Flashing lights. Constant media coverage. Millions of followers. All of these attributes may be prescribed to a well loved actress, a brand new artist or, rather, a 32-year old woman who just got out of jail for second degree murder.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard is the name on everybody’s screen. Whether it’s her public irreverent comments towards her husband’s anatomy or her near unwatchable interview on “The View,” Blanchard is getting millions of views on any given social media platform.
Why is that? Why has a victim of such terrible crimes become such an American icon? Having been called “mother” and “queen,” two of the most flattering internet names, after only a month of being released from prison, the internet has clearly taken a strange obsession with Blanchard.
Blanchard is a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a form of child abuse that involves a caretaker making false claims of illness or disease. As a result of this abuse, Blanchard played a vital role in the murder of her mother.
Blanchard was sentenced for 10 years in prison, and within that sentence, the Blanchard case sparked the public interest.
“The Act,” released on Hulu to critical acclaim, detailed the life of Blanchard from her childhood to the death of her mother. It was a cultural sensation that ignited the somewhat invasive true crime community to obsess over Blanchard.
She garnered sympathy for true crime aficionados, so much so it produced a fanbase for the convicted killer.
They made countdown videos for Blanchard’s release, which raked in one million likes. The creation of these made her release from prison an event for spectators to gawk at.
In the span of two weeks after her release, Blanchard has risen to pop culture icon status. With a plethora of viral tweets claiming Blanchard as a “gay icon,” social media users have begun to view her with an ironic, humorous lens rather than a sympathetic one.
Her newfound popularity sparked the interest of the paragon of American trashiness: TMZ. Whether it’s about her husband’s peculiar online behavior or her favorite Taylor Swift song being “Karma,” Blanchard has become a tabloid staple.
Clearly, these articles are milking every detail of Blanchard to get attention for their own publications. When tacky publications throw in buzzwords like “Taylor Swift,” you’re bound to attract the only fanbase that has True Crime beat for voyeurism: Swifties.
Everyone just needs to take a step back and remember one thing: Gypsy Rose Blanchard is a real person and a victim. She needs to stop being treated as a fictional character for true crime consumers to obsessively focus on or as a cash cow for crass tabloids. Where other people see a harmless internet joke, I see a person who deserves a normal life.
I am tired of constantly seeing her name attached to a mindless thought spoken into the internet void. The true crime community thinks everything this woman says should be analyzed and discussed publicly on their page.
Blanchard is a normal person trying to recover from the trauma she has endured for the majority of her life, and the constant attention is only preventing her from doing so.
Do away with the jokes, the headlines and the videos. Let Blanchard live the quiet, normal life that was robbed from her.