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By Sarada Peri
Recently, Miller Center Professor Barbara Perry wrote about Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s decision to publicly document her egg freezing journey. Perry thoughtfully reflected on the gendered landmine AOC faces, and the reality that women in politics – and everywhere – face a reproductive double standard. While affirming AOC’s right to make that choice, Perry wondered whether speaking so openly about her reproductive health will make the issue fair game for other female politicians and cement the notion that babies are a disqualifying factor for women running for president.
These are all valid concerns that I share. The probability that we could hear a question on the debate stage – AOC told us she was freezing her eggs, how about you? — is no doubt greater than it was last year and, admittedly, chilling.
Unfortunately, there is no way for a female politician to avoid gendered scrutiny and double standards. They are the price of entry into a contest that an American woman has, astonishingly, never won. Given our 24/7 media environment, we no longer live in a world where one can head off attention by simply not talking about the subject. Indeed, for someone like AOC, the fraught questions were baked in from the start. She is unusually young for a woman plausibly considering a presidential run, is approaching the exact age when reproductive questions become an issue, and she is already the personification of clickbait for the rabid right wing. Speculation about her reproductive life will only continue — and no evasion or silence on her part will deter the pursuit of such a rich content vein.
One way to handle the inevitable chatter is to seize your own narrative, which means accepting that, in 2026, a politician’s communication cannot be neatly divided into personal and professional categories. Once upon a time, a member of Congress could share a carefully staged glimpse of family life through a holiday card and then retreat behind press releases and floor speeches. Those days are long gone.
Part of what makes AOC such a gifted political communicator is that she has developed a familiar, almost intimate relationship with her enormous audience. We can debate whether politicians are performing by definition and whether their jobs allow for genuine authenticity. But whatever the reality, people feel like they know her because she appears in their social media feeds as an unrehearsed version of herself, talking about things they actually care about in language they actually use.
And she’s not just knitting on TikTok. I mean, she is knitting on TikTok. But she also did a livestream where she answered queries about climate change while assembling IKEA furniture. She documented her new member orientation over Instagram stories. She used a Vogue makeup/skincare routine video to talk about the different expectations women face. She shared on TikTok how she asked a Republican colleague why he supported cuts to rural hospitals. All of this helps her do maybe the single most important job of an elected official: Build trust.
That doesn’t mean that someone seeking higher office must reveal their medical procedures or reproductive plans. For plenty of folks — though, importantly, not for AOC — that would be out of character. Nor does anything about this discussion excuse, say, Senator Mitch McConnell from concealing his health status, which has mysteriously kept him away from the Senate. Those are different things. But anybody who runs for office must figure out how they’re going to show up as a real human being and not some airbrushed, over-consulted walking press release.
Voters are used to a particular electoral cadence. Every two or four or six years, candidates emerge, showing up in ads and in grocery stores, shaking hands and kissing babies and performing the work of running for office. It doesn’t exactly make you feel like they are truly invested in you. Politicians like AOC who build a deeper level of support spend time cultivating that relationship every day, so that come Election Day, nobody is confused about who she is, what she believes, and whether she’s spent any time listening to her constituents.
There is always a risk in being so open. Those who genuinely believe that mothers of young children have no business holding political office can twist her story to support their claims. But her willingness to speak honestly about a difficult, deeply personal subject can build a more resilient kind of political trust than any campaign promise ever could.
One of the most potent lessons from the past few election cycles is that successful political communicators tend to blur the line between politics and culture. Politics is toxic and the average person doesn’t want to live there. To reach ordinary people, you have to meet them in the cultural spaces and conversations they’re already inhabiting. People form their impressions of politicians while watching, reading, listening to, and talking about things that don’t present as political.
AOC is a congresswoman from New York, but she is also a massive cultural figure with a huge online following who has now used that presence to destigmatize egg freezing. She may be sharing her experience in part to help other people enduring fertility treatments, whether egg freezing or IVF, feel a little less alone.
Maybe watching a member of the House of Representatives injecting herself with hormones will alienate some. But the people most likely to be put off by her disclosure are unlikely to be ones she risks losing. And in a sly way, she is teaching. Explaining the egg-freezing process requires explaining the underlying biology, which even some elected officials have misunderstood.
There was a time when people encountered political leaders mostly within the limited context of politics. Now, they see them constantly in their feeds, jumbled with friends, news, celebrity gossip, influencers, and culture writ large. If we are worried about declining trust in government, it is worth paying attention to leaders who communicate in ways that allow them to be less transactional.
None of this is an endorsement of AOC for president. Perry is also right to be frustrated by the confounding burdens female politicians face. I certainly am. But there is a lesson in how AOC has handled those burdens: Even after the initial uproar, she kept going. Her persistence in the face of criticism revealed a degree of conviction. Rather than sidestep an issue people were always going to use to define her, she chose — in a deft act of political communication — to broadcast it on her own terms.
Sarada Peri served as special assistant to the president and senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama. She was a speechwriter at three Democratic National Conventions and, in 2024, she co-managed the convention writers’ room, shepherding 200 speeches from conception to delivery.