Let’s leave Claudia Conway out of this

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Too much of the world appears to be hanging on the words of Claudia Conway, a 15-year-old girl living in a very famous family. “Kellyanne Conway’s unruly teen starts rumor that Trump is still at Walter Reed and deathly ill… and liberals believe her,” wrote one reporter at the Wayne Dupree Show yesterday (Dupree is a popular conservative podcaster and spoke at CPAC.) ELLE magazine openly wondered whether Kellyanne and George Conway’s “progressive 15-year-old daughter” could be, as tweeters have suggested, “the whistleblower of our time”. A journalist at Yahoo! News proclaimed that the warring between the younger Conway and her mother “goes beyond normal teen vs. mom battles”. And after numerous people tweeted her asking about Claudia’s safety, Kellyanne responded today that “we have Covid, but it’s clear who’s really sick.”

Kellyanne Conway was until recently a White House adviser, and has spent many hours in front of television cameras answering for Donald Trump’s actions. Those hoping to vote Trump out in November have eagerly followed the updates shared by the younger Conway on TikTok, where she has 1.2 million subscribers, presumably because they relish the idea of getting an “inside look” into the life of her controversial mother. Those on the other side of the political spectrum similarly jump to discredit the liberals who imply Claudia is an American hero — but in doing so, they often slip into stereotypes about teenage girls themselves.

Ideally, of course, no one would be paying breathless attention to a 15-year-old’s TikTok videos. The words “she’s 15” have trended periodically on Twitter since this past summer (when Conway became more outspoken on social media), as users kept reminding one another of that fact. But when someone, regardless of their age, is seemingly one of the few in a position to tell the truth about matters of national interest when the White House cannot be trusted, well – it’s understandable that people find themselves unable to look away.

In recent days, Claudia Conway revealed on TikTok that her mother had tested positive for Covid-19. This makes Kellyanne Conway one of several people who have come down with the virus after attending a Rose Garden ceremony acknowledging the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court. (Other people who have tested positive since the event include the President and the First Lady, current White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and more.) Shortly afterwards, Claudia Conway announced that she, too, had contracted the illness.

The importance of these revelations partly explains why some have been eager to see in Claudia Conway the hero they have been waiting for. Adding to that is the fact that she has her political disagreements with both of her parents (her father, George Conway, is an anti-Trump Republican who co-founded the Lincoln Project super-PAC against Trump’s reelection). The idea of a young rebel, speaking the truth from inside the politically divided Conway household, would be intriguing if this were a coming-of-age Hollywood movie — but this is real life, and the implications here are very different.

Our collective eagerness to paint Claudia Conway as a resistance icon shows how unused we are to viewing teenage girls through a lens other than the things they can do to be of service to us. It also points to a bit of a long cultural obsession with teenage girls and their purported power.

Perhaps – just perhaps! – Claudia Conway decided to speak her truth, not to rescue us from ourselves, but because she wanted to. Because speaking your mind, especially as a teenager, can be an empowering thing. Because she, like all of us, is going through 2020, and had a thing or two to say about – well, you know. Everything. Arguing with her parents and blasting their actions on social media hardly makes her unique among people her age, but the attention she’s being given for it is.

It’s worth pointing out, as I find myself doing often, that not every teenage girl has a secret agenda. I’d go as far as to say that most don’t. This doesn’t mean, of course, that Claudia Conway is incapable of wielding power and influence: just as it’s unfair to expect her to save the world, it’s also unfair to claim that her status as a teenage girl prevents her from doing so.

There has to be some middle ground between “out-of-control mouthy teen stereotype” and “Katniss Everdeen volunteering as tribute in The Hunger Games”. Perhaps – and bear with me here! – Conway is someone going through a complicated period, and experiencing it from an even more complicated vantage point. Perhaps she, like most of us, is trying to figure everything out as she goes, because there is no user’s manual for a moment like the one we’re currently experiencing.

You can listen to what Claudia Conway has to say without projecting unfair expectations onto her. You can also choose to step away from the discourse because it makes you uncomfortable. It is possible to interact with this situation with empathy and common sense. All you have to do is remember that a teenage girl is, first and foremost, a person.

Not a savior. Not a force to be controlled. A person.