Monica Lewinsky: Patron Bimbo of Media Takedowns

Content Warning: fatphobia, slut shaming, eating disorders

Monica Lewinsky is the bimbo of my dreams. 

My obsession began in the fall of 2020. I took a class at BU called “The Modern American Presidency,” (yikes) which was about investigating common presidential issues. Being the girlboss I am, I decided to do my final project on the fact that one third of all United States Presidents so far have been accused of sexual misconduct.¹ Jumping right in, okay!

Now there’s the obvious issue of the fact that fifteen of the forty-five men we have put in charge of the country have been accused of sexual misconduct – and those are just the ones who have been publicly accused. But what I really got sucked into in my research was the way the media spins these stories in favor of the accused and further traumatizes the victims. 

This started, like, sooo heavy, right? Okay. So let’s get back to what we’re really here for – bimbos!! What I find as I research all of these bimbos whose fame peaked in the beginning of the 2000s is the power the media had over the public’s perceptions of them. And the way that those public perceptions of young women affected the way I perceived myself as a young woman growing up in a post-Monica-Lewinsky world.

One of the games I like to play is “when this person was the exact age I am right now, what were they doing?” The answer, currently, for my mom is that she was married to my dad (and had been for over a year). The answer for Monica Lewinsky is that she was working in the White House² and in a relationship with the President of the United States. 

When news of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair broke in 1998, Monica Lewinsky was 25 years old. Bill Clinton was 52. This puts them at 22 and 49, respectively, at the beginning of their affair. I am (freshly) 23 years old. 

Let’s take a look at how we got there.

Monica Lewinsky was born on July 23, 1973 in San Francisco, California. She was always strong-willed, according to her family. Her mother recalls that when Monica’s Aunt Debra was getting married, three-year-old Monica was to be the flower girl. Minutes before the wedding ceremony began, Monica decided that her long-sleeve blue dress would look better if it was sleeveless. Already knowing how tough Monica could be when she knew what she wanted, her mother cut the sleeves off the dress. Monica performed her flower girl duties, and, according to her aunt, “stole the show.”

When I was three years old, I was in my first musical ever. I won’t tell you what it is, because I really should not have been in it.

Okay, fine, I’ll tell you. It was a community theatre production of The King and I, with an almost entirely white cast. It was 2003, we didn’t know better, blah blah blah. The point is, I took my duties as the Royal Toddler (a very important role) very seriously. My mom stood backstage with me to remind me when it was my turn to run onstage and bow between the King’s legs. According to my mother, I very seriously told her during one performance that she could leave because “I know my cue, mom.” 

The Lewinsky family relocated to Los Angeles in 1976. In case you don’t know anything about Los Angeles, it’s a pretty image-focused place.³ Monica specifically went to school in Beverly Hills. I don’t think this needs any more explanation.

Throughout her entire childhood, Monica had body image issues – a few eating disorders, body dysmorphia, you know the deal. Classic bimbo shit. The summer before she began eighth grade, she was thrilled when her mom allowed her to go away to fat camp. 

We look at this now and go, “what parent sends her tweenage daughter to fat camp?” It’s of course important to remember that it was the early 80s and eating disorders were super in. But Monica’s mother, Marcia, struggled with her own body image her entire life. And as mothers do, she wanted to protect Monica from the issues she grew up facing. This was the first of many weight loss (eating disorder) programs that Monica participated in.

I can’t recall the first time I noticed the way my body looked – but I know it became really important to me in middle school. In sixth grade there was a group of girls who would do tumbling in the field at recess, and I wanted so badly to be one of them. I begged my mom to let me take gymnastics class at a local gym so that I could participate in the super-cool-field-tumbling-show-off sessions. 

My mom even bought me a special gymnastics leotard – my dance leotards just would not do. It was blue velvet with silver stripes, and it came with a special matching scrunchie. The only problem was I thought the way the light hit the velvet accentuated my “fat roll” at the bottom of my stomach. And unlike in dance, I couldn’t wear tights under to suck in my stomach a little more, or put on a little ballet skirt or pair of shorts to cover my tummy up.

