Getty Monica Lewinsky now
Where is Monica Lewinsky now? The former White House intern, whose relationship with Bill Clinton caused an uproar during his presidency, is today an activist who works to stop cyber bullying, is a public speaker, and has been a contributing writer to Vanity Fair Magazine.
Monica Lewinsky is in her 40s. She was born on July 23, 1973. Does she have a husband? No, she’s never married, and, in some ways, the scandal that engulfed her early 20s has never gone away for her (Clinton said on the Today Show on June 4, 2018 that he doesn’t plan to offer her a direct apology). However, Lewinsky has slowly regained her voice and a new identity in the public eye, largely for speaking out against Internet abuse.
Lewinsky was only 22-years-old, when, as a White House intern, she had a relationship with the president. The saga will be resurrected in a two-hour documentary on ABC News called Truth and Lies that is airing on January 10, 2019. It’s expected to feature audio between Monica and her former friend Linda Tripp.
Monica Lewinsky attends the gala screening of ‘Despite The Falling Snow’ on March 23, 2016 in London, United Kingdom.
The details of the scandal are now elements of American presidential history: The blue dress with the president’s DNA on it, the taped conversations with her supposed friend Linda Tripp, the president’s impeachment, the lengthy and graphic report from independent prosecutor Ken Starr, and Bill Clinton’s line, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” He eventually admitted the contact with her.
“If I have learned anything since then, it is that you cannot run away from who you are or from how you’ve been shaped by your experiences. Instead, you must integrate your past and present,” Lewinsky wrote in a March 2018 essay in Vanity Fair.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Lewinsky Says the Shame ‘Sticks to You Like Tar’ & Bill Clinton Says He Doesn’t Owe Her a Personal Apology
the rrrrain in spain … #ascot2016 🐎🐎🐎
Since the scandal, Lewinsky has had several different careers – handbag designer, weight loss pitchwoman – before she virtually disappeared from the public stage for about a decade while she attended grad school. In the last several years, though, Lewinsky has cautiously and slowly reemerged into the public spotlight. She has stayed out of political commentary, though, and she never revealed her vote for president in the 2016 presidential election, for example.
She has been thrust back into the news in association with Bill Clinton as the former president’s past issues have renewed currency because of the #metoo movement.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, a Democrat, now says she thinks Bill Clinton should have resigned because of the Lewinsky matter (Bill Clinton was also accused of unwanted sexual contact and sexual harassment by other women, including Juanita Broaddrick, who accused him of sexual assault.) However, when asked whether he planned to apologize to Lewinsky herself, Bill Clinton said no and added that he believes he did the right thing by not resigning (he was impeached).
“I do not. I have never talked to her. But I did say, publicly, on more than one occasion, that I was sorry,” he said on The Today Show. “That’s very different. The apology was public.” It was rare for Clinton to mention Lewinsky after all of this time. She responded on her Twitter page, which she uses to advance her cyber bullying causes, by reposting a Vanity Fair article she wrote revisiting the question of consent in the relationship. You can read more about that later in this article.
grateful to the myriad people who have helped me evolve + gain perspective in the past 20 years.
worth reposting this today from @VanityFair …
On Twitter, Lewinsky has called herself, “social activist. public speaker. vanity fair contributor. ambassador @bystanderrev + @antibullyingpro. knitter of things without sleeves #clickwithcompassion.” Most recently, her profile reads, “human/anti-bullying activist/speaker/@vanityfair contributor/@tedtalks giver/@resiliencefnd board member/rap song muse/former beret model. #clickwithcompassion.”
She has spoken candidly about suffering from online bullying herself:
Lewinsky still avoids giving many interviews, although she granted a rare interview with The Guardian, which called her “a respected and perceptive anti-bullying advocate. She gives talks at Facebook, and at business conferences, on how to make the internet more compassionate. She helps out at anti-bullying organisations like Bystander Revolution.” She told The Guardian, “The shame sticks to you like tar.”
According to The Today Show, “Lewinsky is teaming up with Vodafone to create anti-bullying emojis and GIFs.” The New York Times says she has appeared at New York benefits, participated in an anti-bullying workshop, and “joined a feminist networking group.”
.#WorldEmojiDay #BeStrong Anti-Bullying Emojis 4 Support in iTunes and on @imoji
Lewinsky has addressed the ramifications that the fallout over the Clinton relationship cost her. She also appeared at a Forbes conference and spoke about online bullying, saying, “I lost my reputation… And I lost my sense of self.” Lewinsky told Vanity Fair that she was moved to become an anti-bullying activist by her mother’s tearful reaction to the suicide of Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers freshman who jumped off a bridge after being “secretly streamed via Webcam kissing another man.”
2. Monica Lewinsky Was Upset She was Uninvited From a Public Event When Bill Clinton Received an Invite
compassion. #WesternWall
Lewinsky was once invited to speak at a philanthropic summit put on by Town and Country Magazine. However, when Bill Clinton ended up on the agenda, her own invite was pulled. The magazine later apologized, writing on Twitter, “We apologize to Ms. Lewinsky and regret the way the situation was handled.”
Lewinsky exposed the 2018 snub on her Twitter page, where she has hundreds of thousands of followers. “Dear world: please don’t invite me to an event (esp one about social change) and –then after i’ve accepted– uninvite me because bill clinton then decided to attend/was invited. it’s 2018. emily post would def not approve,” she wrote on Twitter. She added, “p.s. …and definitely, please don’t try to ameliorate the situation by insulting me with an offer of an article in your mag.”
Although Lewinsky didn’t reveal the name of the magazine, other outlets eventually revealed it, and some people leaped to her defense.
