The dustup erupted this week at a University of Massachusetts Lowell debate after a student asked Warren how she paid for college and pointed out that Brown had appeared in a nude photo for Cosmopolitan magazine.
“I kept my clothes on,’’ Warren responded, going on to talk about her student loans.
“Thank God,’’ Brown responded on talk radio the next day. Women’s groups and students of gender politics immediately cried foul.
“He turned a comparison of how one dealt with adversity into one in which she was being evaluated on her looks,’’ said Denise L. Baer, a member of the graduate faculty of the Department of Political Science at Boston University who writes about women in politics.
“It adds to the chilly climate for women,’’ added Baer, who said Massachusetts has a particularly difficult “marble ceiling’’ for women in politics.
But Brown, who has himself been a target of ridicule for his background in modeling, took up the mantle of the minority yesterday, suggesting that he attracts undue scrutiny as a rare Bay State Republican.
“Listen, I’m a Republican from Massachusetts,’’ Brown said. “Everything I do and say, every decision I made since the day I was elected is praised, criticized, dissected. And that’s OK. She was joking. I was joking. I’m not quite sure what else to say.’’
He would not go so far as to suggest that he was a victim of a gender double standard.
“You have to have a sense of humor, first of all,’’ Brown said. “Things are way too serious, especially in Washington, D.C. I was merely responding to a wisecrack she made about something I did almost 30 years ago in an effort to pay for law school. I don’t know what else to say.’’
Brown also urged a group of reporters yesterday to turn their attention away from his gaffe and toward his job fair. “With all due respect, you should be here reporting about what’s going on here, and that is that people are still hurting,“ Brown said. “This is the real story.’’
This week, Brown sent a letter to Senate majority leader Harry Reid urging him to move forward with a streamlined jobs plan featuring only the elements that both parties support. Asked yesterday what features of the Democrats’ jobs plan he opposes, Brown did not specify, saying, “I think the biggest sticking point is the fact that they’re just trying to ram stuff through for the election season with no hope of passing.’’
Brown’s office estimated that yesterday’s jobs fair drew nearly 1,700 job seekers to Roxbury.
Stephanie Ebbert can be reached at ebbert@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @StephanieEbbert.