When Monica was fourteen, her parents got divorced. As a result of the emotional trauma she was going through, she developed an eating disorder – although it wasn’t officially classified as an eating disorder until 26 years later, in 2013. 

Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is the most common eating disorder in the United States, but it is also the most under-represented and highly stigmatized. Historical descriptions of disordered eating date back to 700 BC, when ancient Romans would gorge themselves at banquets and then purge so that they could return and continue to participate in the feast.⁴ Then in later centuries, women would starve themselves because they believed it was sinful to desire food. When you dive into research about women’s issues, this will come up a lot  – women’s desires (for anything) are almost always described as sinful.

I think it’s interesting to note here that one of the most popular treatments for eating disorders at the beginning of the 20th century was the “Parentectomy.” Basically, patients with eating disorders would be “cured” by being removed from their parents for a period of time. Now, we know this isn’t actually a legitimate medical treatment and to consider it to be so is actually kind of funny. But it is worth noting that even a hundred years ago eating disorders were often attributed to parental influence.⁵

It is possible (likely) that by attempting to shield Monica from the issues she dealt with growing up, Marcia actually made Monica’s body image issues worse. But that’s just parenting! Our parents screw us up by trying to not screw us up the way their parents screwed them up.

At age sixteen, Monica’s negative self image was a persistent issue – and her mother saw that she needed to do something to help her daughter. So she suggested that Monica attend a program at The Rice House in North Carolina. The Rice House was in business for 70 years, and it employed a starvation diet in which patients were put on a rice-only diet (although they could sometimes eat fruit and vegetables – what a treat!). The Rice Diet was one of the first celebrity fad “miracle” diets, and Marcia thought it would be a perfect retreat for Monica to reset both physically and mentally.

Much to Monica’s dismay, her father, who was a doctor, didn’t think this was the best idea for her. So instead, they admitted Monica to an eating disorder unit at the Rader Clinic in Culver City. It was a very healing program for Monica, and she made a lot of progress. Her parents also then decided to remove her from the eating disorder-nurturing environment at Beverly Hills High School, and Monica attended Bel Air Prep for her last year of high school. 

Monica’s self image issues also affected her relationships, platonic and romantic. Her friends from this time recall Monica’s deep desire for love, and how she attributed her lack of a romantic relationship to her weight. If she were just twenty pounds lighter, then maybe someone would love her.

When I was sixteen years old, I was cast as a mermaid in my junior year musical, which involved me being onstage dressed in just a bra and a tail, and also being put in a harness and hoisted into the air by a crew of four people backstage. Do you see where this is going?

As soon as I saw the cast list posted, I (and my other friends who were cast as mermaids) “joked⁶” about going on a “merm diet.” I worked out constantly and became obsessed with what I ate. I also felt insecure about my body hair and asked my mom to help me put Nair on my stomach and back – because obviously mermaids do not have any hair on their bodies besides their perfectly curled eyelashes, shaped eyebrows, and long, flowing hair. We all got a little obsessed with our appearances. Because we were fifteen to eighteen year old girls, and that is just what happens.

Monica, like me, was a theatre kid. Are we surprised? She acted and was on crew when she was in high school, and then after applying (and being accepted) to a bunch of expensive universities,⁷ Monica chose to attend community college for two years to save money.

While she took classes at Santa Monica College, Monica worked at Beverly Hills High School making costumes for the theatre department. And here’s where her first fraught relationship with a married man begins (continues, really, but for the narrative arc of this piece I’m giving you some information out of order).

Enter Andy Bleiler. Fucking asshole. (Sorry, am I giving too much away?) Andy worked at Beverly Hills High as the technical director – he was young and cute, and he had a reputation for flirting with female students. Monica even mentions that the only reason she knew who he was during her junior year at BHHS was because of a relationship he had with one of her friends. 

