On this International Women’s Day, The Onion devotes its sterling reportage to championing women—a small but influential sliver of the nation’s population—in an endeavor to prevent them from vanishing from the public consciousness entirely.
In the nearly 250-year history of our nation, women’s rights have come a long way. Women have earned the right to vote. Women have witnessed the passage of Title IX. Women have gone to space, have become leading scientists, and have climbed the corporate ladder to become some of America’s most powerful CEOs. But despite this tremendous social progress, never once has there been a woman on top of the White House.
Frankly, that’s shameful. It’s sexist, and it’s wrong.
It’s time to put a woman on the White House, where everyone can see her. It’s more than just time—it’s long past overdue. It is urgent that we hoist a woman to the tip-top of the White House roof, where she’ll be able to look out for our nation’s best interests with what is practically a bird’s-eye view of the South Lawn.
It’s sad to think that this country may be so backwards that there are some people who don’t even consider this a possibility.
Can you imagine how much it would mean to millions of little girls across the country? To squint up at the roof of the White House and see someone who looks like themselves up there? To see a woman standing up there trying to keep her footing? To think, “That lady teetering and tottering back and forth in the wind could one day be me?” I think the looks on their face would speak for themselves.
What do Americans have against the idea of a woman on the commander-in-chief’s rooftop? Around the world, women have been occupying the highest roofs of public office buildings for decades. In India, Indira Gandhi clung to the dome of the Secretariat Building as early as 1966. In England, Margaret Thatcher perched on top of 10 Downing Street for over a decade, earning her the nickname the Iron Lady for her uncompromising refusal to climb down from up there. Now why should the United States be any different? Where’s our woman on the White House?
Of course, we’ve come close. Hillary Clinton nearly achieved the historic feat with her historic ascent of the White House’s North Portico in 2016. Political analysts and experts, who were all but certain she’d reach the gable, were stunned after Clinton made it all the way to gutter height before plummeting to the ground nearly 70 feet below.
Rest in power.
We can stew and speculate, asking ourselves if Clinton would have made it if only she had used a ladder, if only the eaves would have been a few inches shorter or her arms a few inches longer. But ultimately that kind of conjecture is only a useless distraction that makes us look backwards, instead of where we should be looking, which is up.
Imagine the Supreme Court building with nine women on top of it. If that image fills you with outrage or apprehension, I implore you to ask yourself: Why?
I don’t care if men can’t picture a woman on the White House. The time for compromise has passed. She doesn’t need to be perfect. If mediocre white men can go through life doing as they please, I don’t see why there’s any reason we shouldn’t snatch the next woman we see walking down the National Mall and fling her on top of the White House with a construction crane.
Mark my words: In my lifetime, there will be a woman on that rooftop, waving her arms and screaming for help.
Getting there won’t be easy. As history has shown, there will be systemic barriers like gates and fences, strong gusts of wind, and Secret Service snipers. But if we give women our full support—our shoulders, our step stools, our ladders, our cherry pickers, and our sturdy chairs—eventually, one day, one of them will be stuck on the White House roof.
