“You’ll never believe it’s training. You’re going to enjoy it so much,” Fein says.
Critics charged the authors with using guerrilla tactics to ensnare men. “Thousands of unsuspecting American males are, in theory, being lured, hooked and reeled in by legions of determined women using military-style tactics,” poked one paper. Mankiewicz called their conferences “boot camp . . . with the drill sergeants of tough love.”
Schneider and Fein couldn’t have predicted that wounded men would devise ways to beat them at their own game. A trio of childhood friends said The Rules were wrong and decided to write the antidote, What Men Want. In it, they ask that women cook them dinner and stroke their fragile egos. They distribute women into two categories, “wife potential” and “good for now.” “If you have sex with him too soon, he will be less likely to consider you as a potential girlfriend or wife,” the men write, adding that while men may behave like dogs, “deep down they are conservative and idealistic about the kind of girl they will marry.”
Psychologist Meg-John Barker argues that the anachronistic dating advice and popularity of The Rules in the 1990s roused the alpha male seduction communities of the 2000s, which flourish today. The pickup artist movement—PUA for short—taught men to seduce women for sport using chauvinistic tactics. These were codified in Neil Strauss’s 2005 book The Game. Predatory pickup artists were seen as a direct “response to hard-to-get femininity,” especially in a culture inclined to blame women for men’s actions.
As dating began to move online in the late 90s and early 2000s, The Rules pivoted to help women meet men there. Matt Lauer interviewed The Rules authors on the Today Show about their new online dating guide in 2002. He seemed suspicious of online dating, and suggested that women who advertise themselves for dates were probably slutty.
“What kind of online profile lands a Rules Girl a man?” Lauer asks.
Schneider describes a success story. “Brunette Beauty was her screen name, which was clever and visual and not ‘Live It Up’ or ‘Looking For My Soul Mate 51,’” she says. “Loose and Easy,” Lauer jokes, offering an example of his idea of a bad profile name. “Yeah. Right?”
“Nothing about, ‘I’ve been hurt before, I hope you’re different,’” Schneider cautions. “Because then people think: damaged goods,” Lauer says, throwing up some air quotes.
While single women were seen as either desperate or slutty, the 1992 dating guide Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus prioritized male sexuality under the auspices of supporting each gender’s inborn nature. Author John Gray advised women to capitulate to men to get dates, no decoy coating of empowerment necessary. By 1997, Gray’s Mars/Venus had sold six million copies, was published in thirty-eight languages, and earned Gray an estimated $18 million. Not only were single women and men not on an even playing field, they weren’t even on the same planet.
This polarization of the sexes, and the prioritization of men’s needs featured in Mars/Venus and The Rules, both reflected and flowed into the culture. Followers internalized the idea that gender transcended shared humanity, and that women were a subspecies, especially in the bedroom. This mind-set erased nonheterosexual experience, while mandating that the only way to experience sex and love was through outmoded gender roles. Most of all, Mars/Venus and The Rules propped up the myth that single, working women should ditch their desires and agency to pursue monogamous partnerships, and that their worth lay in whether they appealed to men.
PASTELIZE
After the encounter with the mock jury, advisers recommended that Marcia Clark tone down her brassy image to appeal to those who called her a bitch. Jury consultants suggested she “dress softer, speak more softly, don’t be strident,” Clark recalls with a laugh. “I don’t blame them for saying, ‘Try to soften up a bit and make yourself more relatable, more palatable,’” Clark says. “So they’re going to talk about my hair and my skirts? Fuck it. Whatever. I don’t have time for this. The clothing was nothing really. But I did wear longer skirts. I did pastelize myself, you know? I went along with it because I didn’t care. It wasn’t that important to me. I’m not trying to make any statement with my clothes. So if my clothes are getting in the way, then let’s just take that off the table. That was the least of my problems. I had bigger fish to fry.” Trial lawyers often use consultants who recommend tweaks to make them more appealing to juries. But the recommendations for Clark to soften were inherently sexist.
