Heinz Kerry resonates on gender inequity

I must confess.

Last week I was tempted to take Teresa Heinz Kerry to task for sounding just a wee bit unfirst ladylike in her comments to a conservative editorial writer: “Shove it,” she said.

That didn’t stoop to vice presidential levels of crassness, by any means. But I still don’t think Emily Post would have approved.

Now I just don’t care anymore. I watched Heinz Kerry’s speech to the Democratic Party Tuesday night, and, well, I take it all back. I’m all for civility, but I can’t bring myself to scold.

On Tuesday night, John Kerry’s wife began this way: “My name is Teresa Heinz Kerry, and by now I hope it will come as no surprise that I have something to say.”

Heinz Kerry has been dubbed a loose cannon by media observers. They have painted her as a batty billionaire, akin to a sensual European-style aging film star, and just as likely to spout something loopy.

In fact, it turns out she’s smart, boasts a fascinating background, and speaks no less than five languages. Her critics no doubt would prefer she’d tone it down and turn into a Midwestern, Betty Crocker-style candidate’s wife, all guarded words and pretty smiles, at all the right moments. She answered them well Tuesday night.

“My right to speak my mind, to have a voice, to be what some call opinionated, is a right I deeply and profoundly cherish,” she said after fluently addressing the crowd in Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. “My only hope is that one day soon, women — who have all earned the right to their opinions — instead of being labeled opinionated, will be called smart and well informed, just like men.”

The women in the crowd roared, as was intended, and suddenly their collective voices were released as well.

The next morning, I watched a little post-convention night analysis between Katie Couric and Tim Russert. Couric found Russert, as always, “extremely eloquent on very little sleep.”

“Opinionated,” he bantered back.

It occurred to me: After Democratic women win the campaign to free up political wives – and all females – to speak their minds, there’s another cause I’d like to see them tackle.

The right to keep their own faces.

Katie Couric and Tim Russert, for different reasons, strike me as two of the most appealing news broadcasters in the country. Both are smart, well informed, insightful and charming. Both conduct excellent interviews with different but complementary styles.

But Russert looks like a faithful, aging pound dog these days. The bags under his eyes may have been more pronounced than usual that morning. But he’s no Pierce Brosnan any day.

And that’s part of his charm. His jagging jowls, receding hairline and deeply furrowed brow only add character to his face. He seems dogged and thoughtful, humorous and appealing. Sort of like the neighbor mowing his lawn in an old ZagNut T-shirt, the one with the best jokes on a Saturday afternoon.

If he were a woman broadcaster of his age and visage, well, he’d have never made it on the air in the first place. But suspend that piece of reality for a moment.

By now, he’d have been highlighted, polished and waxed. His teeth would have been whitened, his skin and hairline surgically altered. Why, he’d have been botoxed, plucked, tucked, taped, textured and spackled.

He’d resemble, perhaps, the always-beautiful Katie, who just keeps getting younger, blonder and more smooth-browed. She looked like a sleek Afghan hound perched next to him. Also brilliant, but a heck of a lot more cosmetically enhanced.

As she gets older, she resembles less and less the photos I’ve seen of her attractive sisters and mother, who with the same bone structure and similar genes have aged more naturally.

Culture is such a strange thing, and that’s the primary explanation for our widely varying expectations for women and men in the public eye. Even Katie Couric, for all her talent and brainpower, can’t escape it.

But the feminist revolution won’t be complete until the day when a woman with not only a mind, but also a mug to match Tim Russert’s, sits in the anchor chair, comfortably rumpled, graying and wrinkling into her wise older years. Think Madeleine Albright, with a face less Estee Lauder, more Old Bathrobe.

And when a plastic surgeon offers to minimize her jowls, her cheery answer could be?

“Shove it.”