HAIR FLIP @katyperry pic.twitter.com/F0X35IKlIM

— Katy Perry (@wakingonperry) October 23, 2016

“If you’re nasty and you know it, clap your hands.”

Did you just clap?

I’m guessing you may have silently in your head, because if you’ve taken the time to read this and not completely dismiss it, chances are you have already said “no thank you” to that glass of Hillary haterade time and time again.

Yes. I’m with her.

I’m with her because she is the best choice. I’m with her because I think she’s going to be a damn good president. No, I’m not with her just because she’s a woman. I’m with her because she’s one resilient, “nasty woman.”

We all claim to love a strong woman until she speaks up, just a little too loudly. Shows too much power. Opposes you. Knows more than us. Makes us uncomfortable. Stirs things up. When that happens, we will see the attempted destruction of that woman, but it’s not usually obvious. Most of the time the people tearing down that woman don’t even realize they are doing it.

It starts as subtle, sneaky, snarky, passive aggressive, immature. Often about her clothes, her looks, how she talks or whatever little thing someone can find. You know the kind of thing the kid in fifth grade would say about you.

When she refuses to back down, the complaints get louder, “She’s power hungry. She’s in it for her career.”

She still refuses to back down, she keeps going despite the criticism. Now the cries get more and more outrageous, “She’s corrupt! Put her in prison! She kills people who oppose her! She loves ISIS! She’s cheating!”

The desperation continues to a point where those that oppose her are grasping at any tiny little straw they can find and twisting it around, even if it’s completely absurd. It seems like people don’t care if the claims are untrue or ridiculous, we are obsessed and we have to stop her.

Could it be that we are intimidated by her? Perhaps she makes them uncomfortable, because she is one hell of a force to be reckoned with.

You know that old double standard of what makes men “strong” “powerful” and a “leader” often makes a woman a “bitch” “overbearing” or “bossy?” Yes my friends, this is what is happening, and has been happening for years. But now there’s a new label—one that we can all get behind—the nasty woman.

Is she perfect? Nope. Has she made mistakes? Yes? Has she lied? Yes. Has she done things I don’t agree with? Yes. Should she be held accountable? Absolutely.

To be honest, she has done a few things that have made me say, “Really?”, but she is not nearly as villainous as people make her out to be. I truly believe she started out as an ambitious person who wanted to make real change in the world, and had to make some sell out decisions because it’s the sad reality of how things work.

Here’s the thing—in Washington, the establishment and system still exist and you still have to work with it. Someone with no experience who wants to just blow up the system, can’t just walk in there and change everything immediately, it’s not how it works. To be successful, you have to play the game to some extent.

Running for president is not as simple as many people like to make it seem. Armchair quarterbacks sit back and critique like they were in all the conversations in the White House. We cannot blame one person for everything that went wrong, or expect people to be perfect when working to solve the country’s and world’s most complex issues.

Give me one day in the office of Secretary of State, or about thirty minutes of the abuse she takes and I would be running back home to pull the covers over my head and cry. Let’s be honest, that girl is resilient. She gets knocked down and gets back up over, and over, and over again.

For all the haters out there, fuming at the audacity of someone seeing a bit of positivity in her—go ahead and lash out angrily with all her mistakes. That’s on you if you choose to see only the negative. While as a citizen and a voter, I must fully recognize her failures and hold her accountable, I choose to continue to see the positive as well.

I hope she will be victorious. I hope that she will put the heel of her pant-suit matching pump right in the butt of misogyny, sexism, rape culture, racism, hate, fear and divide—all those dark things her opponent stands for.

Whether she wins or she loses this election, she has set an example for me in with her resilience. When I feel beaten down, weary, and ready to give up, I’ll think about all that nasty woman Hillary Clinton has gone through and her incredible ability to keep going time and time again. We can’t really keep going time and time again. Maybe I’ll find that bit of nasty in myself to get up again as well.

 

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Author: Adrienne Dygert 

Image: Twitter

Editor: Sara Kärpänen