. At first, I assumed he was a fan of the orchestra (I’m continually amazed by how many people in Minnesota can pick individual members of the orchestra out of a crowd,) but when he started asking me questions about Keith Olbermann, I stopped him, and gently asked, “Sorry, but who do you think I am?”

As it turns out, I apparently look a lot like NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd, who has been getting a fair amount of national airtime in recent weeks. If only Sarah looked like Chris Matthews, we might be able to arrange to get Inside the Classics some exposure on MSNBC… (Insert your own joke about fewer people watching MSNBC than attending our concerts.)

Secondly, it occurred to me that I actually do have something nice to say. Regardless of what you may think of the current administration and its approach to governance, I’ve always been quite taken with the fact that we have a Secretary of State who can play piano at something approaching a professional level.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfSYwJuq3Vg]
Dvorak Piano Quintet, split in two for some reason

Condoleezza Rice is actually something of an amazing woman on a lot of levels (if you’re interested in a fascinating, completely nonpartisan look at her and the rest of the Bush brain trust, check out James Mann’s excellent book, Rise of the Vulcans,) but it’s the piano playing that really gives me pause. Not that she plays, you understand – I know a lot of adults who still play music for fun – but that she plays awfully well. She plays like a woman who still puts in a couple of hours practice on a daily basis, and I can’t imagine where she ever finds the time.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ytj-I28nt8]
…part two.

So there: an RNC blog post that didn’t mention Sarah Palin’s daughter, John McCain’s age, or the protesters who decided that the proper way to show their displeasure with the GOP was to smash the front window of Macy’s. Do I win a prize?

First things first. Here is the “offending”photo:

I don’t want to belabor the point, as the mainstream press has taken care of that (last weekend it seemed like CNN updated the story every 7 minutes). But as a basis of comparison, observe below a shot of Ms. Cyrus from the Teen’s Choice awards a few months back:

I frankly think she’s exposing more skin in the latter shot, and I find the Vanity Fair photo rather ethereal and much prettier.

The larger point, I think, is that Cyrus’s Disney handlers realized, much too late, that the more mature image presented by the Vanity Fair cover might alienate her largely tween audience (or, more likely, their parents).

We live in an increasingly visual world, and it is no surprise that the music world is so image-driven. Now, lest you think that image issues are strictly a pop music phenomenon, observe the below:

Violinist Sarah Chang’s first album cover. Compare to this:

Chang’s latest release. Is the image appropriate? Sure, it’s an attractive shot of Chang. Does it have anything to do with the music? Well, I guess she’s holding a violin, and there are falling leaves…(“Autumn”?)

Image certainly carries weight in the classical scene, and probably has for longer than we care to admit. (Think of Franz Liszt, the 19th century piano virtuoso/composer whose rock star good looks and charismatic stage presence made the ladies swoon.) Cyrus’s photo reminded me of another rather controversial picture, this one of violinist Lara St. John:

St. John’s first album cover. Some people cried pornography; St. John maintains that she was expressing how nothing came between her and her music (echoes of Brooke Shields ?). What’s certain is that the image generated a lot of press, which I’m sure boosted album sales and helped launch her career. (In St. John’s defense, that would have been the beginning and end of it if she didn’t have the goods to back it up – she’s a fine violinist with a thriving career.)

The image game is a tough one, and it always feels like women come under more scrutiny than men. On one hand, we are expected to present an attractive image of ourselves; on the other, if that image is deemed to “cross the line”, our talent is put to doubt because we are thought to be relying on our feminine wiles. And that line keeps shifting, drifting with political and cultural winds.

I know I spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out what to wear on the podium; women don’t have “uniforms” in the way that men do, so I can’t just slap on a tuxedo and call it a night. How do I maintain both my femininity and sense of style while still remaining “appropriate”? The only certainty for me are my 4-inch heels; whatever you think of them, I love them, because they make me tall. And it’s great to cut an imposing figure on the podium.