The XX Factor: What women really think.

Vestal Guardians for Obama

Now wait a second. Just because that poster (in which cute hipster girls threaten to withhold sex unless their prospective partners vote Obama) has its roots in classical literature doesn’t mean that its vision of women's political power isn’t retrograde and sexist. Last I heard, women in ancient Greece had the same social status as slaves. Maybe this is a generational division, which I guess would put me, at 42, in the frowny-old-crone camp. But this idea of women as the coy vestal guardians of their own, er, temples, which will be tendered only in exchange for some sufficiently valuable transaction? Whether the object accepted in exchange is a vote for Obama, an end to the Peloponnesian wars, or a Fifth Avenue penthouse from Mr. Big, isn’t that vision of male-female relations just a little depressing?
 
To the extent I care about this poster at all (and really, I don’t—it seems like any neighborhood where its aesthetic would go over is already solidly pro-Obama anyway), I’d have to say, along with Salon’s (wonderful) Rebecca Traister, that it kind of makes me want to drown myself. Anyone care to toss me a lifesaver and drag me to shore?