Monica and Andy first met romantically during Monica’s senior year of high school – she went back to see one of the shows at BHHS and caught Andy’s attention. He walked her to her car, they got to chatting about their lives, and Andy kissed her. They continued their relationship the summer after Monica graduated high school, talking on the phone and flirting for hours. Monica knew Andy was in a relationship, but as an insecure eighteen year old who has been seeking romantic attention for years, why would she reject the cute twenty-six-year-old man who took a liking to her? What she didn’t know, though, was that he was engaged.

Andy got married in the fall of 1991, and the following February, Monica began to work at BHHS. Andy’s flirtations with Monica only became more frequent during this time, and then they expanded to become a full-blown affair. 

As someone who has both been cheated on⁸ and cheated with,⁹ let me just say – it sucks on both sides, but probably (hot take) more so when someone else is being cheated on with you. It’s maddening, it’s a whirlwind emotionally, and somehow you always get hit with the blame when you weren’t even the one cheating.

Monica really truly had feelings for Andy, and she recalls just how special he made her feel:

“It was great because he thought I was so sexy and, I mean, for a fat girl, for a guy to find you really attractive, it was really rewarding for me.”

Let’s also just note here that Monica was not fat. But she came of age in the late 80’s when everyone who weighed over 110 pounds was “fat.”

Monica’s work in the theatre department at BHHS gave her and Andy a perfect excuse for spending time together over the next year. But the two did not have sex until December 1992, right after Andy’s wife became pregnant.¹⁰

I can’t actually weigh in on the effects that losing your virginity at age nineteen to a twenty-seven year-old married man has, but I can imagine it’s a combination of exhilarating and exhausting. Loving someone who loves (and is legally bound to) someone else has to suck, and then when that person also expresses interest in you, it’s like… what the fuck are you supposed to do – not be with them?

“Looking back it was just a lack of self-worth, of thinking that I did not deserve anything better. Deep inside I didn’t think I was good enough to have a full relationship. It was a very painful and raw time for me.”

Andy and Monica continued seeing each other on and off for years. And I mean years. 

Monica finished her second year at Santa Monica College and then moved up to Portland, Oregon to attend Lewis and Clark College. After her first year there, Andy went up to visit and house hunt, because he was thinking about moving there with his wife and kids. In the fall of 1994, Andy, his wife Kate, and their children officially moved to Portland, and things got a whole lot messier.

Monica and Andy ended their relationship, but stayed close. Monica developed a friendship with Kate, and she would often babysit their kids. It’s a sticky situation, and certainly not one that a twenty year old is well-equipped to handle. And on top of that, Andy had another extramarital relationship with an even younger girl who ended up being really emotionally wrecked. During that shitshow, Andy acted like a little bitch baby and called Monica to beg her to talk to this girl for him. She is threatening to tell his wife and he can’t have that! Not when things are going so well between them!

When I was twenty, the world shut down because of a global pandemic (wah wah). So while I don’t have a lot of life experiences that can compare to Monica’s at this time (because I locked myself in my home for two years), I did also feel the deep desire for companionship that Monica felt. I wasn’t looking for a romantic relationship in the way Monica was – I mostly just spent my energy searching for a way to feel a sense of connection with others despite being separated by circumstances out of our control. And isn’t that something we are all dealing with, all the time?

And here, folks, is the part we all (probably) know. After graduating from Lewis & Clark College, Monica relocated to Washington DC in the summer of 1995, just before her 22nd birthday. She began working as an intern at the White House in the Chief of Staff’s office in July. Within her first few weeks of work, she heard the other women in the office talking about how the President who is soooo handsome is a major flirt. Monica laughed about this with her friends – she didn’t see the appeal, he was old!¹¹ At this time, Monica was still in communication with Andy, he still sucked, blah blah blah. As part of her internship, Monica was occasionally asked to deliver mail to the West Wing. You know who works in the West Wing, bimbos? The President!

