Not like a theoretical Dick Cheney Pinterest account, which would contain one board that consisted only of pictures of laughing young adults called “People Who May Someday Die Tragically, Leaving Me Their Youthful Hearts.” Or a Rick Santorum Pinterest account, which we all know would be entirely soft core gay porn and ultrasound images.

For decades, Hillary Clinton has served as a litmus test for just how much the American public will accept from a smart, ambitious, assertive, feminist woman: How much she can reasonably hope to attain, and what opposition she will face. Her basic competence has never truly been in question; her “likability,” the ability of society to accept her, always has been. And women have projected their deepest hopes and fears onto her throughout.

The “challenges” alluded to by Clinton have been huge. Her attempts at healthcare reform led to a “Billary” label and caricatures of the president and his wife as conjoined twins. She refused to bake; America panicked. When her husband cheated, people called her too aggressive to keep him happy; when they stayed married, people called her too submissive to stand up for herself. She ran for the Senate, prompting hand-wringing over her power-hungry nature–she was a wife, her husband already had a job in politics, why did she need a job, too? And she won. So she ran for president, which was where the trouble really started.

Fucking whore. Castrating, overbearing, and scary. Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. She devil. Iron my shirt. C.U.N.T. Beat the bitch.

The amount of overt misogyny aimed at Hillary Clinton during the 2008 campaign, from conservatives and progressives alike, was enough to shock many young women – even Obama supporters like myself – into a new awareness of just how powerful and widespread sexism still was in this culture. In this magazine, Susan J. Douglas accused Clinton of being too much “like a man.” (And, hilariously, pointed to notable dying-wife-betrayer and sex-tape-maker John Edwards as an example of a more truly feminine and caring politician.)