Monica Lewinsky is one of the most known American activists. Mostly due to a scandal concerning her and Bill Clinton!
Though her life and career is more than the scandal! Let’s find out some facts and trivia!
- Her full name is Monica Samille Lewinsky
- She was born on July 23, 1973
- She is an American activist, television personality, fashion designer, and former White House intern
- President Bill Clinton admitted to having had what he called an “inappropriate relationship” with Monica Lewinsky
- This happened while she worked at the White House in 1995- 1996
- The affair and its repercussions (which included Clinton’s impeachment) became known later as the Clinton- Lewinsky scandal
- As a result of the public coverage of the political scandal, Monica Lewinsky experienced public trauma
- She gained international celebrity status
- She was subsequently engaged in a variety of ventures that included designing a line of handbags under her name
- Being an advertising spokesperson for a diet plan
- And working as a television personality
- Monica Lewinsky later decided to leave the public spotlight to pursue a master’s degree in psychology in London
- In 2014, she returned to public view as a social activist speaking out against cyberbullying
- From which she personally suffered when publicly ridiculed on the Internet regarding the scandal
- Monica Lewinsky was born in San Francisco, California
- She grew up in an affluent family in Southern California in the Westside Brentwood area of Los Angeles and in Beverly Hills
- Her father is Bernard Lewinsky
- Who is an oncologist and the son of German Jews who escaped from Nazi Germany and moved to El Salvador
- And then to the United States when he was 14
- Her mother is Marcia Kay Vilensky
- She is an author who uses the name Marcia Lewis
- In 1996, she wrote her only book, the gossip biography, The Private Lives of the Three Tenors
- During the Lewinsky scandal, the press compared Lewis’ unproven “hints” that she had an affair with opera star Plácido Domingo to her daughter’s sexual relationship with Clinton
- Monica’s maternal grandfather, Samuel M. Vilensky, was a Lithuanian Jew
- And Monica’s maternal grandmother, Bronia Poleshuk, was born in the British Concession of Tianjin, China, to a Russian Jewish family
- Monica’s parents’ acrimonious separation and divorce during 1987 and 1988
- This had a significant effect on her
- Her father later married his current wife, Barbara
- Her mother later married R. Peter Straus
- He is a media executive and former director of the Voice of America under President Jimmy Carter
- The family attended Sinai Temple in Los Angeles
- And Monica attended Sinai Akiba Academy, its religious school
- For her primary education she attended the John Thomas Dye School in Bel- Air
- She then attended Beverly Hills High School
- But for her senior year transferred to, and graduated from, Bel Air Prep in 1991
- Following high school graduation, Monica Lewinsky attended Santa Monica College
- A two-year community college
- She worked for the drama department at Beverly Hills High School
- And at a tie shop
- In 1992, she allegedly began a five- year affair with Andy Bleiler
- Her married former high school drama instructor
- In 1993, she enrolled at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon
- She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1995
- With the assistance of a family connection, Monica Lewinsky got an unpaid summer White House internship in the office of White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta
- Monica Lewinsky moved to Washington, D.C. and took up the position in July 1995
- She moved to a paid position in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs in December 1995
- Monica Lewinsky stated that between November 1995 and March 1997, she had nine sexual encounters in the Oval Office with then-President Bill Clinton
- According to her testimony, these involved fellatio and other sexual acts, but not sexual intercourse
- The affair led to pop culture celebrity for Monica Lewinsky, as she had become the focus of a political storm
- Her immunity agreement restricted what she could talk about publicly
- But she was able to cooperate with Andrew Morton in his writing of Monica’s Story
- Her biography which included her side of the Clinton affair
- The book was published in March 1999
- It was also excerpted as a cover story in Time magazine
- On March 3, 1999, Barbara Walters interviewed Monica Lewinsky on ABC’s 20/20
- The program was watched by 70 million Americans
- Which ABC said was a record for a news show
- Monica Lewinsky made about $500,000 from her participation in the book and another $1 million from international rights to the Walters interview
- But she was still beset by high legal bills and living costs
- At the start of 2000, Monica Lewinsky began appearing in television commercials for the diet company Jenny Craig, Inc.
- Also at the start of 2000, Monica Lewinsky moved to New York City
- In February 2000, she appeared on MTV’s The Tom Green Show
- Later in 2000, Monica Lewinsky worked as a correspondent for Channel 5 in the UK
- On the show Monica’s Postcards, reporting on U.S. culture and trends from a variety of locations
- In March 2002, Monica Lewinsky, no longer bound by the terms of her immunity agreement appeared in the HBO special, “Monica in Black and White”
- In it she answered a studio audience’s questions about her life and the Clinton affair
- Monica Lewinsky hosted the reality television dating program, Mr. Personality, on Fox Television Network in 2003
- Where she advised young women contestants who were picking men hidden by masks
- By 2005, Monica Lewinsky found that she could not escape the spotlight in the U.S., which made both her professional and personal liIn May 2014, Lewinsky wrote an essay for Vanity Fair magazine titled “Shame and Survival”
- In July 2014, Monica Lewinsky was interviewed in a three- part television special for the National Geographic Channel
- It was titled The 90s: The Last Great Decade
- In October 2014, she took a public stand against cyberbullying, calling herself “patient zero” of online harassment
- In October 2017, Monica Lewinsky tweeted the #MeToo hashtag to indicate that she was a victim of sexual harassment and/ or sexual assault
- But she did not provide details
- In September 2018, Monica Lewinsky spoke at a conference in Jerusalem
- She had been diagnosed with post- traumatic stress disorder due to the experiences involved after the relationship was disclosed
- In May 2018, Monica Lewinsky was disinvited from an event hosted by Town & Country when Bill Clinton accepted an invitation to the even
- In 2019, she was interviewed by John Oliver on his HBO show
- There they discussed the importance of solving the problem of public shaming
- And how her situation may have been different if social media has existed at the time of the traumatic events of the 1990
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