"To put this the other way round, we have no template for what a powerful woman looks like, except that she looks rather like a man."

Women in Power

Mary Beard

"To put this the other way round, we have no template for what a powerful woman looks like, except that she looks rather like a man. The regulation trouser suits, or at least the trousers, worn by so many Western female political leaders, from Merkel to Clinton, may be convenient and practical; they may be a signal of the refusal to become a clothes horse, which is the fate of so many political wives; but they’re also a simple tactic – like lowering the timbre of the voice – to make the female appear more male, to fit the part of power.​3 Elizabeth I knew exactly what the game was when she said she had ‘the heart and stomach of a king’. It’s that idea of the divorce between women and power that makes Melissa McCarthy’s parodies of the White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Saturday Night Live so effective. It’s said that these have annoyed President Trump more than most satires on his regime, because (according to one of the ‘sources close to him’), ‘he doesn’t like his people to appear weak.’ Decode that, and what it actually means is that he doesn’t like his men to be parodied by and as women. Weakness comes with a female gender."​4