Women In The Starring Role

Big job for anyone?  Big job for a woman?  Big job for this woman?

The NYT ran an only slightly more cropped version of this Reuters shot this morning on page A3.  It shows Chilean president-elect Michelle Bachelet at her first major news conference following her victory.

As a long time activist, mother and self-avowed spirit of the '60's, is Mrs. Bachelet being diminished here for her lack of political stature or resume?   Or, are we seeing some visual "blowback" given that South America and Africa (link) both elected their first female heads-of-state within days of each other?

(... Or, is this simply an innocent attempt to portray drama, or the momentousness of the moment?)

In the NYT version, at least, Mrs. Bachelet's face is more discernible, and her expression is quite confident and engaging.  (This is in marked contrast to this AFP version of the shot on YahooNews which makes the new leader look lost and clueless.  In the AFP image, notice how Bachelet's expression seems to somehow also draw attention to the fact the flag is sagging at the corners, whereas this doesn't register as much in the shot above.)

A number of you wrote me thinking that new German Chancellor Angela Merkel was being diminished through patronization during her press conference with Bush in Washington last week (example 1, 2).

(Actually, in surveying images of Merkel, it seems that she tends to be diminished more through enlargement and physical distortion than through "shrinkage.")  Still, in comparing all three images of Merkel with the Chilean photo above, are we looking at a similar tendency to somehow minimize these new female leaders?

(Apologize in advance if any of the YahooNews photo links change or expire.)

(image 1: Ivan Alvarado/Reuters.  January 16, 2006. Santiago, Chile.  today.reuters.co.uk.  image 2: promikatur.de)