While Simpson defense attorney Johnnie Cochran’s suits were noted for their flash and ostentatiousness, far less ink was spilled on the subject of his looks than Clark’s. What’s notable is how often Clark’s appearance was compared to Cochran’s courtroom performance, to prove he was the better lawyer. A Washington Post profile describes her as “looking peacockish” for talking to her colleague. “For all his preening, it is a mistake Cochran never makes,” the paper observed. A retired FBI agent whose specialty was using psychology to catch serial killers told Salon that Clark was “outclassed” by Cochran. “She was just flying around like a little bumblebee as he was spinning the web and she just flew right into it,” he said.
Any small change Clark made to her appearance was noted and criticized. When she altered her hair, she made the news. “We didn’t have dry shampoo!” she laments. “In the middle of the trial my perm is falling out. I didn’t have the time or the money to deal. My hairdresser was telling me, ‘Don’t perm it, it’s drying out and it looks like shit.’ So I let it go. One morning I blew it out. I let it loose.” When Clark walked in with straight hair, the courtroom tittered. Individuals jokingly wondered whether Clark was present at all, because she looked so different. Ultimately, they gave her a standing ovation, with press kvelling over the “prosecutie’s sexy new look.” They described it as “softer” and “more feminine.” When she began to wear concealer to cover the bags beneath her eyes, it was reported that she had had a makeover. An uncharitable report said she “needed a makeover of her makeover.”
Speculation mounted that Clark’s “new look” had come from a sinister place. It was inauthentic, critics charged, and a ploy to manipulate the public who so doggedly watched her every move. This puzzled Clark, who thought the focus on her appearance was “stupid and ridiculous.”
“Only Hillary Clinton has gone through more repackaging for a public that still hasn’t decided if it wants women to work, let alone be good at their jobs,” observed the Baltimore Sun in an article about reactions to Clark’s makeover.
With such tremendous attention trained on Clark’s looks, it was natural that they would be compared to other women’s looks, and that she would be pitted against other women who had nothing to do with the trial. The San Francisco Chronicle polled women trial lawyers, not on their opinions of legal strategy, but on what they thought of Clark’s makeover. They were not kind. In fact, they were “troubled” because they felt Clark had cheated to get to the top. They had “managed to succeed without a cosmetic make-over.” “Marcia Clark’s New Look Irks Female Lawyers,” trolled the headline, promising a catfight.
Other reports charged that Clark’s persona had changed with her hair and makeup—once too angry and harsh, she was now giggly and sweet, joking around during frequent sidebars and escalating the drama for the cameras. But Clark challenges the notion that she became a pushover: “The problem then becomes, OK, so I go in and wear a pinafore and curtsy. OK, you sent a cream puff in to do a real person’s job. I’m not issuing party invitations, kids. This is a prosecution of a double homicide. I have to duke it out with the defense team. I don’t see how I can be sweet.” According to defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, who was on deck to handle an appeal, the “shrill,” “unprofessional” Clark “cried wolf” so frequently in court that by the end of the trial, no one took her seriously anymore. Outsiders watching the trial noticed how the defense attorneys and judge interrupted her and talked down to her, and wrote off her responses as histrionics.
Clark contends that in most o
ffice environments, people behave like themselves, more or less, but that’s not true of court. “The drama’s inherent in the job. You know somebody killed somebody. You’re prosecuting them. They’re on trial for their life. It’s a dramatic situation,” Clark says. “Of course I’m different in court than I am outside. Everybody was like that. I wasn’t unique in that way. Court is not your average workplace. It’s formal. It’s dramatic. It’s war. People go into court and they are different because it’s a trial and you’re at war. It took me by surprise that people were surprised by that.” Yet this drama, inherent in any murder trial, and perhaps more so in a televised, celebrity-laden one, was thought to be Clark’s personal province.
Women’s groups flagged Clark’s mistreatment in court as obviously gendered. Clark says that Judge Ito would address the lawyers, “Mr. Cochran, Mr. Shapiro, Mr. Darden, and Marcia.” The Los Angeles Chapter of the National Organization for Women accused Judge Ito of taking Clark “less seriously than other attorneys,” in a formal letter charging sexism, and explaining its potential to shift the case’s outcome.
