Democratic women don aprons and pose in kitchen to woo 2020 voters

Social media pundits were quick to speculate how often the senator from California and former state attorney general, 54, who developed a reputation as a tough prosecutor, cooked and whether the picture, compared to a scene from 1950s sitcom “Leave It To Beaver,” was staged. Some drew attention to her freshly-creased apron.

Harris, who last week penned a first-person piece for Elle magazine on how her stepchildren call her “Momala,” was also featured in a March 2018 Vogue profile in which her sister and campaign adviser Maya Harris revealed she was a “mad crocheter.”

Harris’ #aprongate backlash is not the first time a female presidential candidate has been dinged for kitchen etiquette this year — and accused of wearing a brand new apron that had come straight out of the packet.

In February, Kirsten Gillibrand let the Associated Press into her Washington, D.C., home for a photo shoot with her family. Skeptical observers took the New York senator to task for donning an apparently new apron, failing to season her fish, and having a state-of-the art kitchen that looked so pristine some questioned whether it had ever been used.

Even Gillibrand’s dog Maple faced scrutiny, with a number of commentators suggesting the goldendoodle seemed surprised to see the 52-year-old mother of two wielding a spatula. The creases on her apron also attracted derision.

Amy Klobuchar has also touted motherhood on the campaign trail. The senator from Minnesota, 58, frequently mentions her adult daughter Abigail’s health issues to humanize her healthcare policies.

The women contenders are not only invoking their roles as mothers, but as wives as well. Elizabeth Warren forged a name for herself during the Obama administration by taking on big banks to protect consumers before becoming a senator for Massachusetts.

But the former Harvard Law School professor has a section in her stump speech dedicated to how in 1968 she sacrificed a scholarship to George Washington University to marry her first husband and high school sweetheart, Jim Warren, when she was 19 and he was 23. Now 69, she went on to graduate from the University of Houston before they divorced a decade later.

The female White House hopeful taking a different tack is Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. The twice-married, childless 38-year-old is trying to become her party’s nominee on her military record and a platform of ending U.S. participation in regime-change wars.

Some of the younger male prospects, like Beto O’Rourke, have been pushing a “modern dad” narrative. The former Texas congressman, 46, livestreamed himself in November cooking a chicken dinner with his wife Amy Sanders O’Rourke shortly after he was defeated by Republican Ted Cruz in his 2018 Senate race.

Women presidential candidates face double pressures, according to Louisiana State University political communication assistant professor Nichole Bauer. First, they risk being perceived as not forceful enough to become the next occupant of the Oval Office. Secondly, they cannot be considered too aggressive out of fear of alienating voters.

“They have to fit into this image of what being a president looks like,” Bauer said. “They have to seem to be the cookie baker in chief and the commander in chief at the same time,” she added, referring in part to the famous comment Hillary Clinton made about baked goods as Bill Clinton campaigned for the White House in 1992. “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas,” she said.

Another force at play is “the girl power angle,” University of Notre Dame political science professor Christina Wolbrecht told the Washington Examiner.

“It’s a way for them to relate to voters because they’re saying, ‘I am a mom, I juggled, I overcame the challenges, I’ve been there.’ It’s politically smart,” Wolbrecht said.

With an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll in February finding 84% of Americans were comfortable with a woman becoming the party’s pick to take on President Trump next year, Boston-based Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh objected to the idea that their efforts to appear more feminine were retro or submissive.

“I think that media perception or characterization is demeaning, patronizing, and misogynistic,” Marsh said. “Women have to be many things every day. They don’t have one job, they have multiple jobs. If you ask, most kids in America would say their mother fed them last night. That’s not the 1950s. That’s 2019.”

But San Francisco-based Democratic strategist Donnie Fowler, who was mindful of not “mansplaining,” said the political reality was every contender has to compete in the electorate he or she has rather than the one they ideally want.

“Yes, there still is gender bias among Democrats and the record number of women candidates running for the nomination must overcome that in their own way — but authentically, absolutely uncontrived and completely true to who they are,” Fowler said. “The question is whether the politicians are the most important part of rectifying that or whether it’s up to the voters themselves.”