Small Hands, Nasty Women, and Bad Hombres: Hegemonic Masculinity and Humor in the 2016 Presidential Election

Abstract

Given that the president is thought to be the national representative, presidential campaigns often reflect the efforts to define a national identity and collective values. Political humor provides a unique lens through which to explore how identity figures into national politics given that the critique of an intended target is often made through popular cultural scripts that often inadvertently reify the very power structures they seek to subvert. In conducting an analysis of 240 tweets, memes, and political cartoons from the 2016 U.S. presidential election targeting the two frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, we see how popular political humor often reaffirmed heteronormative assumptions of gender, sexuality, and race and equated scripts of hegemonic masculinity with presidential ability. In doing so, these discourses reified a patriarchal power structure.