“We are concerned however with the impact your perceived attitude may have on the jury. After all, if Your Honor appears not to take Ms. Clark as seriously as Mr. Cochran, why should they?” wrote Tammy Bruce, president of NOW’s Los Angeles chapter. Clark told me that she was surprised by Bruce’s accusations at the time and wasn’t sure she agreed. “I think I did notice he was harder on me than the other lawyers, but I didn’t make the connection to it as a ‘woman thing’ as much as I figured it was because he was such a celebrity whore. I do admit that I have a tendency to overlook sexism. I ignore it or laugh it off, just push it away. Especially if calling someone out on it may cause harm in the context of a trial, piss off a judge, and wind up with lousy rulings,” she says.
Bruce believes her letter and subsequent meeting with Ito to discuss the charge—to which she brought video clips of specific incidents—forced Ito to treat Clark better in the professional setting and camera glare. Clark agrees. “For the next month, he actually treated me like a person,” she told me. But this wouldn’t last.
“CRAZED HORNY BITCH”
Looking back, it’s hard not to see how gender also tinged Lewinsky’s ambition and made it laughable. Her desire to succeed at work was considered evidence of her striving and sluttiness. Many believed Lewinsky was entitled and assumed she had demanded that Clinton give her a job. Barbara Walters, in her primetime interview with Lewinsky, hit this like a bug that wouldn’t die. “You know other women have had sexual relationships and they don’t expect that out of it is going to come a job,” she said. “I never expected that out of this relationship will come a job,” Lewinsky said. In fact, she had lost her job at the White House, and had been demoted to the Pentagon in retaliation for her relationship with Clinton. She had worked in the White House before the affair. She hadn’t demanded a perk; rather, she pushed to reclaim the job that was taken from her. Walters took her harping as proof that “toward the end of this relationship, you were a real pain in the butt.” Morton, Lewinsky’s biographer, wrote that “the greatest irony of all” was that Lewinsky was accused of “getting a job as a consequence of the very relationship which had blighted her career.” Lewinsky’s ambition was used against her. She couldn’t be both feminine (read: sexual) and competent. She appeared to want—and to take—too much.
Just as Lewinsky’s and Hill’s attackers had done, Clark’s foes worked to shred her credibility and accomplishments by accusing her of being a sex fiend who refused rejection. Defense attorney (and her adversary) Robert Shapiro claimed he had rejected her advances. “My unwillingness to flirt with her . . . made her angry,” he boasted in his memoir, The Search for Justice. In contrast, Johnnie Cochran had a great relationship with Clark, Shapiro wrote, because they flirted with each other. He added that Cochran’s wife objected to her husband’s tactic, feeding catfight fantasies. Defense attorneys “found her a ‘whining’ minx with an uplifted nostril and a rehearsed hurt look,” reported the Washington Post.
“Flirting? Seriously? Because I smiled at him? I mean, come on. Either I’m too stern or too playful. It’s a lose-lose proposition,” Clark says.
Clark was even accused of using sex to puncture Johnnie Cochran’s game. According to Dershowitz, Clark allegedly told Cochran, “When you’re up there, I want you to think of only one thing: I’m not wearing any underwear.”
“She uses all of her resources. You got to give her credit,” Dershowitz told CNN anchor Martin Savidge, to which he replied, “she used every opportunity she could.”
“There was no underwear comment,” Clark told me. “That never happened.”
Clark’s love life was an obsession during the trial. Aside from her alleged flirtations with her opponents, the rumor mill romantically linked Clark to her coprosecutor, Christopher Darden. In a Saturday Night Live sketch, Darden (Tim Meadows) and Clark (Nancy Walls) pursue a romantic relationship in flashback while Barbara Walters (Cheri Oteri) interviews Darden in the present, satirizing the bloated media coverage of the trial’s intricacies. Darden tells Walters in an interview that Clark forced him into bed with her.
“Not all of us are racist, Chris,” Clark says. “Some of us think black is beautiful.” She rubs Darden’s shoulders and aggressively kisses his neck as hip-hop begins to play.
