With the headline cycle of Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s “partying antics” winding down as people focus on new (yet old) subjects, like whether or not Harry Styles is a queerbaiter or if humanity is even going to be around much longer to keep debating it, it bears noting that this is hardly the first time “people” (read: men) have been “upset” about a woman enjoying herself. For not only has Marin already come under fire for “behavior not befitting a prime minister” via that 2020 Trendi photo shoot (in which not wearing a top under her blazer was deemed heretical), she’s now suffering the backlash of “dancing at a private event with friends.” Like, fucking seriously? Is there no end to the double standard that women face in every career field?
And regardless of imbibing some alcohol at said private party, how many male politicians have done worse? John F. Kennedy was hopped up on amphetamines during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but did anyone want to put him on blast (no pun intended) for being too “drugged out” to make decisions? No, back then, everything was done to ensure that The Politician appeared “squeaky clean.” Always to both the public and the politician’s detriment. For no one can live up to those kinds of expectations, inevitably doomed to disappoint when the truth comes out to reveal that—gasp!—they’re human. With frailties and flaws just like everyone else. Granted, there’s a difference between Marinian-league “flaws” and Trumpian-league monstrosities (even just the ones that we actually know about—with the majority of presidents before Trump having the luxury of living in a period when there wasn’t a digital footprint of everything).
This idea that “dignified” politicians are expected to adhere to a “higher standard” has rarely, if ever, been made manifest by any of the government officials society has known over the centuries. Certainly not in the U.S., where Kennedy used the White House (and its satellite residences) as his private brothel or Nixon tape recorded himself talking some paranoid nonsense about everything being the Jews’ fault. Maybe that’s why Marin was hopeful that, “in the year 2022, it [should be] accepted that even decision-makers get to dance, sing and go to parties.” Because yes, there is something decidedly Footloose-ian about this attitude toward Marin, who, as a woman under constant stress, deserves the same right as any male politician to “blow off some steam” (except when men do it, it usually involves a dead stripper or prostitute).
Historically, of course, it has always been the case that a woman seen having “too much” fun (commonly known as “being a slut”) must be silenced, stopped or otherwise subjugated entirely. While many will at first automatically think of Britney Spears’ only recently dissolved conservatorship, the “trend” (to use a grotesque word to describe it) goes back to long ago. From “witches” being burned at the stake to “excitable” women being slapped with a “hysteria” diagnosis. And because females as government officials is, sadly, only a relatively new “phenomenon” in “modern” times, the closest thing to wielding political power for many women in the past century has been becoming a Hollywood star. Like Frances Farmer, known more for her almost decade-long period of legal troubles and psychiatric confinement that began in the 1940s. Just as Spears, Farmer was put into a conservatorship that would allow her parents to make decisions about her life. Including whether or not she should stay committed at the state hospital (first being admitted to one in California and then being transferred out of “kindness” to one in her home state of Washington).
Whether or not the diagnosis they gave her as a “paranoid schizophrenic” was grounded in reality as opposed to a convenient label, what got Farmer into this level of trouble was, essentially, having “too much” fun. In other words, drinking heavily. A common celebrity affliction of the day, in addition to morphine addiction. And cocaine—of which Mabel Normand had a predilection for around the time of William Desmond Taylor’s death, the first major public scandal involving so many celebrities at once (the Fatty Arbuckle debacle preceding it featuring just him and a bit actress named Virginia Rappe). Maybe Taylor’s mystery murder was for the best in terms of setting the precedent for Hollywood’s subsequent barrage of highly publicized and sensationalized scandals, including Farmer’s “erratic” behavior—a.k.a. behaving as any male could without reproach. Like when she reportedly got drunk at a bar and ran down Sunset Boulevard topless—the stuff of Tinseltown legend.
On the note of toplessness, Marin’s second apology in the span of a week was extracted when “influencer” Sabina Särkkä posted a video (on fucking TikTok, obviously) of her and a friend kissing and flashing their chests (censored with a sign that read “Finland”) to the camera at Kesäranta, an official residence of the prime minister. For this, Marin seemed slightly more earnest about her mea culpa, stating, “I think the picture is not appropriate, I apologise for it. Such a picture should not have been taken.”
