On Hillary Clinton's night, newspapers carried photos of Bill: This is why we need feminism

Hilary Clinton made history on 27 July 2016 when she became the first woman to be nominated as a major party presidential candidate in USA.

Rishi Kapoor, one of the funniest Indian celebrities on Twitter decided to commemorate this moment by this tweet:

History being checked! Tx for it ABjr. If it wasn't RIGHT,it would have LEFT a bad taste pic.twitter.com/p6MmEnC5uh

— Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) July 27, 2016

The extremely misguided joke made waves in the twitter-verse because of its misogynist content. Sadly, he was not far behind is his extremely sexualised commentary on the first female presidential nominee in the US Presidential race. There was another gentler, step-motherly treatment being meted out to Clinton by the newspapers covering her presidential run.

A look at how stalwart media houses, populated by Pulitzer prize-winning journalists covered her Democratic party nomination, provides shocking insight about how a few papers choose to highlight headlines and pictures of ex-president Bill Clinton rather than have his wife, the current presidential hopeful, on the cover.

Here are a few newspapers that covered the democratic party nomination, starting with Chicago Tribune:

The Houston Chronicle, like Chicago Tribune, fails to mention which Clinton got nominated in the headline. The accompanying photo of Bill Clinton makes it seem like the ex-president is running for president again. Not only is that factually incorrect and shoddy journalism, it’s just plain sad.

All the papers seem to hold the construct that a woman cannot be important enough to be on the front page of a newspaper unless they are showcasing their cleavage (Times of India, we are looking at you).

This might not be new to us in India, but it is surprising and sad to see how carelessly Hilary Clinton’s nomination bid, for which she has struggled in the last two elections, doesn’t seem to warrant her photo being displayed on the front page of the newspaper.

The New York Times approached the issue with a different strategy; they used photos of arbitrary girls to highlight Hilary Clinton’s nomination bid. It is interesting to note that the sub head of the main headline includes Bill Clinton’s name and another article includes Bill Clinton and his photograph:

One of the reasons of the newspapers carrying Hilary Clinton’s husband’s photo instead of hers might be that Bill Clinton spoke late last night and Hilary Clinton’s appearance on a video screen might have happened too late for early editions. Hilary’s later appearance on a video screen might have happened to late for early editions. The Wall Street Journal‘s early front page featured Bill ; a later front shows Hilary.

The reason why The Washington Post featured Bill and Bernie was again Hilary’s extremely late night appearance and also because Bernie Sanders exclusion was Hilary’s nomination ticket.

On the plus side, Express,Chicago Sun-Times and The Orange County Register featured Hilary’s face on the cover. The Orange County Register had Bill Clinton’s image in a small blurb, right where the spouse’s image of the US Presidential Election nominee should be.

Sadly, the spouse of the Republican nominee, Melinda Trump, doesn’t get as much coverage as her husband. No prizes for guessing why.