Look at this cover photo of Michele Bachmann. Really look at it. It’s creepy, right? Notice how she’s ever-so-slightly wall-eyed… just enough to give her that million-light-year stare. See how she’s got the Katherine Harris boob-thrust down cold. See how her lid lift surgery gives her that *perky* expression (you know, the kind you want to remove with a hand-sander). Note her trashy French Manicure on her clenched talons (her shoes are probably making her head hurt). Then there’s the devil-tranced, cult stare, like she’s getting secret messages from God through her eyebrows. It looks like her head is about to fly off like a top and start spinning and spewing green vomit (no one could top THAT in a debate!).
I mean, do you think the publisher chose this cover photo to make her look crazy? Because I think it makes her look damaged and unprofessional, consumptive and unstable. Unless the title is “Six Xanax, Five Prozac, Four Klonipin, Three Valium, Two Massengil, One Woman. My Story”, it’s just freaking weird. We’ve all seen her glassy, Stepford stare as she waits for a questioner to finish before providing another pre-cooked doctrinal nugget, saying the worst possible things on any given issue….but this is her book cover photo. These are things that – historically – authors have self-curated and staged to portray their assets to their fullest advantage. I had sort of agreed with the argument that the psycho-eyes Newsweek photo was at least in some part cheesy and misogynistic. Now I call bullshit on the wingnut uproar over that photo. Look at this book cover again. She chose this.
Paula Prentiss showing her new perky boobs as a newly roboticized wife in The Stepford Wives, 1977