“Marcia, you acting crazy,” Darden, the voice of sexless reason, says. “We got to stay focused on the trial. This is wrong.” She straddles him despite his pleading, “No, no. Help me!” Clark ignores his distress. After the not-guilty verdict is announced Darden sulks but Clark remains oblivious.
“The only thing I’m guilty of is being extremely horny. Please remove your pants,” Clark says.
“Marcia, we just lost the case of the century. O. J. Simpson got away,” Darden protests.
“Quit whining, Chris. It’s time to take the black Bronco down the 405.”
“I’m so upset, I don’t think I can do this,” Darden says.
“Certainly a very different Marcia Clark than the one we’re accustomed to seeing,” chimes in Walters. “Smelling the same musky man scent day in and day out could certainly turn any woman into a crazed horny bitch.”
Clark’s character on SNL is built on male fantasy, it goes without saying. But it’s worth examining the nature of the humor, which plays on the belief that powerful women are sex-crazed beneath their suits, so much so that the suggestion of a man’s attention renders them predators. Watching these decades-old clips, it’s notable how even-tempered the men in these scenarios are. If a woman appears too strong to be victimized with sex, she is a secretly sex-starved carnivore, an archetype to be shamed and feared.
Erotomania, like the kind SNL imagined Clark suffered from, “is a projection of men’s preoccupation with sex,” said linguistics professor Deborah Tannen in the New York Times. Author of the bestseller You Just Don’t Understand, about miscommunication between men and women, Tannen calls erotomania what it is: a male creation. “Men think about sex all the time, so they want to believe that women do, too.”
THE DOUBLE BIND
When Clark tried to do her job as a prosecutor, she was often accused of being harsh, strident, and unlikable. When she softened her image with pastels and giggles, detractors besmirched her professional credentials and called her “a flirt in lawyer’s clothing.” What was happening to Clark seems clear now, with more than two decades of distance, but the efforts to discredit her as incompetent or unfeminine were so insidious that even women watching the trial closely didn’t see them at the time.
Clark has achieved quite a lot since the Simpson trial. She has authored six books and consulted on television shows, and she reviews appeals cases for indigent defendants, but people don’t know her for these things. She is forever famous for what is perceived to be her biggest failure: the inability to convict O. J. Simpson of murder. After the trial, Clark briefly became a legal correspondent, talking about court cases
on TV. People cracked jokes that she wouldn’t just describe the cases, but also what she would do to lose them.
The day of the verdict, Clark walked out of her office for good. Someone else cleaned out her things because she couldn’t bear to look at them. The case ended her courtroom legal career. Like many of her colleagues from the trial, she won a lucrative book deal, but was retraumatized writing about her experience during the Simpson trial.
Clark said penning Without a Doubt “was like reliving the nightmare and dissecting the nightmare. It was just terrible.” Few have connected the media’s and Ito’s skewering of Clark’s competence to the trial’s verdict—O. J. Simpson’s acquittal. It’s a thread long buried beneath countless other theories of the case.
More than twenty years after the verdict, in late May 2016, Marcia Clark appears at the 92nd Street Y in New York City to promote her new crime novel, Blood Defense. The “semi-autobiographical” novel follows an ambitious female defense attorney, and is being adapted into a television series. On a stage beneath a decorative proscenium, Clark sits opposite NBC senior legal correspondent Cynthia McFadden, who asks her to rehash trial gossip and reveal what it was like to watch a Hollywood actress play her on television.
There are about three hundred people in the audience. The man seated next to me followed the trial closely. He asks me if that’s what her book is about. The couple behind us wonders the same thing. He points out the 60 Minutes journalist Lesley Stahl in front of us, turning away an autograph seeker with a flick of her hand.
McFadden covered the Simpson trial in real time and spent the 134 televised days of it in spitting distance of Clark. “But we never, in all that time, talked,” she tells the audience. “Marcia Clark was the prosecutor intent on keeping her dignity in the courtroom and her mouth shut out of it.”
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