She's Hot, Finnish, Has A 4-Year-Old...And She's Prime Minister
Sanna Marin can also party until the early hours and keep the Russians at bay
(Ed. Note: Covid-19 is still kicking my ass. Fortunately, I have a few things in the pipeline, and I at least have the energy to do a wee bit o’ editing.
I’m not going to complain, not when more than a million Americans have already lost their lives. I’m going to remain thankful that I’m fully vaccinated and boosted…and I sincerely hope all y’all are as well. If you’ve been fortunate enough to avoid COVID-19, trust me when I say that you do NOT want to experience this. I was beginning to hope that I might be bulletproof after two-and-a-half years; I wasn’t. Please- be smart, be safe, and be healthy.)
(Photo: EMMI KORHONEN/Lehtikuva/AFP / Visegard 24 via Twitter (Getty Images))
Heads of state have historically been BOOOORRRRING- old, White, upper-class, Conservative, heterosexual, and well-versed in playing the deadly dull diplomatic game. They look the same, talk the same, and even rattle sabers the same. Thankfully, that’s beginning to change as nations across the globe begin to see the wisdom in electing female leaders. Germany’s Angela Merkel was a trailblazer in that regard, but she was in many ways just a female version of the male cookie-cutter head of state.
Sure, there was the UK’s Margaret Thatcher, but she, like Merkel, had bigger balls (figuratively speaking) than most of the male heads of state with whom she butted heads. It wasn’t for nothing that she was called the Iron Maiden.
And there have been female leaders like India’s Indira Gandhi, Israel’s Golda Meir, Argentina’s Isabel Perón, Norway’s Gro Harlem Brundtland, and Iceland’s Vigdís Finnbogadóttir. So, no, women aren’t strangers to leading countries, even though American Presidents have all been Penis-Americans.
Now there’s an even younger generation of female heads of state coming to the fore. But, unsurprisingly, they’re facing the same double standards that have bedeviled women worldwide.
Take Sanna Marin, Finland’s 36-year-old Prime Minister. Ms. Marin is cool enough to have a very high-pressure job, a four-year-old kid, and what seems to be a pretty awesome social life, for which she’s coming under fire.
So Ms. Marin likes to party and has some pretty hip friends. That’s a problem? It’s hard to tell what’s going on in the video (my Finnish is pretty rusty), other than she’s dancing and having fun. I’d think that someone charged with the day-to-day business of running Finland would be due some time to unwind. If she chooses to do it by dancing and partying with friends…well, where’s the fire, eh?
Of course, some think that a PM should be buttoned up, irredeemably dull, and beyond reproach, which is a not unreasonable expectation for a leader who’s a member of the gerontocracy and almost certainly in bed by 9 pm.
Sanna Marin, Finland’s 36-year-old prime minister, is not sorry for partying. On Wednesday, videos surfaced online of her dancing and having a ball of a time—which allegedly included someone shouting about drugs in the background (though I cannot confirm this, as my Finnish language skills are subpar). Some of her political opponents took this as an opportunity to question her judgment and demanded that she take a drug test.
Marin shot back: “I danced, sang, and partied - perfectly legal things. And I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve seen or known of others [using drugs],” according to the BBC. I don’t believe that at all but also don’t care at all, so let’s move on.
The primary pearl clutchers appear to be other Finnish politicians, though New York Times journalist Astead Herndon pointed out the real issue at hand: “The problem is the leak. A PM needs better friends.”
Perhaps the “pearl clutchers” need to worry less about what Ms. Marin does with her free time than how she’s leading Finland. After all, she’s leading a country that shares an 860-mile border with Russia, which is at this moment at war with Ukraine. To say that Finland is in a precarious position would be something of an understatement, which is one of the reasons Finland recently was accepted, along with Sweden, as a member of NATO.
Ms. Marin beautifully embodies the Nordic ideal of work-life balance, even with a not-always-stable (or friendly) Russian bear on her country’s eastern border. Moreover, she’s demonstrated that a leader doesn’t have to be a dull old White man to effectively lead a country through challenging times.
