The senator’s spouse: Gisele Fetterman finds new role, larger platform for change
Gisele Fetterman loves that people talk about the way she dresses. It has nothing to do with vanity and all to do with advocacy.
In November, while accompanying husband, newly elected member of the U.S. Senate John Fetterman, she sent social media abuzz when she wore a $12 thrifted dress under a well-worn leather jacket to orientation in the U.S. Capitol.
In a city teeming with Chanel and Talbot’s suits, Fetterman’s choice of attire could have easily been mistaken for a stunt.
But after years of advocating for upcycled and thrifted clothes, Fetterman has practically hardwired fashion sustainability into her DNA, emerging as a vocal advocate for the tenets of slow fashion.
“Fast fashion is not only extremely dangerous to the environment but women as well,” Fetterman told PennLive during a recent phone interview from her home in Braddock.
“It’s mostly women in poor countries that work in these factories in horrible conditions. I think about everything I wear. Does it hurt a woman and a family? These are economies that we should be talking about. These are things that exist and have an impact. How can we make things last?”
The 40-year-old Brazilian has long been in the public’s eye, first as the wife of a small town mayor and then as the lieutenant governor’s wife. She has graced the pages of Vogue, GQ and The New York Times, and now, has arguably assumed a far more public role with her husband’s victory in November over Republican opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz.
The platform may be more public and elevated, but she remains focused on the issues that have always mattered to her.
“I’m always going to talk about immigration,” said Fetterman, long an advocate for social issues such immigration reform, women’s and LGBTQ rights. “I’m always going to talk about communities that have been historically ignored. The number of people maybe has changed, but I was talking about those things when I was first lady of Braddock. The only things that have changed are how many people are listening and how many people it reaches.”
Fetterman has never been one to give speeches, cut ribbons and then disappear. She helped launch several non-profit ventures in her community — For Good PGH, The Hollander Project, Free Store 15104 and 412 Food Rescue — all progressive programs that benefit women and vulnerable communities, and, on any given day, she still has her hands in the workings of the organizations, welcoming the hundreds of people who benefit from the programs, and attracting sizable donations and support.
That public profile has attracted plenty of detractors, though. Over the years, Fetterman has been the target of unrelenting personal attacks, from smear campaigns over her generous eyebrows and her former undocumented immigrant status, to a racist attack while grocery shopping in Braddock. (Fetterman became a U.S. citizen in 2009).
Her higher profile has fueled more vicious and unrelenting attacks.
Right-wing media, in particular, have unleashed smear attacks, accusing her of wanting to upstage her husband in Washington, and even suggesting she is part of “the Squad,” a term coined after the 2018 Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives to refer to a handful of female lawmakers, all of whom were brown and progressive.
Fetterman is the first to point out that she is the spouse of a lawmaker — not a lawmaker herself. She is just being herself.
“I’m alway going to talk about the decisions I make,” she said. “I’m glad it connects with people. I’m just living my normal day but I’m happy it has the ability to connect with people.”
She admits it’s not always easy.
In the wake of her husband’s swearing in as senator, detractors took to social media to disparage her and the couple’s three kids, Karl, 13, Grace, 11 and August, 8. Within days a new meme tweeted out by a Republican handle was making the social media rounds, comparing the Fettermans to the iconic TV family — the Addams family, calling the Fettermans a reboot of the famous pop culture characters.
“It’s relentless,” said Fetterman, noting that she loves the fictional Addams family for their quirkiness and individualistic brand of family life.
Fetterman said she cares deeply about what people in her life think of her, but what the right-wing media has to say about her has no impact on her.
“But that’s not the problem,” she said. “The problem is that it incites violence and creates dangerous situations for me and my family, if they are putting that out and are making fun of us and comparing us to a really cool family like the Addams family …and putting that out to 5 million people who maybe are dangerous.”
At times, her daughter Grace has had to suspend her social media accounts.
Fetterman has noted a definite uptick in the number of personal attacks leveled against her and her family on social media since her husband’s election.
She routinely wades through hundreds of vile messages; and blocks and deletes them.
