During the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton was often portrayed as cold and calculated, according to Time Magazine. She was constantly picked on for having too little emotion. This is common in the media’s portrayal of women, as women are often told they are weak when they show emotion and cold when they don’t.
Clinton describes the struggle of walking this line to Time Magazine: “I know that I can be perceived as aloof or cold or unemotional. But I had to learn as a young woman to control my emotions. And that’s a hard path to walk. Because you need to protect yourself, you need to keep steady, but at the same time you don’t want to seem ‘walled off.’”
It appears Clinton has begun to let go of the worry most women carry about walking that line. She has begun to show her humor on Twitter and make more emotional statements in general.
One example is her tweet from Sunday Oct. 20, where she said, “found in the archives,” and included a fake correspondence letter between President John F. Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev during the Cold War. The message is very humorous and crude, including the line “you’re really busting my nuts here.” The tweet’s goal seemed to be to poke fun at the toxic masculinity that was ingrained in the Cold War.
Another tweet from Clinton that exemplifies her humor is one responding to Rudy Giuliani on Oct. 1, where he claims Clinton was never asked difficult questions. Clinton shot back, saying, “Yes, I am famously under-scrutinized.” This sarcastic tone is something she has begun to show off more and more.
These comedic tweets most likely involve others’ help in crafting them, but, ultimately, it shows us what Clinton thinks is funny. It allows us to start to get to know her in a way she has never let happen before.
Clinton has also become more emotional in public, often giving more empowering anecdotes than ever.
The most powerful showing of how Clinton has evolved since losing the 2016 presidential election was the commencement speech that she gave at Yale University in 2018. She was humorous but emotional, explaining at one point that the first couple of months after the election were rough and she still wasn’t completely over the loss, according to Yale News.
She went on to explain that she still thinks about all the mistakes she’s made, but that we can only learn from those mistakes at this point. She uses the pain she felt to empower students to use empathy to combat our nation’s issues.
Clinton seems to have begun to open up and be more public about who she really is, which sets an example for all women to be more comfortable showing who they are.
Some might say this is just the effect of Clinton no longer being in a political role, but I disagree. I think her loss showed her that no matter what she did she would always be scrutinized, so maybe it was time to just stop worrying. It seems as though she has finally begun to relax and be her authentic self. Clinton deserves and is acting on the chance to be herself, and her transition into this is something we can all learn from.
Kara Burke is an international relations and communication double major junior who is experiencing a quarter-life crisis.