Monica Lewinsky won’t change her infamous last name, even though it’s forever tarnished by her affair with former President Bill Clinton in 1998.
The one-time White House intern spoke to Porter magazine about the fallout from the scandal and re-emerging into public life after 16 years in hiding. Lewinsky, now an advocate against Internet bullying, also posed for a fashion photo shoot by photographer Bjorn Iooss.
Lewinsky tells the mag she never considered changing her name.
“No one else in the investigation had to change their name. Why should I? I use aliases at times to protect my privacy, but I’m not ashamed of who I am.”
Lewinsky, now 41, called herself “Patient zero: the first person to have their reputation completely destroyed worldwide via the Internet” at a Forbes Under 30 Summit in October.
She tells Porter she considered suicide several times and suffered from “low-level depression” while living relatively unnoticed in New York and London. She still struggles to maintain a sense of privacy: “For a long time I didn’t realize the implication of simple things, like looking for an apartment. Now when I fill out a form I have to think, ‘Will somebody go to the press with my private information?’ ”
Her most frightening time was at the height of the Clinton scandal. “In 1998 . . . I was terrified every morning for eight months that I would be indicted, then ultimately convicted and put in jail.”
Another big fear was realizing she may never be employable.
“I graduated from the London School of Economics with a master’s in social psychology,” Lewinsky says. “I had been job-hunting with little — really, no — success. It was at that point . . . that I began to realize how much damage has been done to my reputation — what had been taken from me. It was a frightening time filled with much despair, and anxiety and hopelessness.”
The full interview is in Porter, on newsstands Friday and also in a digital edition.