I have also written about how racial codes are communicated through beauty and beauty rituals. One of the unifying interests of Maxine’s research is in the coded language of presentation, especially the ways we talk about contested notions about race, gender, sexual identity and class. For decades, Maxine has written about the cultural meaning of seemingly innocuous notions like why men do not like to dance socially or how women navigate gender at the gym. This week I turned to Maxine Craig, a friend of mine and a sociologist at the University of California, Davis. That’s why I talked with some serious people about Sinema’s clothes. Serious people should be able to talk about that. I addressed that criticism, which I find deeply unserious, in my last newsletter. Some took me to task for lowering myself - and the discourse - to something as trivial as performance, style and fashion. Some of you worry that this line of inquiry devalues Sinema’s credentials and office others worry that talking about presentation is tacitly sexist because it opens the door to critiquing women for something that their male counterparts can take for granted. Many of you wrote me to say that the very idea of talking about what a woman is wearing gives you, for lack of a better term, the heebie-jeebies.

I also invited readers to think along with me. Last week, I argued that it was useful to think about the clothes Kyrsten Sinema wears, because her presentation is part of her political power.

Life is strange maxine