Lewinsky was also discussed during the 2016 presidential election due to Hillary Clinton being the Democratic nominee. Then Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said he believes it’s fair game to bring up Bill Clinton’s extra-marital affairs when running against Hillary Clinton, and he specifically mentioned Lewinsky when doing so, said The Today Show.
The Today Show quoted Trump as saying, “You look at whether it’s Monica Lewinsky or Paula Jones or many of them. That certainly will be fair game.” He justified the comment by saying that Hillary had played the “women card,” said the television show. Asked about this, Lewinsky said, according to The Today Show: “I’m not going to answer that. How’s this? I’m affected by what happens on the world stage, but I don’t let it deter me.”
Monica Lewinsky `attends the Performance Space 122 2015 Spring Gala Honoring Claire Danes at Capitale on April 20, 2015 in New York City.
Lewinsky hasn’t spoken much about the Clintons over the years and has been very circumspect in her public comments, but she did tell Vanity Fair that she considered the relationship “consensual,” adding, “Sure, my boss took advantage of me… Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position.”
In 2014, The Hill said that Hillary Clinton refused to deny reports that an old friend of hers had said Hillary called Lewinsky a “narcissistic looney tune”; Hillary said, “I am not gonna comment on what I did or did not say back in the late 90s.” She told Vanity Fair she found it “troubling” that Hillary’s impulse was to “blame the woman.” She called herself a “conscientious Democrat” but said she was fearful of being dragging back into the news because of Hillary’s presidential run. In 2014, Senator Rand Paul accused Bill Clinton of showing “predatory behavior” toward Lewinsky.
3. Lewinsky Has Never Married, Went to College In London & Wrote an Essay In ‘Vanity Affair’ Magazine Revisiting the Question of Consent
She told Vanity Fair that she dates. However, Monica Lewinsky hasn’t married.
In 2005, Lewinsky moved to London, where she studied social psychology at the London School of Economics; she graduated with a Master of Science in 2006, after writing a thesis called “In Search of the Impartial Juror: An Exploration of the Third-Person Effect and Pre-Trial Publicity,” according to Gazette Review. Lewinsky had obtained the infamous White House internship at age 22, after graduating from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, with a BA in psychology, said Gazette Review. She told Vanity Affair, “I moved to England to study, to challenge myself, to escape scrutiny, and to reimagine my identity.”
She didn’t talk much about the Clinton scandal for a decade until she penned the major article for Vanity Fair magazine in 2014. The Vanity Fair essay was a 2015 National Magazine Award finalist. Entitled, “Shame and Survival,” The essay’s introduction said, “After 10 years of self-imposed reticence, and now hoping to help victims of Internet shaming, she critiques the culture that put a 24-year-old through the wringer and calls out the feminists who joined the chorus.”
In the article, she criticized what she called the “‘culture of humiliation’ that not only encourages and revels in Schadenfreude but also rewards those who humiliate others.” It thrives especially online, she wrote.
In March 2018, in the wake of the #metoo revisiting of sexual harassment by powerful men, Monica Lewinsky herself revisited the topic in Vanity Fair. She described once running into special prosecutor Ken Starr in a restaurant. “Though I wish I had made different choices back then,” she wrote that she said to him. “I wish that you and your office had made different choices, too.”
In the essay, Lewinsky wrote that she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and still feels trauma. She added, “…what transpired between Bill Clinton and myself was not sexual assault, although we now recognize that it constituted a gross abuse of power.” She indicated that she is revisiting what happened to her and referred to it as gaslighting: “I’ve lived for such a long time in the House of Gaslight, clinging to my experiences as they unfolded in my 20s and railing against the untruths that painted me as an unstable stalker and Servicer in Chief.”
She concluded, “I now see how problematic it was that the two of us even got to a place where there was a question of consent. Instead, the road that led there was littered with inappropriate abuse of authority, station, and privilege…Now, at 44, I’m beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of the power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern. I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot.”
4. Lewinsky Had a Brief Career Selling Handbags & As a Dieting Company Spokeswoman But Has a Hard Time Getting a Job
…and blessed from Birla Temple #!ndia
For a time, Lewinsky knitted, made handbags, and was a pitchwoman for Jenny Craig. Celebrity net worth says Monica was paid $1 million for the Jenny Craig gig and made another $500,000 with a tell-all book. The site puts her current net worth at $500,000. According to Celebrity net worth, Monica’s family is “well-to-do” and she “attended elementary school in Bel-Air and Beverley Hills High school.”
Those pursuits evaporated. She told Vanity Fair in 2014 that, after leaving grad school in London, “I moved between London, Los Angeles, New York, and Portland, Oregon, interviewing for a variety of jobs that fell under the umbrella of ‘creative communication’ and ‘branding,’ with an emphasis on charity campaigns.” But she kept getting turned down.
The Times says that she “splits her time between New York and Los Angeles, where she grew up, and London” and has had a hard time finding employment. Instead, she meditates, does therapy, hangs out with friends and volunteers, The Times said.
5. Lewinsky Gave a Well-Received ‘TED Talk’ & Songs Have Included Her Name
Monica Lewinsky has become part of pop culture. She has tried to seize back her image by giving carefully selected public talks.
Lewinsky gave an 18-minute TED talk in Vancouver called “The Price of Shame.” In the talk, she described the painful consequences she still endures because of the scandal, and said she believes she was one of the first victims of cyber bullying. She said during the talk, “Anyone who is suffering from shame and public humiliation needs to know one thing: You can survive it. I know it’s hard,” said The Hollywood Reporter.
The rapper G-Eazy made “Monica Lewinsky” the title of a song, and, says The New York Times, her name is “a reference in dozens of others,” including those by Kanye, Eminem, and Beyonce.