The country is currently being dragged along on one famous woman’s interpersonal drama surrounding her most recent breakup, and inviting us all in so she can document her most intimate thoughts and decisions regarding breakups, relationships, and motherhood.
No, I’m not talking about the past 'round-the-clock media obsession with pop singer Taylor Swift — this time it’s a member of Congress. House Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The question is why? Why is a member of Congress hauling us all along in a series of personal social media videos on Instagram (IG), where she discusses and lectures about inner strength, taking back her life (from whom or what is unclear), and more Girl Boss clichés, all while treating the camera like it’s a friend she should need instead of an Instagram following?
Ocasio-Cortez, 36 years old, announced that she would be freezing her eggs, and demonstrated the process by sticking syringes into her abdomen while joking to the camera and her viewers to “not be weird.” I will leave the questions about egg freezing to fertility experts and women who have had the lived experience, but my questions involve the timing and the reasoning.
This past week, Ocasio-Cortez’s IG videos were the main topics of crossover TMZ and political social media, and she’s just getting started.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is going to run for president in 2028. Sure, there’s a chance Democrats recapture the Senate and Chuck Schumer either steps down as leader or retires, leaving a prime open Senate seat for her to capture, but here’s the thing about Ocasio-Cortez: she hates her job.
She hates being stuck in Congress and all the administrative nonsense that comes with it. She would much rather be out in the streets with her fellow comrades tearing down October 7 hostage posters. The presidency has always been on her horizon, and Bernie Sanders, who turns 164 years old this year, likely doesn’t have another populist run in him, but his most valuable and visual disciple does.
What we are seeing, and why Ocasio-Cortez is attempting it, is the (ironically) gestation period of remaking her image to the country — leaning hard into the working-girl-boss image that dominates much of the media coverage of young, working millennials these days. The decision to open her bedroom to her most personal decisions on fertility is a calculated image action to reshape herself as a celebrity.
This is where the media comes in. TMZ, the notoriously influential celebrity paparazzi outfit, recently opened a D.C. bureau to cover politics and politicians as only it can, stalking down members of Congress in quick ambush-style hits to get their thoughts on the Yankees, Taylor and Travis’s wedding, or any other sort of cultural nonsense it can think of.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her dating life are about to become a singular media obsession, just a full year from likely announcing a presidential run. Maybe the newly single “AOC” goes a boring route, and her next relationship or spouse is just some boring policy wonk from the New York Democratic Socialists of America chapter. But that won’t generate buzz, and it won’t make her the main character in the country, a position that has been held by Donald Trump and Taylor Swift now for roughly a decade.
The TMZification of our media will seize on the opportunity to make Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s personal love life the center of cultural curiosity of the presidential race. Who she is seen out on the town with, who she is having dinner with, who she just broke up with, or who she is engaged to. They see this as an opportunity to do the impossible — to finally rescue control from Donald Trump, who has had a stranglehold on media attention for the past decade.
We know this because she’s already opened the door and let the media and her audience into her home.
Get ready for it. Get ready for “AOC 24/7” — who she’s dating (an athlete or musician or actor, maybe?), “AOC spotted court-side,” “AOC spotted on the red carpet,” “AOC spotted backstage” — and the press to create a media and political phenomenon that cannot be countered by other Democrats in a presidential primary.
Just as Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce tie the knot and exit into the background of American pop culture, the ground is ripe for someone to take Taylor’s place, and it appears as though someone already has.
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