The article wants to unpack a curious, but important, puzzle: if, as most analysts agree, the core unifying feature of right-wing populisms is the adoption of masculinist and anti-feminist performances, one would expect women to be sidelined and excluded from leadership positions. However, even in the current moment of anti-feminist backlash, there is a significant and growing number of women running for office and winning power as hardcore right-wing populists. How can this apparent paradox be explained? This article hypothesizes that the answer lies in the ways in which their bodily performances are able to combined masculinity and femininity, aggression and warmth.
For this article, the focus will not lie in the policy preferences or even the anti-gender verbal discourses of populist leaders and movements, because these issues have already been discussed by others (Meret and Siim, 2013; Friedman, 2019; Dingler et al., 2021). The focus will be on the role of bodily praxis on advancing such views through the generation and communication of performances of masculinity and femininity. The argument will be that these performances are more effective in communicating a vision of the “good” social order and, as such, in establishing identification and representation than the simple exposition of a menu of policy preferences. Two examples of this operation will be discussed: a campaign ad for Melissa Martz, Republican candidate of Florida and the campaign of Alice Weidel, of the German AfD party.
The paper has discussed the role of the performance of masculinity and femininity in the creation of populist right-wing representation. The starting point was the apparent puzzle of the presence of successful right wing-populist women, competing for power in movements that prioritize the performance of aggressive masculinity. In answering this quandary, the paper was able to highlight the role of hybridity and ambiguity that their bodily performances allow, in line with Ostiguy and Moffitt’s concept of the “overflowing signifier”. It was shown how women’s bodies can display markers from many different connotative dimensions: toughness and caring, aggression and allure, propriety and transgression. The apparent contradiction involved in these performances is not a problem; rather, it is a strength. The creation of deniability and ambiguity can serve a strategic purpose in advancing extremist views and, as such, women can have an edge in the competition for leadership.
This article is original in the discussion of the categories of performances of the “low” (Ostiguy) and “anti-elitism” and bad manners (Moffitt), which have been not centered around gender until now. The presentation of two very relevant contemporary examples of female leadership: a representative of republican women and Alice Weidel, from the German. The article is able to identify and define the operating mechanism that makes right-wing women candidates viable in contemporary populist politics.