The first time Monica and Bill met in person was in August 1995 at a Presidential Departure Ceremony. By this time, Monica had seen him a few times and had come around on her coworkers’ opinion that he was very handsome. So she put on her best sage green suit to catch his attention. And it worked! She recalls that after he passed her in the line of greeters, he turned back and “undressed her with his eyes.” 

They ran into each other more consistently after this, when Monica’s internship ended and she began a new job in Legislative Affairs. On her first day in this new job, Bill dropped by multiple times throughout the day and flirted with Monica. Let me take just a moment to remind you that she was twenty-two years old at this time, and he was forty-nine.

When I was twenty-two (literally one month ago), nothing super big happened. And here’s where I quit comparing where I was at Monica’s exact age, because I’m only freshly twenty-three now, and I genuinely don’t have any comparable life experiences. And that is worth noting in and of itself! But I did start consistently going to therapy at age twenty-two, and that was seriously necessary, because the shit going on in my brain was (is) a lot! And I think I can confidently say that’s a pretty common experience for women in their early twenties. Or maybe all people in their early twenties, I don’t know, our frontal lobes are all getting close to being fully developed around that time.

The first time Monica and Bill hooked up (to put it in bimbo terms) was the evening of Monica’s first day of work in Legislative Affairs. It was a coworker's birthday, so everyone stayed at the office late to celebrate.¹² At some point in the evening, Monica walked past Bill standing in the doorway of someone else’s office, he invited her in, and shut the door. They kissed, and while Monica performed oral sex on him, Bill took a call from a congressman.

The following day, Bill decided to go with a move popularized by fifteen-year-old boys everywhere, and ignored Monica all day. Monica, being the absolute slayer that she is, decided to ignore him right back! That really got to him, and the next day he invited her into the back room of his office. They talked and “fooled around” for a while, and he let her know that the White House is usually quiet on the weekends – maybe she could come by and see him then.

This kind of behavior goes on and on, and I’m not going to detail all of it here for you. It’s pretty easily accessible information. But here are some things I think are important to highlight:

Bill called Monica “kiddo” often, and also told her she reminded him of his daughter, Chelsea (who is only seven years younger than Monica!)

They pretty much only saw each other on Bill’s terms – he was the President, and therefore very busy, so Monica mostly just had to wait around for him to call her. I’m sure that wasn’t maddening at all!

Three months into their relationship (February 1996), Bill called Monica into his office and broke up with her. A direct quote: “You know if I was 25 years old and not married I’d have you on the floor back there in three seconds right now. But you will understand when you’re older.” Gross. After that, they were still friends. For about a month. Then they started hooking up again.

The affair went on for just over two years, from November 1995 until December 1997. Toward the end, Monica became close friends with a woman named Linda Tripp. Dun dun dunnnnn! The two bonded over trying to lose weight, and Monica eventually confided in Linda about her relationship with the President. Long story short, Linda decided to work with Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in their investigation into President Clinton’s dumb moves,¹³ recorded her phone calls with Monica, and was an all around snakey bitch.

These calls that Linda recorded were ripped apart by the media following the break of the scandal. 

It’s one thing to be 25 years old and pulled into a legal battle with the most powerful man in the country. But then your private conversations about your sex life with your friend are suddenly being clipped on every major news outlet? How fucking awful is that?

And now, a brief interlude of some bits and pieces of the media’s response to Monica after the scandal broke.

“These tapes are what all the fuss was about? This is what we get for $40 million? A couple of lonely fat babes yapping? This is like a bad Wendy Wasserstein play.” (Tony Kornheiser, Washington Post)

“Monica Lewinsky has gained back all the weight she lost last year. I believe that’s the cover story in Newsweek. In fact, she told reporters she was even considering having her jaw wired shut, but then, nah—she didn’t want to give up her sex life,” (Jay Leno).

