Hillary Clinton is dubbed by political analysts to be the first female president in our nation’s history, due to her adeptness in the political game and overwhelming amount of experience on the front of policy creation and diplomacy. But there is still one major hurdle that our nation has to jump through first: we must treat Hillary Clinton as any other office holder, and not treat her in any negative or positive manner purely due to her sex.

Now, that’s not to say that we shouldn’t, if she does get elected to the presidency, celebrate such an achievement for our progress as a society. It would be as major an accomplishment as Barack Obama being the first African American president in U.S. history. All I am saying is that Americans should, as they did with President Obama, judge her policy as they would any other president. Not favoring it or discouraging it based on the fact that she is a woman.

That being said, the United States does have to undergo some major attitude changes in order to truly be ready to have a female president. One, we cannot change the topic of discussion from serious topics to trivial ones, such as a new hairstyle, simply because Hillary is a woman. The 2016 candidate even commented on this herself; the title for her new book about her career as Secretary of State, “Hard Choices”, originally considered a different title that reflected the theme of cultural sexism that surrounded her career: “The Scrunchie Chronicles: 112 Countries and It’s Still All About the Hair”. According to Daily Mail Online, this was making fun of the ludicrous amount of attention that was paid to cosmetic parts of one of the most powerful women in the world. And two, we have to attempt to discourage arguments against Hillary running for the presidency on the grounds that she is somehow more emotional than her male counterparts. In fact, Mother Jones Online ranks her as one of the coolest Secretaries of State under pressure in modern times, which says a lot about her due to the extreme pressures she underwent through the course of her administration.

With the 2016 election just around the corner, the United States needs to open it’s mind to the idea of the start of a new chapter in our history. If Hillary Clinton is elected, which wouldn’t be surprising due to her overwhelming popularity among the Democratic base, then it will open the floodgates to welcome in a more diverse representation in our government, and will change how we view our democratic process for years to come. We just have to be ready for it.

by CARSEN VAN DER LINDEN