The next time someone tells you there’s no media bias, just respond by commenting “The Timbs tho” and drop a link to this story.
The internet exploded last week with adoring stories about how Sen. Kamala Harris wore Timberland boots (“Timbs”) while visiting California, after her sister Maya Harris posted a snippet of video on Twitter and her niece Meena Harris wrote “THE TIMBS THO” on Instagram.
Various media outlets breathlessly wrote about the “jaunty” way the 2020 Democratic nominee for vice president walked off the airplane upon arrival and lauded for her bold fashion choice. Okay – media fawning over Democrats is nothing new. But here’s where it gets good. Women for Trump co-founder Amy Kremer noticed a striking contrast between the way the media treated Harris and the way it treated First Lady Melania Trump for *checks notes* wearing Timberland boots.
Kremer tweeted side-by-side images of two wildly divergent Yahoo headlines.
First this, from September 2020: Kamala Harris may have made Timberland boots cool again.
Then this throwback to December 2018: Melania Trump gets mocked for wearing Timberland boots while visiting the troops.
When the first lady wears Timberlands, it’s something to criticize. When Sen. Harris wears Timberlands – slay queen!
In that 2018 article (about how the president and first lady visited Iraq to meet with the troops) Yahoo commented on the first lady’s outfit by writing that, “It’s Melania’s shoe choice that really stood out though. The Timberland boots are being called an ‘out of touch’ style selection by some on Twitter.”
USA Today likewise criticized the first lady in an article with the headline: Work boots and white jeans? Melania Trump’s outfit is still missing the mark for some.
It wasn’t the first time Yahoo (which is owned by Verizon) felt it newsworthy to write about what random people on Twitter were saying about the first lady’s choice of footwear. In October 2017 it ran a story with a nearly identical headline: Melania Trump gets mocked for wearing Timberland boots: ‘This is not a fashion show’. In that same article, Yahoo noted that the first lady frequently changes outfits mid-air while en route to her destination, and specifically pointed out two instances where she departed wearing heels only to arrive at her destination wearing sneakers.
Which makes these recent headlines from PopSugar all the more delicious:
Kamala Harris Wears Her Timbs Right Off the Plane, and Now We Know She’s Ready to Get Sh*t Done
Kamala Harris’s Sneaker Collection Has Us Believing She’s “All Laced Up and Ready to Win”
You can almost taste the liberal bias. But putting the blatantly obvious bias aside, here’s a question: where is the angry backlash against these outlets for writing such obviously gendered and sexist articles about Harris’s wardrobe? Shouldn’t the focus be on her policies and positions? Why on earth should her sneaker collection have anything to do with whether she is ready to be president if Joe Biden were to keel over, or simply became unfit for office due to severe cognitive decline?
The Timbs tho.
Some could argue that these boots are made for walkin’ (and trash talkin’)!
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