“Bush went to Wisconsin, to a Harley-Davidson factory and rode a motorcycle. It's the biggest thing a president has ridden since…I just can’t bring myself to throw that joke away,” (David Letterman)

“It is Ms. Lewinsky who comes across as the red-blooded predator, wailing to her girl friends that the President wouldn't go all the way. It is Mr. Clinton who behaves more like a teen-age girl trying to protect her virginity, insisting on holding back, reluctant to remove any clothes, even pushing away Ms. Lewinsky at times and pushing up her slipping bra strap, according to her testimony.” (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times)

I think it’s important to look at some of these comments and how they couple with the way Monica’s body was described. On one hand, because she was young and pretty, she was seen as a naive little ditz – taken advantage of by the President, but it was her own fault for being such a bimbo. On the other hand, because she wasn’t rail thin, and was a woman with boobs and a butt (hello, fatphobia!), she was a manipulative, calculated slut who set out to take down a powerful man.

In reality, neither of these things are true. Monica was a young woman who was both confident and deeply insecure about herself and her sexuality, who developed serious feelings for a man who showed the same interest in her as she showed him, and who, above all else, wanted to be loved. And, also, I don’t know where the narrative of her being stupid came from – the woman landed an internship in the White House straight out of college, for fuck’s sake.

And!!! I’d like to take a brief moment to compare this Presidential affair with the Marilyn Monroe/JFK affair. I can’t say it any better than Monica did in an article she wrote for Vanity Fair in 2014. She writes her hypothetical interjections to a conversation between female writers, comedians, etc., recorded and publicized by The New York Observer just weeks after news of the Clinton affair broke:

Katie Roiphe: I think what people are outraged about is the way that [Monica Lewinsky] looks, which is interesting. Because we like to think of our presidents as sort of godlike, and so if J.F.K. has an affair with Marilyn Monroe, it’s all in the realm of the demigods… I mean, the thing I kept hearing over and over again was Monica Lewinsky’s not that pretty. 

Me: Well, thanks. The first picture that surfaced was a passport photo. Would you like to have a passport photo splattered across publications around the world as the picture that defines you? What you are also saying here is that the primary quality that would qualify a woman to have an intimate relationship with a powerful man is physical attractiveness. If that’s not setting the movement back, I don’t know what is.

While Marilyn Monroe’s affair with JFK was also publicly discussed, it was also pretty widely accepted, and Marilyn remained a well-loved cultural figure.¹⁴ We also don’t know, for sure, if the two did even have an affair. The biggest difference though, I think, was the wide acceptance that Marilyn Monroe was a physically attractive person. For the record, I think Monica Lewinsky is also very beautiful, but that’s not the point. What gives an extraordinarily hot person any more right to have an affair than a normal-looking person? This is very weird to me. 

Monica took heat from all directions after the break of the scandal – no one had her back. Republicans were glad Bill was being taken down, but that didn’t mean they were on Monica’s side – she was still a nasty slut. Democrats and feminists were against Monica because, other than this (and the other sexual harassment cases against him), Bill’s politics were pretty good for women. Monica “destroyed” the career of a man who wasn’t awful to women in his politics. The President of the Feminist Majority Foundation at the time said, when asked about why they hadn’t released a statement in support of Monica, “We’re trying to think of the bigger picture, think about what’s best for women.” But for which women?

Another vital factor in the reaction to the scandal is the way the American political system was designed. American ideals are often referred to using familial metaphors: Uncle Sam, founding fathers, sending our sons (and daughters) to war. In Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don’t, author George Lakoff argues that rather than being the comforting father figure the President is expected to be in times of crisis, Clinton became the absent father. Because the President, like a father, is who people look to for comfort, people didn’t want to name the mistakes he made, and he was allowed to slide into the background and allow Monica to take the majority of the heat.

And as a girl who grew up in a world filled with Monica Lewinsky jokes and references, I can say that the media’s comments on her certainly didn’t affect my life in a positive way. I heard that one of the biggest issues she dealt with was fat-shaming, but then I saw what her body looked like. It didn’t look fat to me, and it actually looked kind of similar to my own body. So if I somehow found myself in the middle of a very public scandal, would news outlets talk about my body that way? Would late night talk show hosts joke about how ugly and disgusting I was?

