Last Saturday evening, I was lying in bed scrolling Instagram (as one does) and noticed AOC had posted a new story.
I tapped in and watched, absolutely captivated, as she explained she was going to be opening up about her upcoming experience freezing her eggs.
I’ve since watched every video she’s posted about this — the 10 minute vlogs about her shots, the explainers about how the reproductive system works, all of it.
I’ve read/watched the follow-up pieces — the inimitable Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom’s today is my favorite, but also Moira Donegan in The Guardian, the NYT on AOC’s growth in public, breaking down the conservative backlash, Jessica Valenti’s reaction on why conservatives are actually freaking out, Jill Filipovic’s take, Brigid Bergen in Gothamist on the personal angle, Madeline Peltz’s take on the tradwife of it all, and more.
I am rapt, and I’m not alone in my fascination. Her videos on her egg freezing journey are some of her most-watched in the last year+ on her Instagram. She shared a few of the thousands of comments and DMs she’s gotten — an example:
I’ve never done fertility treatments — I’m lucky and grateful that getting and staying pregnant has been relatively easy for me — but that makes me somewhat unusual among my peer group of ambitious women in our late 30s.1
I have countless friends who’ve gone through egg freezing, IUI, and/or IVF for all kinds of reasons, from wanting to preserve optionality for later to friends in same sex relationships to carrying genetic markers that would benefit from embryo screening in advance.
I’ve also consumed a metric fuck ton of internet made specifically for 30-something women intending to have kids, and she seems to have done the same — she’s fluent in the language and format of these types of videos, tapping the syringe in front of the camera with ASMR-like clicks.
The honesty, vulnerability, and the service AOC is doing for her community are all overwhelming and generous. The social media skills, the politics, the gender performance, the conversation about ambition - there’s just so much to talk about.
Two things in particular I want to dig in on…
Her authentic-but-boundaried social media
One of the things I’ve really appreciated about AOC’s public presence over the last 8 years is that she perfectly exemplifies what I call “responsible authenticity.”
She knows who she is and what she believes. She knows what she’s trying to accomplish. And most importantly, she knows which parts of her life are for public consumption and which are for private. She’s never hashtag-unfiltered; she’s simply herself, with intentionality.
I wrote about the way she uses the internet in When We’re in Charge (in a section that was later excerpted in The Daily Beast):
From a compelling video that could help her raise money to visual branding that stood out among the crowd to content that was real (but with boundaries!)—AOC seemed like an authentic version of herself online because, like any millennial, she’d grown up online and felt comfortable using the internet to express herself.
In particular, she’s strategically used live streams to connect to her base: From logging on to Twitch to play video games—which she described to The Washington Post as “kind of like the way some of my colleagues talk about golf”—to using Instagram Live to talk directly to the camera about what she experienced during the January 6 insurrection, she’s cultivated a remarkable amount of intimacy with her community … [it often feels] like FaceTiming with my friend, who just happened to be the congresswoman from New York. (To be clear: She’s not my friend; we’ve never met.)
Going through the screenshots on my phone, it seems like every few months I have one from one of AOC’s Instagram stories—whether because I laughed when she described the Capitol building as a kind of Hogwarts, I found it compelling when she was explaining how she chose a dress to wear to a diplomatic meeting, or I wanted her recommendation on which BB cream to use as foundation, her social media has stuck with me.
AOC has made the highfalutin office of United States representative seem approachable and real and given us, her followers, a carefully curated feeling of community and insider-ness with her.
She isn’t a stranger or an elite—she is one of us, while also leading us. I trust her because, thanks to her social media, I feel like I know her.
I also know that I absolutely don’t know her, not even a little. Instagram is not reality, and as a member of Congress, she is actually one of the more powerful people in the country. I only know the version of her she presents online, and I can tell exactly how careful she is about it. That’s a model for us all.
AOC has perfected the boundaries of her parasocial relationship with her community while still being a serious public servant. (Zohran Mamdani is the only other politician who matches and maybe even exceeds her skills — his role as mayor versus hers as a legislator gives him a leg up.)
When we talk about politicians being authentic on the internet, this is why it matters: Authenticity allows for a (false) sense of intimacy, which is a fundamental building block for trust — and trust is what allows a voter to believe in someone even if they disagree with them.
In particular, live vlogging her egg freezing is fucking genius. She’s not the first member of Congress to do this — Rep. Sara Jacobs did similarly a few years ago — but she’s the first with the platform of her scale and with the looming political future over her.
