What Watching a Furious Hillary Clinton Showed Me

At the beginning of the year, 2016 was trending on multiple social media platforms. Every couple of months, there’s a new wave of nostalgia online. I’m usually unmoved by these algorithmically manufactured moments, but thinking about my own hopefulness a decade ago has made me both depressed and angry.

My younger daughter was born that July, and her older sister was in preschool. A friend bought them “The Future Is Female” T-shirts, which were made by a small, woman-run business. These shirts expressed a level of earnestness that felt good at the time but in retrospect is cringeworthy.

Even then, I knew that Hillary Clinton was an imperfect candidate in many ways, and I was worried about the Bill-shaped baggage she would bring to the presidency. But I can’t deny that I was excited to bring my 3-year-old to vote with me that November; a woman leading the country would have been an undeniably powerful vision for a little girl. Those feelings of pride and aspiration rose again during the hot brat summer of 2024, and we all know how that went.

I was again reminded of my curdled optimism and the current level of accepted, casual misogyny in our political discourse when I went back and watched Hillary Clinton’s hourslong deposition in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation by the House Oversight Committee. (Yes, she was and remains a punching bag, even though her last political office ended Feb. 1, 2013.)

While I have no problem with the Oversight Committee interviewing anyone and everyone who might give them information about Epstein’s heinous crimes, the Republicans on the committee were maddeningly disrespectful to Clinton. The queries she faced from the majority were inane, referring to conspiracy theories and including disparaging innuendo. But interactions with two of the Republican women, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, stood out and circulated as viral moments.

Resplendent in a bright blue suit, Clinton responded to all of the questioning with barely concealed (and often unconcealed) frustration that at moments bubbled over into anger. Her expressive face displayed a full range of aggravation. It was incredibly satisfying to watch, because it felt as though she was channeling the exasperation and rage that many American women have felt at least for the past decade.

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Jessica Grose is an Opinion writer for The Times, covering family, religion, education, culture and the way we live now.

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