Usha Vance: The Ultimate Pick-Me Girl
If you have spent any time online, especially in the hallowed halls of Tik Tok or Instagram, you have surely run across the term ‘pick-me girl’.
By definition, a pick-me girl is a woman who tries to stand out from other women to gain male attention, approval, and validation, often at the expense of other women.
Perhaps you know someone in your orbit who unfortunately falls into that category. Someone for whom the male gaze is the ultimate prize. Male acceptance the north star by which they navigate. For better or worse (usually worse), these women will willingly subjugate, demean, and debase themselves in the process.
If you are still unfamiliar and need a glaring example, then look no further than Trump’s running mate’s wife, Usha Vance.
If ever a woman radiated pick-me girl energy, it would be her. All the while, I do note, radiating sad acceptance of her lot when she does not think she is being watched/photographed. Zero sympathy points awarded. In fact, I deduct 30 points from Slytherin.
Here is some background about Usha. It is impressive … until it isn’t.
Usha is the daughter of Indian immigrants. Her mother is a Biologist and college provost. Her father is an engineer. By all accounts Usha excelled scholastically, received an undergraduate degree from Yale, a Master’s from Cambridge and graduated from Yale Law School in 2013. That is where she met Vance. Up until 2014 she was a registered Democrat. But the deals with the devil were too good to pass up and that changed (had to change) when she began clerking for boof King Brett Kavanaugh when he was in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She then went on to clerk for Justice Roberts.
She and JD got married in 2014. She continued her legal work while having three children — two sons and a daughter. In fact she worked right up until this week when she quit her law firm to complete her contract with Satan and maximize her pick-me girl energy by traveling to Milwaukee where her repugnant husband was named Trump’s VP choice.
I shared this morning that while I typically do not believe that any single demographic is a monolith, I do, however, make one exception. Trump supporters and voters are indeed a monolith. They are a monolith of abject stupidity, rampant self-loathing, glaring blindspots in which they do not see how they are currently actually targeted if not promised to be targeted should he get back into the oval, and people who are willing to sell their souls. It is a monolith of racism, bigotry, hatred of the other, willful ignorance, and a lust for vengeance against anyone they can blame for their personally acquired lot in life. The monolith encompasses misogyny, lying like breathing, and glee at turning this nation into some Christofascist, Handmaid’s Tale wet dream.
This is a woman who should know better. She has been educated at the highest levels, was raised in and is still of the Hindu religion, was solidly open minded and progressive in her thinking, her actions, even her choice of spouse until he made his deal with the devil. But then she told her scruples and dignity and integrity to fuck off when she went to work for Brett Kavanaugh. And now she is willingly being used as a visual token by a campaign that openly disparages anyone of color, who has promised to deport at the highest numbers ever seen, and who has no use for someone like her — brown, with a funny name, a child of immigrants, and not Christian — once they get what they want. The ultimate sellout and pick-me girl. She has aligned herself with the absolute worst elements in our society and is now actively helping to steal rights from other women in order to get what she wants. So I don’t care how many sad faces the photographers captured of her at the convention last night when she didn’t think she was being watched, she is there under her own steam. And the locomotive she is driving is dragging democracy down into the sewer with her.
What I find so very sad is that this woman not only has two sons by Vance, who are being raised in his new, repulsive ideology, but she also has a daughter who she is now willingly working to strip bodily autonomy and basic human rights from. It is completely shameful.
Vance is on the record saying women who are beaten should stay with their husbands. That he will work to completely outlaw abortions — NO EXCEPTIONS. So if his daughter is brutally raped someday and gets pregnant, too bad. If she marries an abuser? Stick with it, girlie. Cover those bruises with long sleeves and thick make-up. Education? Pfft.
That piece gets me, too. He is completely onboard with Project 2025 (now being rebranded as Agenda 47, even more dangerous) which demonizes education, especially collegiate (hello, Yale Law School — hypocrisy, party of 2, your table is ready), and would eradicate the Department of Education. The woman is degreed from Cambridge and Yale, for cripe’s sake. How does she square that with what she now represents?
How does she square any of it, especially her husband, who once called Trump a “moral disaster”, a “total fraud”, and “America’s Hitler”? A husband who is now a willing toadie, lickspittle, and power whore, funded by Peter Thiel, who would see 50,000 federal employees fired and replaced with sycophants who would pledge allegiance to Trumpism, not the Constitution.
She is standing by a husband who once Tweeted about Trump, “Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. Lord help us,” after the “Access Hollywood” tape was published in 2016.
And this one: “There is no moral equivalence between the anti-racist protestors in Charlottesville and the killer (and his ilk),” Vance wrote in a deleted-tweet.
He has liked Tweets that said Trump committed “serial sexual assault,” calling him “one of USA’s most hated, villainous, douchey celebs.”
All of that to this: “I’m proud to be one of his strongest supporters in the Senate today and I’m going to do everything in my power to ensure President Trump wins in November — the survival of America depends on it.”
No, the death of this great experiment called the United States of America depends on it. Installing fascism depends on it. Enacting laws that violently target my trans son depends it. The complete stripping of female bodily autonomy depends on it. The elevation of their warped Christianity as a national religion depends on it. The further lining of rich donors pockets depends on it. The complete destruction of the rule of law depends on it. The eradication of Social Security, military benefits, overtime pay — all depend on it. The 900+ pages of their virulent playbook being enacted depends on it.
Usha is a learned woman. Vance brags about her absorbing 1,000 page books in mere hours. I refuse to believe she is not up to speed on what her husband has fully embraced. It is, in fact, his embrace of this heinous manifesto that gained him the recommendation of the Heritage Foundation to Trump for him to be the VP pick.
I feel nothing but disgust. No sympathy. She has watched as her once thoughtful, balanced, seemingly decent husband has turned into a pawn of the richest (Thiel), and has taken a dive headfirst into the sewer of Trumpism. Judgey? Sure, whatever. But I can tell you that if my measured, decent, progressive husband began spouting this level of dangerous bullshit, embracing measures that vilify our son, strip autonomy from our daughters, place me, my parents, and my children in danger as targets for our ethnicity, and endanger the future of this country? There would be a very public repudiation of him, a dumping of his shit on the front lawn, a bonfire of it all, and the fastest divorce you have ever seen. My integrity is not for sale. And my love has limits. And that limit is when someone proves they have no humanity.
Not so, Usha. Last night saw her fully dive into the MAGAt sewer with him. Nothing she does now will change that. She is a willing pawn, a token, a pick-me girl who is openly working against women, children, the elderly, the LGBTQIA, and this very nation.
Honestly, the only person with more pick-me girl energy than her right now? Her pathetic, greedy, power hungry sellout of a spouse.