She could’ve gone the route of keeping it secret, or of writing a first-person essay about it for Vogue next month. Instead, she’s using the process as an entry point for conversations not just about what she’s doing but also about gender, ambition, the right’s war on women’s futures and reproductive health, what it means to feel like your family planning is constrained by economics, the broken health insurance system, and so much more.
AOC is perfectly connecting the dots between her lived experience and the policy/politics of reproductive health care in a way that’s digestible and engaging. It’s incredible communications work.
There is no right way to be a woman
After watching that initial story, I immediately texted a number of my fellow 30-something female friends. “Go watch AOC’s story — question answered.”
Over the last few months these friends and I had talked about the 2028 presidential primary and the thing that came up around AOC was not whether or not she can win — I think she can win both the primary and the general — but whether she’d be able to run if she wanted a family.
I confess, I hate that we thought like this. Someone else’s family planning is none of our business. I absolutely reject the conceit that women cannot have both big jobs and kids. It’s hard, but with good partners, it is possible. I try to prove that out every day — it’s why I talk constantly about being a mom while also loving my job.
But there is big job and then there’s President of the United States.
I think a mom will someday be president. I hope so! But I just don’t know if America is ready to wrap our heads around a woman possibly becoming pregnant while being president.
We don’t even give normal people paid time off after birth — would the president be able to take leave? How sexist would the blowback be? How much pressure would she feel to “bounce back” immediately after birth? What if there was a crisis? I believe it is possible. I also believe it will be exhausting.
But I love that she’s talking about this decision-making process and the way it ties into her career. (Again, Dr. Cottom’s op-ed on this is spot-on, as always.)
I’ve worked with and talked with so many young women running for office over the last decade who have grappled with exactly these challenges. Things I’ve heard:
If you’re a single woman running for office, you get asked what will happen if you get married or why I’m not married
If you’re married but don’t have kids, you get asked what will happen if you get pregnant
If you do have kids, you get asked who will take care of them
There is simply no right way to be a woman, especially a woman seeking power. There are only a multitude of wrong ways. So fuck it, do it your way.
Last night’s vlog in particular, spoke so powerfully to this.
Even if you’re not particularly interested in fertility treatments, watch this one. She responds to some of the discourse and the freak out — she notes: “I am very grateful for my life. I go after what I want, but maybe that’s what they don’t like either. Too bad for them.”
It’s audacious. Ballsy, even. And it’s the kind of unrestrained ambition (not just for a job but for a type of life) that hit me right in the gut.
One of my mantras — especially when I know I might get some skepticism for making choices that might seem on face value to be kind of insane or like choosing to do things on hard mode — is simple:
I deserve to have the life I want.
If I want a family and also a big job and also a puppy (LOL) and also to live in NYC and also a social life, etc etc etc, I deserve, at the very least, to try. I shouldn’t self-censor or stop myself just because someone else might think it’s objectively nuts.
To see a woman in some of the highest echelons of power model what it looks like to proactively go after whatever it is she wants — to leave as many doors open as possible, to claim agency in her future — is so moving.
I hope her egg freezing results in the outcome she wants, whatever that may be. I hope her side effects aren’t too brutal. And I hope that every woman watching (young or old) sees that it is possible to, if not have it all, to be unashamed and unafraid to want it all.
When We’re in Charge is my leadership book for millennials and gen Z trying to do things differently. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute. It’ll be out in paperback in September.
If I compared myself to the people from where I grew up in Virginia, I’m a decade behind. In my NYC social circle, I’m relatively a teen mom.
This was a fantastic article, but the part that most resonated was when you talked about the questions people ask. I cannot count the number of times I, as a single woman with no kids, was asked during my city council campaign what would happen if I got pregnant. Meanwhile, my opponent standing next to me on various Q&A panels was a married man with two kids under 5 and a wife who was (visibly, publicly) pregnant with their third... And not a single person questioned how he'd handle the responsibilities of office. My response was often along the lines of "being single without kids gives me more time to devote to our community" but what I really wanted to say was "ABSOLUTELY none of your business, and I'd be delighted if I finally meet the right guy, get married, and am able to conceive." Kudos to AOC for her foresight and authenticity!
This is a great write up that puts the perfect words to describe why AOC is so powerful. I guess I also am wondering why this is even a question given the former Prime Minister of New Zealand was pregnant when she took office and then gave birth in her first year of office so there’s a blueprint already. But then again NZ is a bit more reasonable around women reproductive health. I honestly think if anyone can do it, it would be AOC. She’s far more weak in terms of the perception she’s two-faced around the Israel discourse. I think that’s what’s gonna be more tough for her to address than trying to/having a baby while also running for President (which I think would actually excite people).