Good for you, Monica Lewinsky, for finally taking control of your story
We thought we knew Monica Lewinsky, didn’t we, back in the late 90s? But all we knew was who the press told us she was.
With headlines blaring about scandal and seduction and sex, the news media rolled out all of their best misogynist tropes to make us believe that Lewinsky was a calculating seductress, a hilarious punchline, or maybe even an evil co-conspirator within a grand Republican conspiracy to bring down the then-president.
As a 17-year-old girl growing up in the US in 1998, inhaling the headlines, I believed that if I knew one thing, it was not to emulate Monica Lewinsky. Like everyone else, I was wrong. Named this week as a producer on the American Crime Story TV dramatization of the political crisis that made her famous, Lewinsky continues to blaze forth as a
role model for women wronged, transforming her life story from a tragedy to that of a hero’s journey.
The lurid tale of Lewinsky’s affair with Bill Clinton broke at the dawn of internet news. And oh, how it flourished as we glued ourselves to our computer screens, hungry for salacious details and the exhaustive punditry that they begat. It was the beginning of something sinister. In 1998 and 1999 it seemed like you couldn’t turn a corner without seeing her face or a headline with her name, but Lewinsky’s voice was largely absent – or at least her willing voice. The release of the Starr report into the whole affair provided the world with a more-than-intimate glimpse into Lewinsky’s thoughts, but without her willing participation. As she wrote in a 2018 Vanity Fair piece: “Every adult with a modem could instantaneously peruse a copy [of the Starr report] and learn about my private conversations, my personal musings (lifted from my home computer), and, worse yet, my sex life.”
Even when Lewinsky was able to speak to the media, as in her silence breaking 1999 interview with Barbara Walters, it was through a filter that had been designed without her consent
and which failed to flatter her. She was not able to dispel the accepted narrative that cast her as a figure of shame. Though Clinton’s departure from the White House and the 11 September attacks drove her off the front page, the media maintained an unkind surveillance of her life. It gave the impression that she did not flourish when she attempted a career in fashion design, or when she moved to London to do a postgraduate course at the London School of Economics (because we were so busy revelling in her shame, it took us a long time to notice that Lewinsky is very intelligent).
But a great deal changed for Lewinsky in 2015, when she delivered a TED talk on public shaming. By calling out the ways in which she’d been mistreated, she began to reclaim the story of her life and tell it on her own terms. She recast herself as an advocate for people who were victims of shaming and bullying but who lacked her media spotlight: unable to escape it, she redirected it.
Shame has for ever been a tool used by cultures dominated by patriarchy to repress and punish women for having the temerity to exist, to express desire, to be desired. Now a woman who had been shamed more than most (perhaps more than anyone) was stepping forward to say that she refused to be defined or controlled by that shame.
Lewinsky’s approach is more than a “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” strategy: by getting involved with projects such as the upcoming TV series, she’s not relenting or accepting the narrative. She’s wresting power of it. And for those of us who came into womanhood in step with the rise of her notoriety, it’s a revelation. As a teenager I saw her experience as warning to stay silent about my own experiences of being abused by those in power – because let’s not pretend that a consensual affair between a 22-year-old-intern and a 49-year-old president of the United States isn’t that. Now she’s one clear example of the importance of speaking truth to power.
And for those who might question why she should profit from it, I ask: why should she not?
The healing power of narrative is so well-documented that it’s an integral part of many forms of therapy. I think Nora Ephron explained it as well as anyone when she wrote: “If I tell the story, I control the version. Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me.”
Monica Lewinsky’s decision to work on the new TV show revolving around an important part of her life is a reminder that no one can take away our power to seize control of our own stories – even if the only people listening are ourselves. And her blowjob jokes? They remind us that no amount of shame is as powerful as a woman with a good sense of humor.
A great deal changed for Lewinsky in 2015, when she delivered a TED talk on public shaming