Is Rosmah victim of misogyny?

Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor is quite the controversial figure. She seems to dominate Malaysian news like no other wives of past prime ministers. The woman provides much fodder for satire through her various exploits.

A Rosmah satirical cartoon is sure to go viral, getting plentiful likes and shares. You have all seen the wildly popular sketches of her – towering black hair, tubular body and disproportionately large breasts.

“How funny accurately these sketches caricaturise her,” I used to think. “That HAIR! RM1,200 just to tease it into a monster,” I used to think.

Then one day I stopped.

There was a pattern to these satirical cartoons of Rosmah. Besides the diamond ring/Birkin handbag/bags of money/jet, the features of the cartoons that stood out the most were the hair, face, body and breasts.

Satirical cartoons tend to be caricatures, exaggerating certain characteristics of the subject. Caricatures of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak would exaggerate the balding head and for Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, it would be the nose. The focus is on the facial feature, just as it is for other Malaysian men often used as subjects in these cartoons.

However, when it comes to Rosmah, the drawings exaggerate parts of the body instead of facial features.

Why the exception for her?

It’s one thing to draw a caricature of her with soaring bouffant hair in a cartoon criticising her RM1,200 haircut but why must every single cartoon of her highlight her “vanity”.

Vanity is not a bad trait, but when attributed to a woman whom we believe is fame or power hungry, it appears to us as a negative trait, something a woman would do anything for. Quite like the evil stepmother in Snow White. Coincidentally, there is a cartoon depiction of Rosmah asking the mirror on the wall “who is the fairest of all?”

Recently, Rosmah was included in a list of “Asia’s 10 Most Beautiful First Ladies”, which drew quite the laughter from the people and accompanying cartoon. Why? Simply because she does not conform to our standards of acceptable beauty. She is not young and not slim/thin/not-fat. Besides this, Rosmah is also thought of as the woman who has control over her husband and whose vanity has led the country to the mess that it is in. Even Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad thinks so.

When we think of a woman holding such power and control over her husband, who happens to the prime minister, whom would we imagine? Angelina Jolie or Melissa McCarthy? Surely to have such hold over a man, the woman has to look like Aphrodite.

Alas, Rosmah is not, and this is where our deep-seeded misogyny reveals itself. Run a Google search on her and you would find many gossip blogs and sites spreading rumours of doctored photos and practices of black magic – accusations that are almost exclusively used against women.

In satirical cartoons, we make the body, which is deemed not beautiful, appealing or lusted for within the norm of accepted feminine beauty, as the focus of satire. Had she been a man and the husband of a woman politician, I doubt most of the vitriol flung at her would have been thrown at him.

I have noticed in Malaysian cartoon or comics, the wife who is drawn larger than the husband is domineering, controlling and mean. None of these are traits society attributes to femininity.

In those cartoons and comics, a husband who is controlled by or living in fear of his wife is depicted as physically smaller, thinner and/or weaker than the wife. This is a caricature of his reduced masculinity.

Even when Najib is featured in the cartoon alongside Rosmah, his drawing is diminutive compared with her. One could argue that it reflects the power dynamics between the couple but I think it is more of what we think their relationship is like: Najib the puppet and Rosmah the puppet master.

Another name for this is “queen control”, a term that both emasculates the man and paints the woman as a monster.

However, should a cartoon of a domineering wife be drawn looking like Jolie, she be viewed as a seductress or temptress – a devil, not a monster. Devil can be feminine and sexual but not a monster, which is both hideous and repulsive.

In many ways, these satirical cartoons of Rosmah are sending out a deeply misogynistic message: “How can you be vain when you look the way you do? How dare you have power over your husband when you look the way you do? How dare you have power over your husband when you look the way you do?”

The objective of satire should be to criticise a person’s wrongdoings, not the way they look. Even when the person is a woman we love to hate. – July 5, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.