Column
RBG and the Notorious Meme-ification of Female Leaders
Memes don’t glorify female leaders — they flatten them
In recent weeks, on top of the baseline fury over everything else — deep-rooted systemic racial injustices, the government’s mishandling of the coronavirus, Russian military aggressions that Trump doesn’t seem to care about (take your pick!) — a new and rather surprising tendril of outrage began to blossom: outrage at 86-year-old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
As targets of anger go, you’d think Ginsburg would be low on the list. Beloved by progressives and lionized by many feminists, her voice has been a lifeline, or at least an emotional balm, for liberals who are terrified by the right-leaning direction of the court. In 2013, her thundering dissent in a landmark decision against voting rights gave rise to her rebranding as a Tumblr hero and designated badass among young millennial women. Shana Knizhnik, then an NYU law student, bestowed her with a catchy nom de guerre, Notorious R.B.G., an homage to the rapper Biggie Smalls, aka Notorious B.I.G. By 2015, Knizhnik, along with writer Irin Carmon, had authored a bestselling book, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
