The Untold Truth Of Monica Lewinsky

Thanks to an ongoing narrative that began more than 20 years ago, everyone thinks they know who Monica Lewinsky is. Countless unflattering and, often, one-dimensional terms have been ascribed to her: tart, floozy, stalker, that woman. Lewinsky — then a White House intern — was only 22 years old when she became entangled with the 42nd president of the United States in the mid-1990s. The fallout from her affair with President Bill Clinton led to his impeachment, and nearly brought down his administration. Additionally, the relationship and its legacy h as dogged Lewinsky in all the years since. She has since become adept at avoiding the harsh glare of the public spotlight. 

Can you imagine what the headlines of your life might be if someone based them off of the mistakes you made in your early twenties? Yikes, right? A bit of investigation proves that the preconceived notions about Lewinsky are reductive at best. Here's what you may not know about the woman who has, in her own words, buried the blue dress and moved forward. 

"You got a raw f***ing deal, kid." Those were the first words the late, Pulitzer-prize-winning author Norman Mailer ever uttered to Monica Lewinsky. The brief exchange took place at a bookstore event in 2002, during which Mailer's son Michael introduced the two. That same year, one of Mailer's other sons, writer John Buffalo, invited Lewinsky to a family lunch at the Provincetown, New York home of Norman and his wife Norris — and an unlikely friendship was forged. 

"Norman was a force, and Norris was his equal, an elegant counterpoint. She was also an accomplished writer and artist, and we formed a rare, instant bond," Lewinsky recalled in Vanity Fair in December of 2014. Fed by a mutual love of literature, profanity and the magic of every day things like white wine and flea markets, the bond Lewinsky shared with the Mailers grew over time. It would include continued correspondence and "colorful, story-filled" evenings. 

It's clear the affection between the Mailers and Lewinsky was mutual. When Random House published Selected Letters of Norman Mailer, a letter the esteemed author sent to Lewinsky (a family dinner invitation, no less) made the cut. 

There are two types of TV virtually no one can resist: shows that are made for binge-watching, and those seemingly created with the sole purpose of making you ugly cry into your rosé each week. Arguably the most popular examples of these are Netflix's Orange Is the New Black and NBC's This Is Us, respectively. And, as if you needed any further proof of their universal appeal, consider the fact that Lewinsky tunes in just like the rest of us. 

In July 2014, she confessed in a Vanity Fair article that she'd been spending copious amounts of time curled up on her old red sofa in a summer blanket watching Orange Is the New Black. The show's riveting story lines and emotionally nuanced characters easily transported her "into that cloistered world of raw emotions, human frailties, and power plays," she wrote.

Then, in February 2018, Lewinsky tweeted she was catching up on This Is Us — which she joked was "the Adele of television." There are two conclusions we can draw from this: first, that Lewinsky likely won't go near a slow cooker anytime soon, and second, she has excellent taste in television programming. 

She had an affair with a powerful man in the community. When this affair became evident, she was publicly scorned and ridiculed. Can you guess the woman's identity? If you guessed Lewinsky, you're only half-right. Because while the story describes Monica Lewinsky's ordeal, it also fits Hester Prynne — the ostracized heroine of The Scarlet Letter. In fact, academics have begun to draw direct comparisons between the badge of public reproach worn by these women, one literal and one figurative. 

Author Sasha Cagen outright refers to Lewinsky as "the modern day Hester Prynne," noting the striking similarities in their stories. "Just as Hester Prynne was asked to stand on the stage and be shamed for her one 'mistake' and then wear the Scarlet Letter for the rest of her life as a 'living sermon against sin, until the ignominious letter be engraved on her tombstone,' Lewinsky endured the slut-shaming pillory in 1998 when people and even journalists thought nothing of calling her a 'plump tart,' 'tramp,' or yes, 'slut,” Cagen wrote on her website in 2015. 

In an academic paper written in 2015, a student named Blake Dean explored the "deficit of empathy" in society that made the ruthless ridicule of Prynne and Lewinsky possible. The phrasing is particularly poignant in light of the fact that Lewinsky, in her 2015 TED talk, put out an impassioned plea for "compassion and empathy" to end internet-shaming culture.

Given the cliche negative characterization of Lewinsky floating around the internet, it's easy to overlook a defining fact about her: she's highly intelligent. After all, her first job after graduating from college was at the White House. How many people can claim that pedigree? Plus, in the years following her public fallout, she moved to England, where she received a master's degree in social psychology from the London School of Economics. However, landing a job has more often than not proven nearly impossible for Lewinsky. 

After graduation, she threw her energy into interviewing for jobs — typically non-profit or organizations with a charitable slant. "Yet, because of what potential employers so tactfully referred to as my 'history,' I was never 'quite right' for the position," she revealed in Vanity Fair in June 2014. 

In an interview with The Guardian, Lewinsky said she spent over a decade "floundering." She relied on non-traditional employment, admitting in her Vanity Fair article, "I've managed to get by (barely, at times) with my own projects, usually with start-ups that I have participated in, or with loans from friends and family." 

Lewinsky has since reclaimed her narrative and become an ambassador for the anti-bullying movement.

When Lewinsky was 16 years old, a high-school English class curtailed what was shaping up to be a tumultuous stretch of teen angst. To be more specific, Lewinsky says it was someone she was introduced to in the class that shifted her perspective. That person was T.S. Eliot. 

Of course, Lewinsky didn't meet the acclaimed poet in person. Rather, her teacher read one of his most enduring works aloud in class: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." In that moment, Lewinsky developed an abiding love for Eliot's work and that one in particular. She revealed this in what essentially amounts to a love letter to the poem that she penned for Vanity Fair in June 2015. 

It wasn't the first-time she would allude to the piece (and likely not the last). In her 2014 Vanity Fair article "Shame and Survival," Lewinsky described her decision to return to the public forum with a nod to Eliot. "Perhaps by sharing my story, I reasoned, I might be able to help others in their darkest moments of humiliation," she wrote. "The question became: How do I find and give a purpose to my past? It was my Prufrockian moment: 'Do I dare / Disturb the universe?'" 

Gearing up for her TED talk in 2015, Lewinsky must have known there would be push-back. From trolls, from misogynists, from politicos — take your pick. Still, she accepted the invitation to speak. In a rare interview with The New York Times just prior to taking the podium, Lewinsky illuminated why. 

When Times writer Jessica Bennett pressed Lewinsky about what she hoped to accomplish with the speech, Lewinsky referenced David Foster Wallace's book Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. In it, she proffered, is the story of a young girl who endures horrific abuse but, in enduring it, learns she can survive. 

"That's part of what I thought I could contribute," Lewinsky told Bennett. "That in someone else's darkest moment, lodged in their subconscious might be the knowledge that there was someone else who was, at one point in time, the most humiliated person in the world. And that she survived it."