Today, Chelsea Clinton lives happily as the chair of the Clinton Foundation and works as an author. She’s married to banker Marc Mezvinsky and has three beautiful children. Her life today is a stark contrast to the time she spent in the White House as the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and former First Lady Hillary Clinton. Despite all she went through, she never lived her life with regrets or bitterness. Instead, she channeled her compassion and began a career in public services after dabbling in the financial world. She once told The Telegraph, “I’ve tried really hard to care about things that were very different from my parents,” adding that she couldn’t bring herself to care about money.
Chelsea Clinton was bullied as a child
Having a prominent father also came with pitfalls. Before he became president, he was the governor of Arkansas, and when Chelsea was younger, she endured hate and harassment from those who disagreed with his policies. She once revealed in an interview that in second grade, older kids trapped her in a locker to see if state troopers would rescue her. She consciously decided not to react to her bullies and has become resilient over the years.
She told The Guardian that it wasn’t her nature to “retaliate with crass language or insult someone personally.” Donald Trump Jr. bullied her by reposting a New York Post article that claimed Chelsea would ask Kamala Harris for an ambassadorship if she came into office. In response, she said, “Must be the same people who said I would run for Congress, get married years before I actually did, and have an alien sibling.”
She was mocked on TV
Going through puberty and adolescence comes with many challenges, but imagine going through it on the world stage? When she was 12 years old, her father was elected president, and people in the media thought it was ok to make fun of her. Rush Limbaugh was one of those people, and the inauthentic apology he offered was, “I don’t need to get laughs by commenting on people’s looks, especially a young child who’s done nothing wrong. I mean, she can’t control the way she looks.”
SNL did the same, often mocking her in their skits. Julia Sweeney got pushback for playing a teen Chelsea with frizzy hair and braces, while Mike Myers and Dana Carvey dressed as Wayne and Garth from “Wayne’s World,” said that “adolescence has been thus far unkind” to Chelsea. The criticism remains that kids should be off-limits from parodies, as it can negatively impact their self-esteem.
She never had privacy in college
When Bill Clinton was in the White House for his second term, Chelsea Clinton started her first year at Stanford University. While her family attempted to stay low-key on orientation day, they stuck out like a sore thumb, leading the crowd to cheer and make a scene. While other college students got their first taste of independence, Chelsea was constantly trailed by Secret Service agents. The agents even had their own room in her dorm. One student who spent time there at the same time as Chelsea said that they attended a forum session led by the agents, who were explaining their jobs and training.
Despite her lack of anonymity, she still succeeded at school. Even so, Chelsea has a strong belief that every child deserves privacy, even if she doesn’t agree with their politics. Speaking of the attention Barron Trump received when he went to NYU, Chelsea said, “I think he’s a private citizen. I feel so strongly that if you are a private citizen, you have an unimpeachable right to privacy and I think the media should leave him alone.”
Chelsea survived through her father’s life-changing scandal
1998 wasn’t a great year for the Clinton family. Bill Clinton was embroiled in lawsuits and sexual harassment allegations, which culminated in an impeachment hearing. Despite ending in an acquittal, Clinton confessed to having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern at the time. The scandal dominated headlines for months and cast judgment over the Clintons’ marriage. While Chelsea Clinton’s parents taught her to stand strong in the face of the scandal, she was still heavily impacted by this personal betrayal. One biography wrote that she went to the campus hospital at her school repeatedly for severe stress-induced stomach pain. While many children would have cut off ties with their father in the face of this scandal, both Chelsea and her mother, Hillary, forgave Bill. Today, the entire family remains close.
