Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand raises her voice in Philly

BEING objectified is part and parcel of being a woman. As long as there are construction sites and public sidewalks, it's practically unavoidable.

You'd think, though, that a female member of the United States Congress would get some sort of pass that would keep men - especially her colleagues - from fixating on her figure.

In her new book, Off the Sidelines: Raise Your Voice, Change the World, which she'll discuss tomorrow in a public event at the National Constitution Center, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., shares details about the offensive remarks she's had to deal with, especially when she was pregnant with her second son.

"Wherever I went, my male colleagues seemed to comment," the 47-year-old junior senator writes. "I couldn't ride an elevator in the Capitol without hearing, 'Oh, my God, are you going to explode? Are you going to have that baby right now?' "

The worst offender had to be the southern congressman who once told Gillibrand, "You know, Kirsten, you're even pretty when you're fat."

Outrageous, right?

True, Gillibrand was only the sixth woman to give birth while serving in Congress. But c'mon, don't these men have families?

But wait. There's more.

Once Gillibrand started slimming down post-pregnancy, the off-putting remarks kept coming.

There was the time a fellow senator squeezed Gillibrand's waist from behind and said: "Don't lose too much weight now. I like my girls chubby!" And the time she was working out in the men's gym and a co-worker pointed out, "Good thing you're working out, because you wouldn't want to get porky."

"It made me feel horrible. It made me feel less valued and unimportant," she told me last week during a phone interview.

Oh, I wish she had named names.

Gillibrand wouldn't identify these cads in her memoir or to me. It's not too late, though. Call me, senator, and let me expose those sexist pigs!

Maybe she'll dish at her talk tomorrow, but don't expect it. Do expect her to discuss her experiences as a woman in elective office, as well as her desire to get more women involved in politics and the highest ranks of industry.

And, no doubt, she'll be talking about her predecessor Hillary Clinton, who's getting a lot of buzz these days as a potential 2016 presidential candidate. Clinton wrote the foreword to Gillibrand's book.

Gillibrand, a lawyer, assumed Clinton's seat in 2009 after President Obama appointed Clinton Secretary of State. At the time, Gillibrand was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2012, she was elected to her first full Senate term.

She is the mother of two sons - Theodore, 10, and Henry, 6 - and married to venture-capital consultant Jonathan Gillibrand.

The upstate New York native's name also has been mentioned in relation to the 2016 presidential race, but Gillibrand has insisted that she's not interested - and she reiterated that during her interview with me.

Not that Gillibrand has a problem with ambition.

In Off the Sidelines, she writes about how negatively ambitious women are perceived: "You must be cold. You must be calculating. You must be arrogant and man-hating. This is a significant issue for women in politics. Too few people believe that you can be ambitious, feminine and a decent person at the same time."

She wants to change that perception. Her book, she said, is "a call to action," as is her new website, offthesidelines.org, which is dedicated to encouraging "every woman and girl to make their voice heard on the issues they care about."

"We are not at enough decision-making tables," Gillibrand told me.

She's right about that.

Mary Ellen Balchunis, a Democrat who is challenging U.S. Rep. Patrick Meehan, R-Delaware County, in the 7th Congressional District, has been inspired by Gillibrand's leadership.

"I do see her as making a path for others," said Balchunis, a political science professor at La Salle University.

"You know how tough it is being a woman. Look at the Pennsylvania delegation," Balchunis added. "She did it with young children. I give her a lot of credit."

Politics aside, I am a fan of just getting more women to the proverbial table.

Last week, Gillibrand was one of 16 female senators who signed a letter to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to say they were "deeply concerned" about the league's sloppy handling of the Ray Rice case, as well as its new domestic violence policy, which increases the punishment for first-time offenders to a six-game suspension.

"If you violently assault a woman, you shouldn't get a second chance to play in the NFL," the letter reads.

"I think they handled the issue horribly. . . . They already knew early on that he had admitted to beating his wife," Gillibrand said of the incident last February at Revel Casino in Atlantic City, where Rice was captured on tape knocking out his fiancee, now wife, Janay Palmer Rice.

"He should have been fired on the spot."

Gillibrand contends that Americans have to decide whether we, as a society, value girls and women or whether we want to return to a "Mad Men"-type era when women were relegated to secondary status.

"We are already good leaders," she said. "I want to assure women that their views and voices are different - and that's good."

Blog: ph.ly/HeyJen