What are you most insecure about? What is something about yourself you have spent years wishing you could change? Now imagine that thing is called out in news headlines for years, along with intimate details of your sex life. And now imagine that Beyonce, Queen of Pop, writes and releases a song fifteen years later using your name in it as a synonym for ejaculation. Like, that sucks (no pun intended).

I also grew up with major fear and shame around sex. And a big part of this was because I internalized the culture of slut shaming that came with being a person with access to media. Sex tapes were leaked and careers were ruined. Frat boys made banners for game days saying “[Rival Team] SUCKS like Monica Lewinsky.” If any snippet of information was shared about a person in a sexual context, that was all anyone wanted to talk about when that person came up. I think it seemed to me that the only way to avoid being slut shamed myself was to completely shut off and shut out any desire that I might have felt.

The way that the media speaks about women has a major impact on how girls grow up viewing themselves – duh. And although we like to think that the things that were said about Monica Lewinsky in 1998 wouldn’t fly today, they set a precedent for the way the media could, and would, treat women. We see it all the time. Paris Hilton’s sex tape leaks: she is a dumb slut. Lindsay Lohan struggles with addiction: she is out of control. Britney Spears has mental health struggles: she is crazy and can’t handle herself. Amber Heard accuses her ex-husband of domestic violence: she is lying. The media’s response to Monica Lewinsky set the bar so low for the way human beings could be treated, and the bar is still knee level, at best.

Now, Monica is a 49 year old (same age Bill was when their affair began) activist and writer. She made the choice to come back into the public eye in 2014, writing an essay for Vanity Fair titled “Shame and Survival.” She found her footing as an anti-cyberbullying advocate, calling herself patient zero of online harassment. Obviously this claim can’t be, like, fully verified, but it makes sense to me. The internet kind of exploded globally in the late 90’s-early 2000’s, and Monica was one of those people everyone just loved to hate for years. And so she was one of the first people to really be cyberbullied, because it just wasn’t possible to do that before then.

In 2015, Monica did a TED Talk called “The price of shame,” in which she talked about her own personal experience with shame in the aftermath of the scandal. She has also published more articles in Vanity Fair about humiliation culture, the #MeToo Movement, etc. And then in 2021 she co-produced a season of American Crime Story that focused on the Clinton scandal and his subsequent impeachment. Also, she is very funny on twitter. She is fighting for her 22-year-old self, because no one did that for her at the time.

When I am 49, I hope that I will have weekly dinners with all the people I love. We will sit at a big table with a pretty tablecloth (that will certainly have stains on it from my children), and eat a good meal that leaves us feeling nourished. The 12-year-old girl who didn’t like how her tummy looked in her pretty blue velvet leotard will be in my heart, but not in my mind. My body has kept me alive and running for 49 years, and that is exactly what my body is for. We will all laugh together about the things we did and said and felt when we were 22 and maybe a little stupid.

And maybe I’ll be an activist, or a writer, or an actor, or something new I haven’t discovered that I love yet. But like Monica, I will take what I am given and make the best of it – and hopefully make the world a little better for the people coming after me.

1. You want their names? Okay! George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James Garfield, Grover Cleveland, Warren Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.

2. Like… If I didn’t know how it all turned out, I’d say good for her!

3. Sorry McKayla, but this is the reputation LA has and it is important to the way Monica experienced it!

4. I can’t not mention The Hunger Games here.

5. As are a lot of things! Nature vs nurture etc etc

6. I wasn’t joking

7. In her biography written by Andrew Morton, Monica notes that she really wanted to go to Boston University (my alma mater) – she is me.

8.  I was fifteen and it’s very funny to me now.

9. I will not be taking any questions on this. But this is also so bimbo of me, right?

10. Once again, this man is a major fucking asshole.

11. And this, bimbos, is what we call dramatic irony.

12. I mean… weird work environment.

13. Whitewater, sexual harassment, the likes.

14. For the most part – but maybe I’ll write an essay about her too.