What it was like to be Monica Lewinsky in 2001

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I’ve always had a soft spot for Monica Lewinsky. I was in DC when the scandal hit. In fact, I worked out next to Linda Tripp one day at my gym right in the height of the news coverage and later I ran into Newt Gingrich at an Inn. I was 10 years out of college, so still young enough to remember what it was like to be a woman who wanted men to like her, wanted to be sexual and didn’t know the consequences that I’d pay for that. I was through the loop myself; I’d learned my lesson and moved on, but I still felt very tenderly toward what she was going through. It was what I’d gone through, only secretly. And probably lots of other young women. And she was doing it publicly.

I am glad to see her speaking out now; I wish she had done it then in a more effective way, but I guess slut shaming is powerful and she was just young enough to buy into it, and the power to own was only the power to be on the cover of Playboy, a wink and a nudge, not a real female FU I am woman hear me roar type of power that I wanted her to own.

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1995 scandal?

I liked her immediately, and during the period when this was happening knew she was a far bigger victim than anyone else involved in the story. I admit to a bit of a crush at the time.

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