What If Hillary Clinton Were A Man And Donald Trump Were A Woman?

One economics professor used actors to reenact one of the debates and find out.

So this is a little uncomfortable but overall very revealing to watch. INSEAD professor Maria Guadalupe got together with NYU’s Joe Salvatore, a professor of theatre who specializes in ethnodrama (!!!!!!) to recreate sections of the second televised debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. NYU News has a great story about the process, how they rehearsed, and how they decided which parts to include (“we ended up having to cut the “When I was First Lady” because when we tried it as “When I was First Man,” it just made no sense.”)

They put on a few live performances, which I now wish I could have gone and seen, and solicited reactions from their (largely liberal, academic) audience members. What they saw and heard will, as they say, surprise you:

People got upset. There was a guy two rows in front of me who was literally holding his head in his hands, and the person with him was rubbing his back. The simplicity of Trump’s message became easier for people to hear when it was coming from a woman — that was a theme. One person said, “I’m just so struck by how precise Trump’s technique is.” Another — a musical theater composer, actually — said that Trump created “hummable lyrics,” while Clinton talked a lot, and everything she was was true and factual, but there was no “hook” to it. Another theme was about not liking either candidate — you know, “I wouldn’t vote for either one.” Someone said that Jonathan Gordon [the male Hillary Clinton] was “really punchable” because of all the smiling. And a lot of people were just very surprised by the way it upended their expectations about what they thought they would feel or experience.

Read the whole thing here:

What if Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Had Swapped Genders?