As you’re probably aware, Erika Kirk has been everywhere in recent months.
The widow of slain podcast host Charlie Kirk, Erika has hosted rallies, visited the White House, and granted countless interviews in the months since her husband’s death.
Her new role as CEO of Turning Point USA, the organization founded by her late husband, has made Erika one of the most visible women in modern media.
And the discourse surrounding her sudden rise to fame has resulted in some heated debates.
A recent article from Washington Post fashion columnist Ashley Fetters Maloy has sparked backlash due to its focus on Kirk’s wardrobe choices.
“Erika Kirk is walking a fine line in a glittering pantsuit,” Maloy wrote, adding:
“Kirk, a mother to two toddlers, continues to take on public-facing leadership duties while promoting traditional ideas about prioritizing marriage and motherhood, and her clothes are attempting to walk the same high wire… her styling of late suggests that she’s aware that she now needs to be able to blend into mainstream, secular, political contexts well enough to be taken seriously — but not so well as to be mistaken for a career woman or a feminist.”
We should reiterate here that this was an article that appeared in the Post‘s fashion section.
On social media, however, many are under — or are creating — the impression that the newspaper is attempting to diminish a female political figure by focusing on her clothes.
“For crying out loud will this s— never end,” former Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema wrote X (formerly Twitter), according to Yahoo News.
“Erika isn’t ‘prioritizing marriage’ because a radical leftist shot and killed her husband Good Lord. These people will never stop attacking the Kirk family,” conservative pundit Jack Posobiec added.
“I’ve been reporting for a quarter century now, and I still remember at my first daily newspaper job, we had to read a style guide that specifically cautioned reporters to be very careful about describing women’s clothes in depth because it can be viewed as sexist,” Axios reporter Marc Caputo chimed in.
“How does this get printed?” right-wing commentator Jason Rantz asked.
An op-ed that focuses on the clothing worn by a famous woman does indeed run the risk of coming off as sexist.
After all, we rarely see opinion pieces criticizing the clothing worn by a male pundit or politician.
But Maloy is a fashion columnist who was using fashion as a lens through which to explore Erika’s controversial decision to make a public spectacle of her grief.
Even many who otherwise support Erika and her cause say that they wish she would take a more understated approach to honoring her husband’s legacy.
And it makes sense that a fashion columnist would focus on the sartorial aspect of Erika’s never-ending press tour.