Monica Lewinsky
- mazelandmagen
- Feb 24, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 7, 2024
As a child of the 90s, of course I’m familiar with the name Monica Lewinsky, but I never knew until embarrassingly recently that she is Jewish! As soon as I learned this, I wondered 𝙬𝙝𝙮 I never knew. I was only 14 during the height of the Clinton impeachment affair, but of all the things I remember the media saying about Monica Lewinsky, her being Jewish wasn’t one of them. Even if the media at the time was pretending her Jewishness had nothing to do with her portrayal, it suddenly seemed to me it had 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 to do with it.
In my last post I discussed the ways Jewish women are stereotyped in popular media. Young Jewish women are often the “Jewish American Princess” - a rich, privileged, spoiled, highly educated “daddy’s girl” who is obsessed with finding a rich husband to maintain her affluent lifestyle. Jewish women in general are often portrayed as abrasive, vulgar, and tactless, especially when compared to their non-Jewish counterparts.
What I do remember about the media’s treatment of Monica Lewinsky in the 90s is the merciless, misogynistic bullying and slut-shaming. There were vile comments on her weight and appearance, accusations that she hadn’t earned her job at the White House, and speculations she seduced the president to advance her career. And listen, nepotism did land her the job, yet I can’t help but believe that had Monica been a thin, blonde Christian rather than a voluptuous, brunette Jew, her treatment would have been remarkably different.
In an article from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency,
"[Monica] described the pain of being hounded and having her life torn apart during the investigation and impeachment of Clinton. She compared the ordeal to an age-old Jewish story about a man who gossips maliciously about someone in a village. When the man seeks to repent, the local rabbi tells him to cut open a feather pillow and strew the feathers in the wind. The lesson is that taking back gossip is as impossible as collecting all of the feathers.” The article ends with a quote from Monica, saying “you can survive it and you can insist on a different end for your story. We can all lead one another to a more compassionate, more empathetic place.”
Photo: Monica on the cover of Paris Match magazine in 1999
Sources and further reading (including some hot takes from the Middle East - yes they include that Monica was part of Jewish conspiracy):
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