Reformation, a women’s clothing brand based in Los Angeles, roped in writer-activist Monica Lewinsky as the star campaigner for their new election campaign, “You’ve Got the Power”, encouraging women to vote in the 2024 elections.
Lewinsky was featured on the brand’s landing page dressed in a variety of workwear outfits, including a Veda Ashland black leather trench coat and a Moya Linen two piece in red.
The message on the page read: Together with Monica Lewinsky and Vote.org, we’re reminding you that you’ve got the power. And that you need to vote this year. Talking to Variety, the activist-writer said, “It’s pretty simple: Voting is using our voice to be heard and it’s the most defining — and powerful – aspect of democracy. Voting is always important, but the stakes are especially high this year with voter frustration and apathy threatening to meaningfully impact turnout. I’m excited and grateful to be working with Reformation to remind people to register, use their voice and vote! A Ref woman is an empowered woman – and an empowered woman uses her voice.”
Monica Lewinsky: History with Politics
Monica Lewinsky is no stranger to politics. Years ago, she became a subject of public ridicule because of it when she had a highly scandalous run as a White House employee involving her and then President Bill Clinton in an illicit relationship.
When the relationship became public, the former president denied, under oath, having had any “sexual affair, “sexual relations” or “a sexual relationship” with her. The scandal turned Monica into a celebrity overnight, though in a negative sense, as she became the eye of the political storm that followed. She was hounded by paparazzi and public alike. Intense media scrutiny and severe ridicule and criticism for her misconduct forced her to withdraw from the public life completely.
Narrating the ordeal in her Ted Talk in 2015 she said, “At the age of 22, I fell in love with my boss. And at the age of 24, I learned the devastating consequences. Not a day goes by that I am not reminded of my mistake, and I regret that mistake deeply. In 1998, after having been swept up in an improbable romance, I was then swept up into the eye of a political, legal and media maelstrom like we had never seen before.”
Why Monica?
The choice of Monica Lewinsky as the face of the voting awareness campaign by Reformation and Voter.org has come as a big surprise to most people. There has been a general speculation: why her?
Perhaps there could not have been a more deserving person than her. The sheer determination and strength she exhibited in re-establishing herself in society after the very public debacle which made her infamous internationally, speaks volumes of the willpower she has, making her the most appropriate choice for the “You’ve Got the Power” campaign.
Talking to CNN, Catherine Rampell, CNN commentator and Washington Post columnist, says, the scandal “defined her image and destroyed her life in ways that were not the case of course for the other participant for whom we should have had higher expectations. So, she has really struggled I think in the years since to escape that scandal and that branding and that public shaming that the country put her through and that many of us were complicit in. She’s tried many times to reinvent herself being a reality TV star at one point, hosting a show, designing handbags and what not.”
In 2014, Monica emerged from a self-imposed ban on her public appearance to talk about online harassment. She took a public stand against cyber bullying, calling herself “patient zero”. After the scandal broke out, she was called names and labelled as a “tramp, whore, tart, slut and bimbo”
In a bare-all essay for Vanity Fair, Monica wrote: In 1998, when news of my affair with Bill Clinton broke, I was arguably the most humiliated person in the world. Thanks to the Drudge Report, I was also possibly the first person whose global humiliation was driven by the internet.
Since then, she has been quite vocal about anti cyber bullying and women’s rights. In March 2015, she delivered a TED talk, highlighting the need for a more compassionate Internet. In June, the same year, she became an ambassador and strategic advisor for anti-bullying organization Bystander Revolution1. “Monica’s been empowering women to use their voices and feel powerful for a long time, so it just makes sense that she’d help us do the same,” Reformation wrote on its website. “And while great clothes won’t fix everything, putting them on and going to the polls is a pretty good place to start.”
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- “Monica Lewinsky joins anti-bullying group Bystander Revolution, says she wants to help ‘other victims of the shame game’ survive”. The Independent. June 9, 2015. Archived from the original on June 17, 2015. Retrieved June 17, 2015. ↩︎
