Remember 2007, that dark, faraway year in which “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” premiered, Paris Hilton went to jail, and Nancy Pelosi was sworn in as speaker of the House?
It was an uncivilized world, one where Rosie O’Donnell would leave “The View” and where the iPhone would not be released until June. We were so primitive, so vulgar. But we didn’t know any better.
And that’s why Nancy Pelosi subjected women passing through the Speaker’s Lobby of the Capitol Building to comply with a draconian dress code that forbade them from wearing open-toed shoes or sleeveless dresses, the remnants of a brutal patriarchy on the verge of crumbling.
In all seriousness, after feminists spent the better part of last week lamenting that same dress code (which also requires men to wear jackets and ties) as though it were some new Trump-era concoction of sexist Republicans, comparing it to the laws enforced in a fictional society where women are forced into sex-slavery, Pelosi commended Speaker of the House Paul Ryan for pledging to modernize the rules.
“Glad to see [Speaker Ryan] is updating the dress code for the House Floor. These unwritten rules are in desperate need of updates,” she tweeted, referencing his pledge on Thursday to change the rules in the lobby and the chamber.
If that’s true and the rules were in such “desperate need” of updates, why didn’t Pelosi make those changes when she had the chance? Or, for Pelosi, is that need only desperate when Republicans are in control?
She had a full four years to update the dress code when it fell under her authority, but instead chose to oversee its enforcement her entire time in the speaker’s office.
Of course, it’s possible that during her tenure from 2007 to 2011, a comparatively primeval period in world history, the world was not yet ready for women to be seen without sleeves in select areas of the Capitol building, and Pelosi knew that. More than likely, however, is the possibility that the dress code didn’t become sexist until the media accused Republicans of wielding it against female reporters. Now that people she cares about care, Pelosi cares.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice, and after decades of women’s arms sweating under the suffocating grip of Ann Taylor fabric, they have been liberated … all thanks to a Republican.
How about that War on Women?
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
