America Needs a Real Wife Guy in the White House
We’re at a crossroads in the fight for gender equity in the United States. At the same time as women are choosing to have children at a later age than ever before, the right to control our own bodies is being systematically shredded state by state. Even though single women are more likely to own homes than their single male counterparts, trad wives are proudly flooding our social media feeds with outdated ideals of womanhood. While millions of people are singing along with Chappell Roan about the “Femininomenon,” the Vice Presidential candidate for the Republican Party is on TV claiming that childless cat ladies are a threat to the very fabric of society. The cultural disconnect is dizzying.
For many of us, politics and culture offer an array of prominent couples demonstrating what a healthy and empowering partnership looks like, something we need now more than ever. I’m not talking about the stereotypical “wife” guy” who, in many cases, forms their own identity in the shadow of their wife. I’m talking about a real “wife guy,” a successful man who unabashedly supports and expresses adoration for their equal–if not more–successful wife or girlfriend.
There is no one more prominently in this role right now than Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, who gave an emotional speech at the Democratic Convention on Tuesday night, and listed all the reasons he loves and believes in his wife. If Kamala Harris is elected President in November, Doug will be the nation’s first First Gentleman, but either way, he’s already the President of Harris’ fan club. “Wherever she’s needed, however she’s needed, Kamala rises to the occasion,” Emhoff said to a round of applause at the United Center in Chicago. “And she did it for me and our family, and now that the country needs her she’s showing you what we already know, she’s ready to lead.”
Meanwhile, Usha Vance’s husband has barely mentioned her career as a Yale-educated lawyer at a white-shoe law firm following not one, but two Supreme Court clerkships on his campaign trail. Instead, the one-time Hillary Clinton supporter has really only been in the news when defending her husband’s statements on childless cat women.
Emhoff, who was a partner at a prominent law-firm with a seven-figure salary prior to Harris signing on to be Vice President, met the then-Attorney General on a blind date in 2013 and says it was love at first sight. Every year on their anniversary she plays him the awkward message he left on her voicemail at 8:30 in the morning, asking her out for their first date. Emhoff has gone out of his way to say that his support for his wife in her current role is emotional, not strategic, and that he’s here to be her best friend and partner rather than another political advisor.
Since he's been such an avid fan of his wife on the campaign trail, I’ve taken to calling him “the Travis Kelce of politics,” after a man so enamored with his girlfriend/pop icon Taylor Swift, that his NFL off-season mostly consisted of being filmed with googly eyes at Eras Tour stops across Europe.
The 2024 Olympics also boasted a treasure trove of supportive power-partnerships on display for the entire world to see. Alex Ohanian showed up to the opening ceremonies ready to umbrella caddy for Serena and their daughter Olympia. On the track, Tara Davis-Woodhall jumped into her husband paralympian Hunter Woodhall’s, arms after winning gold in the long jump, leaving viewers in tears. Even Simone Biles’ husband, NFL player Jonathan Owens, who has previously been slammed for not supporting his wife enough, could be seen in the stands every day effusively cheering her on as she won gold yet again. While we’re on the topic, Emhoff was voted “most athletic” at his Jewish summer camp, proving that even by the most rudimentary standards of adolescent boys, he was no loser.
What makes these powerful partnerships so rich at this particular moment is that the men in them are, by the most basic definition, not “losers.” They’re not “weird” (as the right has recently been labeled) or “beta cucks” (as internet trolls love to call supposedly undesirable men), but men who demonstrate many of the attributes the alt right claims to herald as the masculine ideal–like wealth, athleticism, and being romantically linked to attractive women.
It’s easy to write off the love lives of famous people as superfluous in the fight for gender equity, but this highly-public counter-programming is urgently needed. A 2022 global United Nations report revealed regressions in attitudes on gender equity across 10 countries concerning everything from when domestic violence is acceptable to whether or not women should be leaders in the workforce. Just this past March, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of the hard-fought progress being reversed by those claiming to promote ‘traditional’ values, and with Donald Trump and JD Vance–a man who said publicly that women should stay in abusive marriages–a few battle states away from reclaiming the White House, this terrifying trend is knocking at our front door.
Obviously, it should not take a professional athlete, or a tech billionaire, or the Second Gentleman of the United States to normalize straight men being enthusiastically supportive of their wife or girlfriend, but there are a lot of people who associate money, fame, and strength with success, and until that changes I’d rather them see confident men support the women they love instead of the “I hate my wife” tropes we’re so often force fed. I would much rather girls witness Travis Kelce tear up as his girlfriend performs So High School in front of tens of thousands of people than have them aspire to mimic the tradwife lifestyle popularized on accounts like Ballerina Farms.
Part of what made Joe Biden feel like a breath of fresh air four years ago was that he so clearly loved and respected his wife Jill (who has been working as a professor throughout her term as First Lady)—something that could not be said in good faith about his predecessor. And the last thing America needs right now is another inaugural lunch where the First Couple sits silently next to each other like strangers. We need the lovingly blended Harris/Emhoff family in the White House to help push back the rising tide of toxic traditionalism that Trump and the GOP are so keen to implement. A Swift/Kelce endorsement wouldn’t hurt, either.