Maureen Dowd’s portrayal of Callista Gingrich brings to light the role of the politician’s wife as a glamorous nurturer and admirer of her strong husband — someone who is an agent for his success. This shiny surface reflects the deeply rooted values we hold about strong couples and leaders, which is perhaps why when the reality starts showing in the cracks it all seems so grotesque.
“Draped in Tiffany diamonds, Callista is the embodiment of the divide between Gingrich’s public piety and private immorality,” Maureen Dowd wrote of Gingrich’s third wife and mostly silent actor in his Republican campaign. This silence is dictated, Dowd suggests, because “the campaign does not want to remind voters that the relationship, portrayed as so redemptive, was born in sin and hypocrisy.” Callista Gingrich’s role as the redemptive, transformational wife, therefore, is needed to justify Gingrich’s infidelity to his second wife Marianne, with whom he had also had an affair while he was still married to his first wife.
Callista’s role brings to mind the unlikely parallel of Asma Al-Assad as a poster woman for Syrian “reform.” In her response to Vogue’s profile of Asmaa-al-Assad, Sana Saeed highlights:
“Asma al-Assad is fascinating because she seems to be a Muslim Arab woman who doesn’t belong in the Muslim Arab world. She embodies the strong, self-assured, passionate White woman who is internally embattled; living in a society so seemingly ghastly antithetical to what she needs, or rather, even what she deserves. Yet despite this, her compassion as a woman and her Western-accorded sense of independence and abrasiveness have allowed her to help save her society at the most micro level, even if she chose to marry into a family infamous for indiscriminately killing almost 30,000 citizens of the state in an attempt to quell political dissidence.”
Callista Gingrich projects hope in Newt Gingrich, as Asma al-Assad once projected hope in Syria. Is that the purpose of the wives of politicians? To try and convince the world that they are agents for meaningful change, even when there is so much evidence to the contrary?
The Muslim psyche is embedded with the idea of the wife as source of support, a haven from the troubles of the world. One only has to recall what happened in the aftermath of the Prophet’s first revelation: when he was alarmed and thinking himself insane, it was his first wife, Khadija, who comforted and assured him that she believed him. It is worth noting that Khadija did not do this for publicity, nor to project the image of a strong, rooted marriage that could serve as the platform for prophethood. She did it out of love, compassion and conviction, not a political statement.
This is in stark contrast with the concept of public figures in the realm of contemporary politics. No longer are politicians’ wives acting as free agents. Their public images are meticulously airbrushed so that they can be embedded as selling points indicating the forthright agendas of their parties. They serve as accessories to enhance and disguise the unpleasant reality of the relationships or the unpopular aspects of those agendas. That reality might be a past illicit affair or a sexting scandal. It might even extend beyond the scope of the relationship and have to do with distracting the public from the gruesome condition of the state itself.
One thing is certain: the more perfected the exterior, the harder it is to register the ugly truths underneath. A latent part of us is swayed by the image of the strong Callista Gingrich gazing reverently at her husband, Huma Abedin clinging adoringly to her husband in her embroidered wedding dress and Asmaa Al-Assad’s smartly-cropped honey-blonde hair and Chanel suits. The values embedded in these images make it all the more difficult to register the realities these women are meant to veil. When we see our leaders through the roles of their wives, we often find that glamorization and moral degradation coexist, reflecting both the best and worst of us.
(Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore)
Sarah Farrukh completed her BSc in Social Sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences and is currently a Masters of Information student at the University of Toronto. She writes about faith and books at A Muslimah Writes.
