In this op-ed, writer Ashlee Marie Preston analyzes media coverage of White House communications director Hope Hicks's resignation announcement and issues a call for more accountability for white cisgender women.
On Wednesday, February 28, Hope Hicks announced her resignation from her position as White House communications director without giving much of an explanation. The move came just after Hicks testified before the House Intelligence Committee, on February 27, as part of its Russia investigation. That closed-door session went on for more than eight hours, according to The New York Times, which reported that Hicks told investigators the job had required her to occasionally tell white lies.
As if on cue, pieces in publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post appeared to position Hicks as a victim, allowing anti-Trump sentiments to create a protagonist narrative around her. She somehow seemed to become the antithesis of Trump, instead of a possible accomplice.
Yet you shouldn’t be deceived; Hope Hicks is almost like the Trump administration’s Regina George. What little we know about Hicks appeared to create something of a wholesome, “good girl” persona, which could come off as an attempt to deflect responsibility. Let’s be clear: Hope Hicks is not a victim of this administration. Her persona won’t absolve her of her role in getting Trump to the White House — or of any of the things she might have done there.
As reported by New York magazine, Hicks had no prior political experience before joining the Trump campaign — yet she somehow managed to land an important position in the White House. New York explains how she got her start with the Trump brand: She did public relations for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line and promoted Trump-brand resorts. The New York Times reported in June 2016 that before her PR career, Hicks worked as a model, once posing for Ralph Lauren. And Refinery29 reported that she was the face on the cover of The It Girl, a novel by Gossip Girl author Cecily von Ziegesar. Hicks could come off as someone who inhabits the same spaces as the wealthy teens living on Manhattan's Upper East Side in the Gossip Girl TV series. While the show was fictional, Hicks seems like she could have just walked out of a scene filled with characters who grew up in an elitist culture.
She made her way to politics at the personal request of Trump, a conversation she detailed in an April 2016 New York magazine interview. That same article listed some of Hicks’s day-to-day responsibilities: handling press inquiries and taking dictation for the then candidate’s tweets. At the White House, Hicks earned $179,700 annually, with the job title assistant to the president and director of strategic communications, according to White House records. She was eventually promoted to interim communications director following the brief tenure of Anthony Scaramucci. Through it all, Hicks has been called “the yin to Trump's attention-grabbing yang” by a CNN commentator, “a Trump whisperer” in a Politico profile, and now a “mostly silent hardworking nice girl,” in an analysis of her resignation in The New York Times.
The through-line here is simple: Hicks took these jobs of her own will, and her ascent to power was likely not something she unwittingly found herself in the middle of. Neither she nor any of the other women in Trump’s White House are hostages; they are key team players (see also: Kellyanne Conway). But Hicks’s race, cisgender identity, looks, and well-connected family might scare some off of criticizing her. After all, her parents met on Capitol Hill, and her late grandfather ran public relations for Texaco, according to Town and Country. Last year, the Connecticut Post wrote about her because, aside from being one of the president’s closest aides, she’s also the daughter of a former NFL executive vice president.
There’s nothing wrong with Hicks getting her hustle on. It should be remembered, however, that she is not an outsider but someone born and raised in the halls of power and apparent privilege who found an unconventionally quick path to the higher floors of the establishment. Yet some writers at major publications might feel better about pulling their punches when it comes to Hicks, given her identity and status, letting her off easy, as pieces from Politico, Business Insider, and Forbes seem to have done during her tenure with the Trump family. But the perception of innocence can be disarming and destructive — especially when it benefits white women. Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty and Inequality published a study last year that showed that, when compared with black girls of the same age, white girls between the ages of 5 and 14 get the benefit of almost every conceivable doubt with regard to virtue and civility. Is it so out there to assume that this presumed innocence might follow a white girl into white womanhood?
Hicks’s whiteness pairs with her conventional attractiveness. Just look at Janet Mock’s Allure column on “pretty privilege,” where she writes, “‘Pretty’ is most often synonymous with being thin, white, able-bodied, and cis, and the closer you are to those ideals, the more often you will be labeled pretty — and benefit from that prettiness.” Beauty can become a beastly thing, as Hicks has reminded us, thanks to style write-ups of her “chic” resignation look. Commentators at Vox, for example, have been eager to attack the media for the sloppy way it talked about her looks without asking whether or not her appearance helped make her one of the most powerful women in the country.
When you’re a white, beautiful, cis woman in America, it appears that everyone is coming to save you. Remember the Twitter campaign to save First Lady Melania Trump from her husband? As First Lady, Melania created an anti-bullying campaign; surely she could use that same ethos to stand up to her husband? But that would require the platform to be a source of actionable good, rather than an empty talking point she seems to use on Twitter when things don’t go her way.
The fact is, Melania, Ivanka, and Hope all reap the benefits of white, wealthy, cis-heteronormativity. It could be argued that, as long as they uphold the patriarchy, they’re seemingly promised they'll get handsome rewards for their cooperation. It doesn't appear that anyone forced Hicks to be as close as she is (or was) to Trump. She had to have known exactly what she signed up for — namely, a chance to lock in her position of power and privilege.
The reality is that women like Hope Hicks are generally able to negotiate with wealthy white men in a way that women of color and LGBTQ women typically can’t, because of racism or non-heteronormativity. And it seems to me that white, cis-heteronormative women have put themselves first.
Just look at the racist attitudes of suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony, who said, "I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ask for the ballot for the Negro and not for the woman," and of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who used racist language in opposing the 14th and 15th Amendments. Other suffragettes segregated their marches and railed against the 15th Amendment on their way to ensuring white women got the right to vote. Or Consider Betty Friedan. The book Feminism: From Mary Wollstonecraft to Betty Friedan, by Bhaskar A. Shukla, treats the story of Friedan's infamous phrase “Lavender Menace” too kindly, since it details Friedan's backtracking, at a conference, on her initial reference to LGBTQ activism as a threat posed to feminism. After Friedan professed support for lesbian rights, women cheered and cried as “thousands of lavender balloons rose from the floor, drifting triumphantly towards the ceiling," the book reports.
White women in power are undoubtedly able to intervene in ways that their nonwhite, noncisgender counterparts are not, but instead, some appear to allow themselves to become victims, essentially absolving themselves of outcomes brought on by their own prejudices. It can feel as if they have been deemed innocent until proven innocent. Women like Hicks have the power to intervene, yet some have chosen not to risk their own privilege or safety. Their voices and well-being are arguably elevated above those of people of color. Therefore, they could challenge the silencing of black and brown voices and serve their cause as well.
It would be one thing to say that Hicks used her position in the White House to do what the job should idealistically require: advocate for the voices of all Americans, only to find herself shafted by the situation of the decaying infrastructure crumbling around her. But she didn’t. She, like Ivanka, seems to be complicit. Why pity her for making her own bed and now being forced to lie in it? Can you honestly say that someone who was not white and young and pretty wouldn’t be subjected to a far worse fate than hers?
Wealthy, cis-heteronormative white women have been known to run in some of the most powerful circles on the planet, including legacy organizations that people of color and LGBTQ people overall haven't been able to infiltrate or access; when we do, it can be argued, we’re not afforded the same level of influence. We can't let the false notion that all white women are inherently virtuous — despite its long history in our culture — blind us to the harm it seems some have actively promulgated, both historically and in the present day. Hicks will, in all likelihood, be fine. History has shown us that. It’s impossible to say what Robert Mueller’s investigation will uncover, but remember: Hicks took that job. I would argue that she played a role in the undoing of America, just like the 53% of white women voters who cast their ballots for Trump in 2016.