“It’s exhausting,” Fetterman said. “But there are dangerous people in the mix and that’s what creates that feeling that I don’t like or enjoy. It’s just not right that we just accept that. A lot of people have said you’ll grow a thicker skin. Well, I don’t want to grow a thicker skin. I like being sensitive. We should not normalize the harassment of anyone, especially not of children.”
The Fettermans have made their children the focus of their lives — even as politics has continued to play an outsize role in their lives. The children have only ever known their father to be in politics, starting as mayor of the rust-belt steel town of Braddock, outside Pittsburgh.
Fetterman has long prepped her children to the realities — and the cruelty — of politics, but she has always placed the focus on allowing them to have as normal lives as possible.
“They are so cool and laid back,” Fetterman said. “We were getting ready for John’s inaugural and they said, ‘Do we have to go to this?’ I’ve worked very hard to make politics a small part of their lives. I really care about basketball games and playdates.”
Last year, four days before the May primary, Fetterman unwittingly assumed a new role when her husband suffered a stroke and she became his right-hand person on the campaign trail, often speaking out for him as well as excoriating those who mocked him during recovery and questioned his fitness to serve.
Her efforts did not go unnoticed. She was named AL DÍA News 2022 Media Person of the Year. In a tweet announcing the distinction, Hernan Guaracao, CEO of the Philadelphia-based multilingual and multicultural media organization, called her “the extraordinary woman behind the victory in a national race for control of the U.S. Senate.”
“It was amazing and to be recognized by my people,” Fetterman said. “I’ve always said that I have two goals. To make both my countries proud. The country I came from and my adopted country.”
Fetterman plans to travel to Washington at least once a month to join her husband. The rest of the time, she will continue to do what she has been doing for the better part of 15 years or so — letting her role as a politician’s wife take a back seat to her work as a social change advocate and a mother.
She has vowed to wear almost exclusively nothing but upcycled clothing.
“Her proud disclosures of her favorite vintage finds (and, more crucially, their cost) does a lot to illustrate that affordable and easily accessible vintage clothes can belong in the most rarefied spaces,” Vogue wrote earlier this month in a piece reviewing her dress choice for the Senate swearing-in (a metallic blue dress that she picked up several years ago at a dress swap event at Carnegie Mellon).
To this day, her favorite pair of jeans are the ones she wore in high school (yes, they still fit).
“I know it takes 90 gallons of water to make one pair of jeans,” she said. “Once you have learned this information it never leaves you. I think of every pair of jeans and how much water it took and what resources it took to make them when there are so many great pieces out there for me. The best dress. The best pair of jeans. The best purse already exists. Just like the greenest house is already out there. It doesn’t have to be built again.”
Gisele Fetterman said her husband’s health continues to improve. In the meantime, she recently braved Arctic temperatures and took the kids snow tubing. Last week, the couple attended the swearing in of Gov. Josh Shapiro.
Her transition continues.
In spite of her busy agenda, Fetterman is pursuing a lifelong ambition of becoming a firefighter, a passion honed during her time in Newark, N.J., where she witnessed horrific and needless fires destroy lives and families.
“Fire for me is one of the worst ways to go,” she said. “It’s something we can prevent.”
In fact, one of her first non-profit type endeavors happened in the wake of a horrific fire in Newark. Appalled that lives had been lost for lack of smoke detectors, Fetterman reached out to several smoke detector manufacturers and got them to donate hundreds of the devices to families across Newark.
“I just couldn’t accept this idea that this could have been prevented,” she said.
Fetterman is slated to graduate from the fire academy in May, but already has assumed the role of a firefighter with River’s Edge Company 113 station in Braddock.
“It’s a childhood dream and you are never too old to pursue your dreams,” she said.
In the meantime, she continues to navigate her new role.
“It was the same kind of learning curve when I went from small town first lady to second lady of Pennsylvania,” she said. “I’m kind of finding my place, making friends, connecting with a lot of the spouses and figuring out something we can do together, but also figuring out this new role and what it looks like. I’m just learning along the way. I’m kind of always learning on the job.”
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