Split Screen: The politics of Sarah Palin photos
After she was named John McCain's running mate, the focus was on her clothes and body, not her policies.
When Sen. John McCain announced Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate in August 2008, she catapulted overnight from relative obscurity into intense national scrutiny. As a cinematographer who analyzes the visual politics of how we frame women leaders, I've been revisiting the 2008 campaign’s visual record. What I found was a masterclass in visual sexism.
Whether you agreed with her politics or not, the way Palin was visually framed for American audiences reveals deeply ingrained patterns of gender bias in political coverage. Three visual techniques stand out for their subtle yet powerful ability to undermine her authority: the persistent use of open-mouth framing, the excessive focus on her appearance and clothing, and the domestic—rather than political—visual contexts in which she was photographed.
The Politics of the Open Mouth
If you recall the visual coverage of the 2008 campaign, you might remember Palin frequently photographed mid-sentence, mouth agape. This probably wasn't a coincidence. Communication researchers Diana Carlin and Kelly Winfrey quantified this pattern in their study of 2008 campaign coverage, finding that Palin was photographed mid-speech with her mouth open in approximately 67% of news photos, compared with 41% for Joe Biden, Barack Obama’s running mate.
This disparity matters. As media scholar Kathleen Hall Jamieson notes in her analysis of presidential image-making, capturing subjects mid-sentence with mouths open creates a “less authoritative visual frame” that can make speakers appear less composed and more emotional. For female candidates already fighting gender stereotypes about emotionality, this visual pattern reinforces subtle biases about women's fitness for leadership.
When photo editors consistently select these open-mouth shots from hundreds of options, they’re making political choices, not just aesthetic ones. These choices accumulated to create a visual narrative of Palin as less serious, less controlled, and ultimately less vice presidential than her male counterparts.
Fashion Victim: The Politics of Clothing
Perhaps the most overtly sexist aspect of Palin's visual coverage was the obsessive focus on her appearance: the “$150,000 wardrobe” scandal, the infamously absurd Newsweek “running shorts” cover, and a particularly egregious Reuters photograph that seemed designed to objectify her body.
When news broke that the Republican National Committee had spent $150,000 on clothing and styling for Palin and her family, it dominated visual coverage for weeks, showing Palin juxtaposed with designer clothing or price tags. Male candidates also buy nice clothing. Considering the hundreds of millions spent on modern political campaigns, this was a reasonable expenditure for spending months in the public eye making her case to the American people. Tellingly, there was no similar story about Biden, Obama or McCain. Journalists still barely cover clothing expenditures for male candidates, but they continue commenting on the women’s—from the cost of Hillary Clinton’s Armani jacket to Kamala Harris’ designer pantsuits.
In November 2009, a year after the election, Newsweek repurposed a photo from Runner's World magazine for its cover. The image showed Palin in running shorts and sneakers, leaning against an American flag—a photo taken for a fitness profile but now used to illustrate a political story.
Palin herself called out the sexism: “The choice of photo for the cover of this week's Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this 'news' magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. The Runner's World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness—a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now.”
Equally disturbing was a Reuters photograph published during the campaign that showed a blurred image of Palin's legs in the foreground with a male supporter appearing to look upward in her direction. The caption read: “A supporter listens to Republican vice presidential nominee Alaska Governor Sarah Palin during a rally in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania October 8, 2008.” The visual composition unmistakably suggested a voyeuristic perspective of a man potentially looking up her skirt—an image that would be unthinkable for any male candidate. That a major news agency would frame, select, and publish such a photograph reveals how normalized the objectification of women in politics had become.
When we explore how the media handles men's appearance, it becomes obvious that Sarah Palin was subjected to visual sexism. Political scientist Caroline Heldman's research comparing coverage of male and female candidates found that men's appearance changes were framed as “makeovers” or “polishing,” but Palin's were characterized as "shopping sprees" and evidence of superficiality. The visual framing reduced her to her appearance in ways that simply didn't—and still don't—happen to male candidates.
Communication researcher Lindsey Meeks quantified this disparity, finding that 31% of visual coverage of Palin included references to her clothing or appearance in captions or accompanying text, compared with just 8% for male candidates at the same level. Each of these image-text combinations reinforced the idea that Palin’s appearance was more noteworthy than her policies or qualifications.
