Pop-political icons are that politicians are becoming popular culture icons. Popular culture can produce and reinforce stereotypes but also create ‘spaces’ of resistance. Hence, popular culture can negatively impact a range of aspects of politics. Existing research recognizes the critical role of popular culture in general and for creating and spreading material like memes, not at least about gender.

This study set out to investigate the usefulness of women as pop-political icons in the form of memes. Popular culture discourses both reveal and reshape citizens’ understanding of feminist politics and female political figures. This study aims to contribute to this growing research area by exploring women politicians in popular culture as memes in the American Election 2020.

I choose two examples: Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. First, search as research is made of the keywords “meme,” “Kamala Harris”/” Elizabeth Warren.” Then, spreadability is studied in social media and legacy media (well-established online news outlets and the online presence of traditional mass media). After that, I, with computer-aided simple web-based tools, select memesPage 87with high spreadability for close readings. It is not the task of this paper to examine full generalizations of meme spreadability. However, in this selection criteria, the opposing memes were overwhelming. I, therefore, kept on searching for the supporting memes to appear. These were made visible in legacy media news outlets.

The close readings are guided by Vasby Anderson’s (2018) two archetypes of women in popular culture: 1)“Bitch” is powerful women as threatening and unfeminine, trapping political women within the double bind between femininity and competence, 2) “Badass” recognizes women’s capacity to lead but does so in a way that deflects attention away from the persistence of sexist stereotyping and cultural misogyny. These archetypes are becoming more complex and varied in the new global milieu (ibid.). In the study, I use bitch, badass, and supporters or opposers.

In the results, I distinguish the narrative construction of supporting memes vs. opposing memes. Kamala Harris’s ethnic origin and her gender are somewhat differently constructed for Elizabeth Warrens. While Harris can be considered a badass both for support or position (“I’m speaking”), she is also degraded to be not even a bitch but an inauthentic non-person by opposers. In the Warren case, there are also memes of inauthentic claimed origin. However, the focus is on her meme- makers being mocked in the so-called “Meme Wars”. Another opposer meme is on her smiling face as a mask for Hillary Clinton, illustrating the linking of elite gender to bitch. Warren was also an object for the memetic harassment of the snake emoji. Only after Warren stepped down, supporting memes surfaced on the theme “She will persevere”.

A conclusion is that making fun of is making relatable (supporter) or unrelatable (opposer). An implication of this is the possibility that memes engages audiences in playful political critique but can also be politically distancing. The women politician meme narratives seem to engage and expose misogyni in yet another form.