Women Candidates Have Fun Hobbies Too, They Just Don't Get to Talk About Them

Did you know that Beto O'Rourke was in a punk band named Foss in the 90s and that Pete Buttigieg taught himself to speak Norwegian, basically for fun? Chances are, you might, because male candidates are routinely covered as both serious contenders and as multi-faceted human beings. Groundbreaking!

But what if—stay with me—I told you that the women candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination also had fun hobbies and vast intellectual curiosity? And that these charismatic qualities are lurking just beyond all of the narratives about their nebulous "likability" and totally offensive efforts to remove Al Franken from Congress for groping a woman?

In the spirit of covering women candidates for the "rock stars" they, too, are: read on for 19 colorful character quirks and staggering academic achievements of Sens. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Amy Klobuchar. Two of them even have dogs!

There's much ado about Beto's worship of legendary punk band Fugazi, but what of Warren's affinity for Dolly Parton? She launched her 2020 run to the sweet sounds of "9 to 5."

Harris also listens to music—shocking, I know. Her 45-track Black Music Month playlist, created for Huffington Post in June 2017, included A Tribe Called Quest, Lauryn Hill, The Notorious B.I.G., Childish Gambino and Andra Day.

The media loves a politician who works out. Look no further than Gillibrand, who has run two marathons and plays on the congressional women's softball team.

Sen. Klobuchar enjoys hiking and is a barre-class devotee. (“It’s a reminder that we must all be humble," she told Vogue, "because I’m like the worst in the class.”) She has also accompanied her dad, Minnesota newspaper reporter, Jim Klobuchar, "on epic bike rides that helped her get to know Minnesota’s scenic beauty," according to one review of her book.

Artemis O'Rourke may get all the glory, but have you met Warren's own First Dog contender, Bailey the golden retriever? "We named him after George Bailey, the community banker in It’s a Wonderful Life—a guy who was decent, determined & saw the best in people,” she announced last year of her canine son.

Just a few of Harris's many hobbies growing up, according to her Vogue profile: singing in an Oakland, Calif. church choir, joining civil rights marches, mastering Indian cooking, cleaning test tubes in her mother's (a cancer researcher's) lab and knitting while watching cartoons (the only way she was permitted to watch TV). “I have no idea how many blankets Kamala must have crocheted,” Harris's sister, Maya, told Vogue. “She was the mad crocheter.”

For Gillibrand's senior project at Dartmouth College, "she researched Tibetan refugees and even interviewed the Dalai Lama."

Klobuchar, who is Slovenian on her father's side, is a fan of the Slovenian pastry "potica," a treat her grandma used to make and which her office flies into D.C. from Minnesota. Klobuchar is also fond of cracking jokes connecting her to fellow Slovenian, First Lady Melania Trump, who, she has quipped, "officially displaced" her "as the most famous Slovenian-American."

The light, nighttime reading sitting on Harris's nightstand in a 2009 q&a with the *San Francisco Chronicle*: Fist Stick Knife Gun, about "the evolution of violence in American streets," she said. (Oh, and also Eat, Pray, Love.)

As a law partner at New York's Boies, Schiller & Flexner (yes, the same that has represented Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos), Kirsten Gillibrand realized the firm didn't have a maternity leave policy. So, in 2002, she wrote one herself.

Would you believe that Warren's claim to fame was not, actually, being ruthlessly cyberbullied by the sitting president? Indeed, she was a star debater at Oklahoma City's Northwest Classen High School who went on to win the state championship.

Klobuchar and former F.B.I. director James Comey were in the same class at University of Chicago Law School. Comey told Vogue that Klobuchar was “annoyingly smart."

Why does Harris list "Momala" on her Twitter bio? It's what her two stepchildren, the kids of her husband, attorney Doug Emhoff, call her because, as she wrote in her book, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, they weren't keen on the title of "stepmom."

Gillibrand and Connie Britton have been friends since their shared Dartmouth College days and even roomed together on a study abroad trip to Beijing. Let this knowledge wash over you as you behold the photographic evidence:

Fun fact: the name Kamala is derived from the Sanskrit word for "lotus flower."

Rom com alert! Gillibrand's husband, a British-born venture capitalist, proposed in Central Park, after hiding the ring inside a snowball. But Gillibrand almost threw it at a squirrel first.

Harris was a member of the oldest black sorority in the country, Alpha Kappa Alpha. Her sisters, many of whom have gone on to be power players in various fields, are now a "secret weapon," according to CNN, who help Harris fundraise and organize. At a January event, CNN said, Sen. Harris's sisters "signaled their presence in the audience with their trademarked sound, 'Skee-Wee.'"

Warren's preferred beer is Michelob Ultra, or, as she jokingly calls it, "the club soda of beers."

In closing, how cute is Gillibrand's family pup, Maple?