ABSTRACT
When Hillary Clinton accepted her political party’s 2016 presidential nomination, she announced that the Democrats “just put the biggest crack in that glass ceiling.” On the days leading to the election, journalists remarked that she will spend the election night under the largest glass ceiling in New York City: The Javits Center by I. M. Pei and Partners. The architects’ inspiration for this 410,000 square-foot convention center was the Crystal Palace, an exhibit hall designed by greenhouse designer Joseph Paxton. From its conception, The Javits Center was associated with the exhibition of objects and people. Clinton’s loss subsequently generated various uses of this metaphor, including “[h]ighest glass ceiling remains intact after Clinton’s stunning loss” and “cracked, but intact.” Glass is a building material associated with politics and social advancement. The election night’s suspense, enchantment and near-triumph of the disadvantaged are all elements of fairytales, which describe the collective dreams of a culture. This chapter examines the social, material and cultural intertwining in the glass ceiling metaphor. An analysis of the material properties of glass, the technical advancement in recent years and the cultural context of fictions offer complex readings of this metaphor.
