When some people look at Monica Lewinsky, they see “an inspiration of strength and beauty.” For others, she is frozen in time, forever branded with the scarlet letter as the White House intern who carried on an adulterous affair with a president.
Lewinsky was outed as Bill Clinton’s part-time lover in 1997. Their immoral relationship began in 1995 and included romantic entanglements in the Oval Office. Her dress stained with the politician’s bodily fluids led to confirmation of their dealings and haunted him during his 1998 impeachment trial.
The media personality reminded the public of the scandal yet again when an Aug. 31 selfie took on a life of its own. Lewinsky snapped a photo of herself in a plaid red and white top with a deep V-cut, a turquoise bandanna tied around her neck, and a big smile plastered on her face.
She was dressed in her finest “hoedown” gear for friend Victoria Jackson’s 70th birthday. But the jokes wrote themselves, as hecklers happily jumped on the bandwagon of making her the punchline.
“Hoe down ? Didn’t really think that one through did you ?” asked one person trolling Lewinsky. On the contrary, an admirer commented that the photo was a “Thirst trap!!! In the best possible way!”
Others were committed to dragging Bill into their public reactions, with some even suggesting “he was weak, weak, weak, weak” for giving in to the temptation of a young intern. One person complimented Lewinsky when they wrote, “Now I see what bill seen.”
Monica Lewinsky is speaking out in a new documentary and an op-ed pic.twitter.com/RFSmLiueMl
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) November 13, 2018
At the time of the affair, she was around 24 years old. The then-president was 51 years old. The Democratic official has been married to his wife, Hillary Clinton, since 1975. The longtime couple is parents to daughter Chelsea Clinton, who would have been about 18 years old when her father’s misconduct made headlines.
Since Lewinsky cannot outrun her past, she is using it to her benefit. She is credited as an executive producer on “The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox,” a Hulu series delving into another highly publicized scandal. Lewinsky saw the project as an opportunity to help Knox reclaim her narrative, a feat that she has tried to do for the past two decades.