As rhetorical scholar Bonnie Dow argues, this fixation on Palin’s wardrobe and physical appearance became “a gendered spectacle that redirected attention from substantive political issues” and created a double bind: Palin was criticized both for being too glamorous (inauthentic) and for her pre-makeover look (unprofessional) (Dow, 2010). Women are damned if they do and damned if they don’t: You must simultaneously look professional with nice clothes to be taken seriously, and also not have spent money on your clothes, hair, or makeup in order for people to take you seriously. The visual focus on her clothing and body created a framework in which her appearance always mattered more than her words.
Once a Governor, Always a Mother
The third pattern in Palin’s visual coverage was her consistent framing in domestic rather than political contexts. Research by Dianne Bystrom at the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics found that Palin was photographed with her family 33% more often than male candidates. Though family imagery can humanize candidates, this excessive focus on Palin's maternal role diminished her political identity.
When Erika Falk analyzed the visual contexts in which candidates were presented, she found that though male politicians were predominantly photographed in official settings that reinforced their authority, Palin was frequently shown in what Falk terms “personal spaces”—settings that emphasized her role outside of politics. Each of these visual choices subtly communicated who belonged in the political sphere and who was an outsider.
The visual techniques used to frame Palin in 2008 weren’t isolated incidents, but rather part of a broader pattern that affects women across the political spectrum. Rebecca Traister, in her analysis “Sarah Palin's Feminist Revolution,” wrote: “Even I had to admit that the moment at the end of the vice-presidential debate at which she picked up her infant son had stunned me into silence. I knew the baby was there to advertise Palin's maternal allure, to protect her from criticism, to hammer home her antiabortion bona fides, but still: Seeing a vice-presidential debate in which one of the participants was holding her infant changed everything.”
Palin likely chose to bring her family along on the campaign trail to illustrate her maternal values and family-centered worldview. This was a deliberate political strategy. But recognizing her agency doesn’t absolve the media of responsibility in framing these moments. When a woman candidate's family becomes the dominant visual narrative rather than her policies and leadership, we should question whose interests this serves. The problem wasn't that Palin’s family was present or that she held her baby, but that the visual emphasis on her domesticity came at the expense of framing her credentials. And that it was so markedly different from that of male candidates.
Sarah Palin was the only candidate on either ticket asked how she would handle parenting—and she was asked about it consistently. Political scientist Meredith Conroy conducted a systematic analysis of interview questions posed to all four candidates on the major tickets in 2008 and found that Palin was asked about balancing family and political responsibilities in 74% of her interviews, while none of the male candidates (Obama, McCain, or Biden) were asked similar questions in any of their interviews.
These patterns create a double bind for women in politics. As Karrin Vasby Anderson’s research demonstrates, women candidates must appear both “feminine enough” to meet gender expectations but “authoritative enough” to be taken seriously as leaders—contradictory demands that visual framing often exploits rather than resolves.
The mouth-open shots made Palin appear less composed; the wardrobe coverage prioritized her appearance over substance; the domestic framing questioned her belonging in political leadership. Together, these visual techniques created a narrative that no campaign strategy could effectively counter.
I disagree with Palin on many things. But I hope we can all agree that visual representation shapes our political imagination. She deserved better—deserves better. We all do.
Until next time, keep your eyes sharp and your lenses sharper.
Send examples of visual politics you've noticed to submit@contrariannews.org with the subject line SPLIT SCREEN.
PS: I’ve started doing gender breakdowns of the researchers I’ve cited. In this article:
Total unique researchers: 11
Female researchers: 11 (100%)
Male researchers: 0 (0%)
Azza Cohen (she/her) is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who served as Vice President Kamala Harris's official videographer in the White House. She recently founded a production company with her wife, Kathleen, and is writing a book about visual sexism from a cinematographer's perspective. Uncover and address visual sexism alongside Azza every other week here on The Contrarian and on Instagram and Bluesky.
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Thanks for this piece and the whole series, great work. The double standard coverage of Sarah Palin was infuriating; clear run-down of the major ways the press miscovered her. I found it then--and still find it--clarifying to tear apart sexist treatment of a politician I otherwise can't stand.
It is a mystery to me why journalists seem to rarely notice male politicians' multi-thousand-dollar suits (not to mention their watches etc.). And the open-mouthed shot (what should be culled like a mid-blink shot) is my #1 pet peeve. Drives me crazy. I swear there is extra effort put into choosing that "O" mouth for women--so frequently seen--but not for men.
Well, all that may be true but 1) she was less serious, less smart, and less likable. But consider today: who is most often photographed with his puckery mouth open, his eyes squinting, his hands pointing, his cotton candy hair in motion, and his horribly pockmarked and dyed skin in sharp focus?