2018’s Biggest Instagram Influencers Are These Congressional Freshmen Women
They’re not sipping flat tummy tea or shilling reflective eyewear; instead, they’re finding the Hart office building and joining protests in Nancy Pelosi’s office. These are 2018’s biggest Instagram influencers: the women of the congressional freshmen class, who are using the platform not just like millennials (which many of them are) but as revolutionaries. If you’ve ever heeded a follow recommendation, this is it; watching these newly minted representatives in action might actually restore your faith in government again (almost—there’s still the White House).
The leader of the pack is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), who has adeptly used social media since the start of her campaign to unseat longtime Democratic incumbent Joe Crowley from his district in The Bronx and Queens. Ocasio-Cortez has always taken a warts-and-all approach to sharing her congressional journey, from long nights on Amtrak to long days door-knocking in her district, to doing laundry, and cooking dinner on nights off from star-studded events, all while talking about the issues that matter to her and the people she represents, like Medicare for All and free college tuition. As personable as she is online as in real life, Ocasio-Cortez has taken her Instagram storying to new heights, recently adding closed captions for the hearing impaired. Her of-the-people use of the platform not only reflects her progressive politics—it creates the affect that you feel like you always know where she is, and that she's hard at work on the behalf of the people she represents—compare that with a president who routinely denies press access, and more often than not disappears to the golf course.
But to watch Ocasio-Cortez Instagram Story her way through her first week as a representative-elect wasn't just encouraging—it was exciting. To watch her navigate the marble halls of power (“Welcome to Hogwarts,” she said) was to truly understand that, as she has often said, someone “like her” (young, brown, a former bartender) was never meant to make it to the room where it happens. You almost worried what would happen, in turn, to her once she got there—would we lose her once she went through Capitol security?
Her first week of "Congress Camp 1” stories proved that the opposite would be true; instead of leaving us at the door, she brought us inside. And her fellow sisters in midterm-upset have done the same: Rashida Tlaib of MI, Ilhan Omar of MN, and Ayanna Pressley of MA, who similarly beat out Democratic incumbents from the left, have also shared their first days in government via Instagram platform. They even use the snarky social-friendly parlance of their millennial constituents: in one video she shared, Omar referenced her “squad” (on which Ocasio-Cortez commented the fire emoji, of course); Tlaib captioned a photo of herself under three very white, very male portraits, "Move over boys...Rashida is here.” (Pressley took the opposite tack, finding a portrait of Shirley Chisholm under which to pose with the message, “Because of her.”)
Of course, most thrilling of all was seeing these cool new freshmen friends do their jobs. They wasted no time; Ocasio-Cortez joined millennial protestors from Sunrise Movement in occupying Nancy Pelosi’s office, and has since campaigned for her fellow congresspeople to sign onto plans for the creation of a new Select Committee on climate change, which will be tasked with drafting a Green New Deal. Omar, the first Somalian Muslim woman in Congress, who wears a headscarf, immediately mounted a challenge to the 181-year-old rule that says that congressional representatives cannot have their heads covered on the floor.
As the new class was learning their way around the Capitol, more than a few pundits (a generous term) got in the mix on social media, trying to use their platforms to paint a picture of Ocasio-Cortez especially as a juvenile unfit for the gravity of her appointment. One was Eddie Scarry, a conservative commentator who tweeted a surreptitious photo of her from behind that implied that she was too well-dressed to be from a low income bracket ("that jacket and coat don't look like a girl who struggles")—he has since deleted the tweet, but seems to have a history of taking clandestine photos of women at work. And losing former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, of all people, tried to say that Ocasio-Cortez had stumbled in a reference to the number of “chambers of government” in one of her videos.
What we know from this, other than the fact that Sarah Palin should see one of the several movies made about her historic election gaffes, is that the establishment is watching. And they’re worried. They likely can’t imagine what it would be like to communicate with constituents without the mediation of TV advertisements, paid consultants, or form letters.
Politicians have used social media before, but it’s always felt forced, or gimmicky. The immediacy of these new Instagram-literate political representatives makes politics seem more “real” than they have been before—that is, relevant to the lives of the majority of Americans—instead of a game that elites play and for which the rest of us brace ourselves. Say goodbye to the “belfie” and hello to the “C-selfie”—that’s a C-SPAN reference.
