The damsel-ification of Usha Vance
One of the stranger narratives to emerge from the Republican National Convention this past week is the reception of Usha Vance. Usha is married to Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, former President Donald Trump’s pick for vice president. Should Trump and Vance win in November, Usha will be the second lady of the United States.
Viewers noted that Usha’s heritage and identity — Usha’s parents are South Asian immigrants and she’s of Indian descent — appear to be at odds with her husband’s and the larger party’s politics, specifically the implicitly racist and explicitly xenophobic parts. Usha introduced herself and her husband at the convention on Wednesday, after speakers spent most of the previous day hammering home anti-immigrant rhetoric, some dipping into extremist fear-mongering and accusing immigrants of rape and murder. Despite previously insulting Trump, her husband’s political stance has, of late, closely resembled the former president’s, including anti-immigrant sentiment.
While she spoke, the audience waved “mass deportation” signs — ostensibly not directly at her but in support of the general anti-immigration stance of the Republican platform. Perhaps it’s not surprising that far-right Republicans have begun attacking Usha and denigrating her and her husband’s mixed-race family.
The perceived conflict between Usha’s background and Republican politics has created another reaction, too, one steeped in a particular stripe of sexism: that Usha is somehow a victim or reluctant participant in, if not a hostage to, her husband’s political ambitions.
Some political reporters have started to “read” her body language, surmising that she’s “uneasy” or unwilling to be in this position. The Daily Beast took one moment of Usha looking at her husband during the convention, and came to the conclusion that this was a woman trapped: stuck in love with a man who made a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump.
“But then the smile faded and at other moments she appeared fatigued and had a ‘What am I doing here?’ look,” the Daily Beast’s Michael Daly wrote. He added, “And when he and Usha gazed at each other there was a spark of what appeared to be true love, even in MAGAland. Then she had a look that made you hope that the heart will prove to be enough when your husband has sold his soul.”
From mannerism analysis to the musings about love in a hopeless place to the “poor Usha” projection, it all assumes that Usha Vance ultimately disapproves of her husband’s political ideologies.
Usha is not a shrinking violet nor a political babe in the woods: she graduated from Yale Law School, just like her husband, and clerked for conservative judges like Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, when he was still an appeals court judge, and then for Chief Justice John Roberts. Later, she worked as a trial lawyer at a white-shoe law firm. As of 2022, she was registered as a Republican in Ohio, where her husband ran for Senate.
If that “silently disapproving wife” trope sounds familiar, it’s because political reporters and commentators portrayed former first lady Melania Trump in a similar fashion. Some even went so far as positing a fantasy that she secretly hates him. It wasn’t until recordings of Melania downplaying the separation of migrant families at the border leaked in 2020 that the myth of Melania being an unwilling partner to her husband was shattered. Still, some continue to perpetuate that idea.
Former second lady Karen Pence was often quoted as being apolitical and non-influential when it came to her husband’s politics too, as he served in Congress and as governor of Indiana. It created the impression that she was some kind of spiritual bystander. But when he was picked by Trump, her facade dropped and she was revealed to be one of the biggest Trump supporters in the former veep’s inner circle.
Whether it’s people feeling awful for Heidi Cruz, insisting that Tiffany Trump is not close to her family even though she keeps appearing at big events, hoping against all odds about Laura Bush’s beliefs, or speculating about secret Hillary voters in Trumpland, there’s an inclination to distance Republican women from the Republican men they support.
Data about mixed political marriage isn’t extensive, but according to an analysis of Deseret News and Brigham Young University’s 2023 American Family Survey, only 21 percent of marriages are politically mixed and roughly just 4 percent are between Democrats and Republicans. People don’t tend to marry people whose political beliefs stray too far from their own.
The left-leaning rationalization about Usha Vance and her ilk is a type of benevolent sexism, the idea that women are naturally the kinder, gentler sex, in need of protection and unwilling to voice their true opinions. On the surface, the act doesn’t seem overtly malicious — hence the “benevolence.” But ascribing these traits to women undercuts their autonomy and attempts to exonerate them from their own choices.
In Usha’s case, any look that could be interpreted as dismay — when in reality it could be fatigue, or even simply a lack of media training — is a signal to some that she’s a damsel in distress. Certainly a woman with her education and resume would be very capable of divorcing a husband she fully disagrees with.
The only person who knows what Usha’s true intentions are or how she really feels about her husband and his politics is Usha Vance herself. She could very well share some of the sentiments of the benevolently sexist narrative that’s been created about her. She could also be sitting on those reservations for her own private reasons, from love to ambition and anything in between. The more likely possibility, though, is that she does not disagree with J.D. Vance. A completely reasonable thing to assume is that his politics are her politics, even if that’s hard for some to accept.
Given the political vitriol she’s already facing from her husband’s own party, that does paint a complicated picture. To some, that’s why she’ll always need saving — even if it’s in the form of melodramatic fanfic.