[B]ack to Marin: Her personal life first made international headlines in December, when she went dancing until 4 a.m. and left her phone at home, missing a text that told her to self-isolate after she’d come into close contact with someone who’d tested positive for covid. (Remember the days when governments recommended that?) My immediate reaction to this story was one of awe: I wish I could leave my phone for hours at a time and not develop anxiety hives. That being said, you should probably have your phone with you if it could help you prevent the spread of covid. Luckily, she tested negative….
In the eight months since, Marin’s become more of a fixture on the global stage than she might have reasonably expected (and not just because of her love of dancing): Finland shares an 860-mile border with Russia, and following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, her government officially applied to join NATO in May.
Frankly, she’s a refreshing break from our American gerontocracy, where we currently have four Senators over 80 and only one under 40. We have a President over 80, and our last one was in his mid-70s. Sanna Marin and other young female heads of state represent a refreshing change from the idea that you must be an octogenarian White man to lead a country effectively.
Marin has a life outside her job, unlike President Joe Biden, whose life is consumed by his. An American President gets no downtime, which is something that holds true for most male heads of state. Like many female leaders, Sanna Marin is attempting to redefine her job as one more amenable to creating a work-life balance- or as much as possible for a Prime Minister.
Of course, as is valid anywhere in the world, politics is a constant game of King of the Hill. Someone is always trying to find a way to bring down the person at the top of the hill, and the same is true for Ms. Marin. There are those in Finland who’d like nothing more than to see her fail miserably, and they’d be happy to have a hand in that failure. They’ll latch onto anything they think they can turn into a controversy, whether legitimate or not.
To help quell the controversy, Ms. Marin did take a drug test (she tested negative), though there was no compelling reason for her to do so.
Marin held a news conference following the release of a second video showing her “dancing closely” with local pop star Olavi Uusivirta, according to the BBC. A video of the same party released on Thursday showed Marin alongside five people dancing and singing, according to The Associated Press.
“I have taken a narcotics test today, the results of which will be available in about a week,” Marin told reporters, according to Politico Europe.
“Even in my teenage years, I haven’t used any kind of drugs. I took the tests just to be sure” to erase any suspicions, Marin continued.
“I wish we lived in a society where my word could be trusted. But when suspicions like this are raised here, that’s why I took these tests,” she said, according to Bloomberg.
Indeed. There was no reason to assume she had taken drugs, whether recently or in the past, but we live in a political world in which the default is to assume the worst of someone. So, partying means using drugs, right? Perhaps because that’s what we would do, and so we assume the same of anyone else.
And even if Ms. Marin had taken drugs in her teenage years, what of it? Isn’t the important thing what she’s doing now as PM? How many of us did truly, deeply stupid things during our younger days that we wouldn’t want to come to light?
(You can’t see me, but I’m sheepishly raising my hand as I blush with embarrassment. I’m not sure I could remember everything.)
And so what if she was “dancing closely” with anyone? That seems as if it would be an issue (if indeed it is one) between Ms. Marin and her husband, Markus Räikkönen. Whatever accommodations, arrangements, or understandings they have within their marriage is no one else’s damned business.
Her opponents can question her judgment because she parties on occasion. They can even demand that she take a drug test (she beat them to it), though I suspect Ms. Marin would laugh at them for being such prigs. But, on the other hand, even a head of state needs to blow off steam now and again, so if Ms. Marin happens to do it by dancing and partying until 4 am…well, more power to her. At least she’s not blowing up her political opponents, right?
Finland, and the rest of the world, need more leaders like Sanna Marin. I suspect that people who know how to relax and have fun probably make better leaders in times of crisis. And anyone who can balance a high-pressure job, a four-year-old kid, and an impressive social life is OK by me.
If you’re one of the busybodies concerned with how Sanna Marin conducts her personal life, you should ask yourself one question: Would you be as concerned if Ms. Marin were male?
I doubt it. Lose the hypocrisy and the misogyny, willya??
No one would give a tinker's damn if it was a man doing these things.