It makes you uncomfortable, but maybe it was all in your head and you’d be awkward if you said something? Maybe he’s just being nice? Or that’s just how he is? So you grit your teeth and play along.
No better was this illustrated by a photo of Vice President Joe Biden whispering into the ear of Stephanie Carter while her husband Ashton Carter was being sworn in as defense secretary that circulated around the internet last week. The look on Carter’s face – tense, praying for it to be over, not wanting to make a fuss – triggered a bolt of recognition for women everywhere who’ve been at the mercy of someone who’s a bit handsy.
As Barbara Ellen wrote of Carter’s reaction in the Guardian,
“Then there’s the hideous automatic all-too female slide into coping mode – the inbuilt conditioning to keep the peace. Ms Carter should have been enjoying a special moment in her husband’s career – not enduring the clammy grip of a handsy political silverback, whose position in life suggests that (despite all the apologists for “his generation”) he’s intelligent enough to know exactly what he’s doing.”
Biden, who has form for whispering sweet nothings into the ears of women, is certainly not alone (everybody has a lechy uncle Boris right?). It happens all the time. Today, for example, John Travolta planted a very unwelcome kiss on the stony, unwilling-to-play-ball face of Scarlett Johansson at the Oscars.
That unwillingness to indulge is exactly what Barbara Ellen means when she says that just as touchy feely men need to back off, so to do “women have to unpick their own good-girl conditioning about personal space, and truly start to believe that they’re entitled to some”.