But it was. And Marin’s effusive apology about the “company she keeps” is, again, something a male politician has never had to be sorry about. Did Trump and his cronies apologize for their close ties to Putin (who perhaps is the lone person on the planet with access to the purported “golden showers tape” of Trump and some prostitutes)? Did Trump apologize for anything ever, for that matter? No. And he never would. Which is perhaps the most fundamental difference between male and female politicians—that the latter gender is expected to get down on her knees (the position men most like to see women in) and beg forgiveness for even minor and/or harmless “infractions.”
Just as the Holy Trinity of “trainwrecks” in the 00s—Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney—there is a certain amount of media responsibility at play for manipulating and contorting what Marin does in her personal life. Which is exactly why she put it so succinctly when she said, “I feel like footage is being shot of me all the time, everywhere, and it doesn’t feel good. Even normal things are made to look bad.” Clearly, if a camera is on anybody 24/7, it’s only to be expected that some “usable footage” is going to be gleaned for the purpose of painting the portrait of a woman “unfit” for office.
And no, this isn’t Marin’s first “offense” during her short stint thus far as prime minister. Nonetheless, just as women promoted the #ImWithSanna hashtag when Marin was condemned for doing the Trendi shoot, so, too, have a large number of females come forward in solidarity by posting videos of themselves partying and drinking. Because, yes, women truly can do it all: have fun, be mothers and hold down a high-stress job. All while men can ostensibly only be one thing at any given moment: an oppressive douche. Telling women how they “should act” being chief among those oppressive qualities.
To boot, even knaves like Silvio Berlusconi, with his bunga bunga parties, or Boris Johnson, with his Partygate hypocrisy, have bounced back with far more ease (because, make no mistake, Boris will continue to fail upward). For male politicians are of the perpetual belief that their form of governance should be of the “do as I say, not as I do” variety. Contrastly, Marin has never claimed to be somehow “above” partying, freely admitting, “I was dancing, singing, partying… hugging my friends, doing totally legal things.” She also added, “I have free time that I spend with my friends. I’m pretty sure that’s the same as many people my age.” This, too, raises the question of why the arena of politics has for so long been populated solely by stodgy old white men projecting the façade that the office of a politician is akin to “monarchical divinity” (which seems to translate to playing a lot of fucking golf). Therefore, evidently, allowing men the same lack of consequences as “God.”
With the suspicious amount of scrutiny on Marin’s “partying,” it’s obvious that the boys’ club nature of government worldwide has been shaken up too often for male comfort in the past few years, another notable example being Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s entrance into the House of Representatives at the age of twenty-nine. Apart from her age and gender, there is also a blatant bias against her ethnicity—made all the more obvious when Trump said in 2019 with reference to Democratic Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley, “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came?”
All of said women were born in the U.S. except Tlaib, who moved to the country at twelve and became a naturalized citizen. But such factual information is not the concern of men like Trump (of which there are a shocking amount). The concern is clinging to power, being the dominant, “god-like” source that all of humanity turns to for “guidance.” The open secret being that people don’t really need government to go about their lives without much noticing the difference (e.g., Italy).
New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, among the few other women holding the office of Prime Minister on this planet, would only comment of the overt sexism at play in Marin’s own “Partygate,” “My one general reflection is that ever since I’ve been in this role, I’ve really had a mind to whether or not we are attracting people to these jobs. We need people from all walks of life to look to politics and think, ‘That’s a place I feel I can make a positive difference…’ How do we constantly make sure that we attract people to politics? Rather than, perhaps has been historically the case, put them off.”
Alas, that has perpetually been the primary attempt of men clinging to the power of afforded them by dominating this arena. It’s why patriarchy continues to thrive largely unchecked. Because trying to be part of any government as a woman—least of all a woman who is her authentic self—has been made to feel as unsafe a space as walking the streets alone at night.
