The Mirror

Hillary Clinton: ‘Running For Office Can Be A Really Brutal Experience’

Betsy Rothstein Gossip blogger
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Former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton continues the big tease of will she or won’t she run in 2016. In the September issue she’s gives a big, wide-ranging interview to Glamour, in which she talks about the sexism she’s experienced and just what a “brutal experience” it can be for a woman to run for office.

Editor-in-Chief Cindi Lieve does the honors of interviewing the potential first female POTUS. In the interview are clues about what Clinton may be thinking about herself and if she can handle the tough race ahead.

The rhinoceros image may not be the greatest one for a woman, but hey, we know what she means.

Glamour asks, ‘How does she persuade women to run for office?’

Clinton says young women running for office just have to “follow Eleanor Roosevelt’s maxim about growing skin as thick as the hide of a rhinoceros, and you have to be incredibly well-prepared—better prepared [than a man], actually—and you have to figure out how you’re going to present yourself, and you have to have a support group around you, because it can be really a brutal experience. But I think if you were to talk to women who have run, both successfully and unsuccessfully, nearly all of them would say, ‘You learn so much.’ You learn about yourself, what you’re capable of doing.”

And how does she deal with difficult men or women at work?

HRC: “I will say, keeping your head down and doing the best job you can in the beginning gives you the opportunity to be evaluated on the basis of the contributions you are making. I often would listen more than talk in my early meetings with people…. [Then], when you feel strongly about your work or about a position, you’ll be given more attention [than] if you hadn’t done that constantly.”

As for perfection, Clinton advises against it because, after all, men don’t worry about that crap.

“We have all had the experience where 20 minutes later, a man says the same thing and everybody responds positively…. So don’t take it personally,” she told Lieve. “Take it seriously so that you understand it, and then try to devise techniques to overcome it. And I think this…’perfectionist gene’ that too many young women have holds them back, and instead they should be really aiming for ‘good enough.’ You don’t have to be perfect. Most men never think like that. They’re just trying to figure out what’s the opening and how they can seize it. They’re not thinking about, Oh my gosh, I’m not perfect, my hair’s not perfect today, I wore the wrong shoes. No.”

Read the entire excerpt here.