I logged off of Twitter for a couple of healthy hours on Friday. By the time I opened the app on Saturday, my timeline was full of words I did not understand. âNancy Reagan Throat Goat?â âNancyâs got that gawk gawk 3000?â I had clearly missed some crucial breaking news, a classic Friday News Dump that spawned memes all weekend: former First Lady Nancy Reagan, allegedly, gave the greatest blowjob in Hollywood back in her acting daysâand she gave a lot of them. Allegedly.
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The catalyst for this cursed information, I am told by colleagues who swiftly caught me up on this important news, was a tweet from a modest-lifestyle influencer and conservative podcaster Ben Shapiroâs sister Abigail Shapiro, who has various social media channels called Classically Abby. Shapiro tweeted a photo of Madonna reclining on a bed with one boob out, and the Reagan family gathered for a wholesome photo where Nancy stands in the middle dressed like a Whereâs Waldoâs grandma cosplay. âThis is Madonna at 63. This is Nancy Reagan at 64. Trashy living vs. Classic living. Which version of yourself do you want to be?â
Abigail Shapiro is a YouTuber and social media personality who talks about how cool and fun it is to cover up and be a âclassic womanââsomething Nancy would have loved, coincidentallyâwhich would be fine if Abby wasnât also deeply into shaming people who are more comfortable with their bodies and sexualities. Some of her stances include âLeggings Are A Problemâ because theyâre distracting to men, wives should ask husbands to praise them about how well they cleaned their home, and texting is ruining dating.
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The intention of Shapiroâs tweet was seemingly to portray Madonna as a sex-craved maniac and Reagan as a buttoned up, classical wife that women should aspire to (itâs of course OK to be whatever and whoever you want to be!) In a stroke of satisfying irony, however, the internet unearthed a very juicy tidbit about Nancyâs personal life, pre-White House, in response to this tweet from hell. As spotted in June by the Washington Babylon, an unauthorized biography of Nancy published in 1992 noted that Nancy âwas renowned in Hollywood for performing oral sex...not only in the evening but in offices. That was one of the reasons that she was very popular on the MGM lot.â Another source is quoted in that book as saying Nancy tagged along with friends on trips to Arizona; her guy friends would pick up girls at Arizona State University, and Nancy âentertained them orallyâ on those road trips. A Village Voice article from 1998 also referenced the biography, and noted that Nancy âwas known to give the best blowjob in town.âThis is all to say that lots of different types of people enjoy sex, possibly have a lot of it, and might even be good at it, regardless of how they dress or their general public image.
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Motherboard has been unable to verify these stories, but this set off an entire weekend of memes, videos, jokes, tweets, etc, about Nancy Reagan allegedly being very good at giving blowjobs. The result of Abbyâs observation, and the subsequent revelation that, allegedly, the former First Ladyâs head game went crazy, resulted in some of the best jokes this terrible little app has seen in a very long time:
The memeâs lifecycle moved quickly to the schoolmarms of Twitter takes; TV writer Nell Scovell tweeted (and then deleted) on behalf of scolds everywhere: âIf you're laughing about Nancy Reagan having skills at sex, please remember this is it's a classic high school move.â Thereâs nothing wrong with being really great at blowjobs, but itâs not hard to imagine that the story, whether it was true or not, was initially shared and passed on with the intention of hurting and humiliating Nancy Reagan. But I havenât seen anyone intending to do that now that the storyâs been revived on Twitter. Being wildly good at hitting that lil' dangly thing that swings in the back of her throat, as Cardi B might say, is a real skill. But one could make the argument that it is, in fact, good and fun to shame a Reagan for her hypocrisy, considering that administrationâs contributions to the sex-negative world we live in today, including the disastrously harmful War on Drugs and the War on Porn. The 1986 Meese Report, commissioned by Ronald Reagan, spurred the political war on pornography by claiming that porn was linked to violence against women. The report has been widely discredited.
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Nancy herself held a lot of disdain for the womenâs liberation movement of the 1980s. She reportedly called the movement âsilly womenâs libbers,â hated that they wore âhot pants,â and felt that women would succeed in life if they behaved and appeared feminine. She believed that women were happiest in the home, raising children and caring for a man. She also hated poor people and people with AIDs, famously refused to help a friend who was dying of the disease. Reagan also repeatedly attacked porn. âPornography is pornography, what is there to see?â sheâs quoted as saying during one of the Q&A sessions she sometimes held about womenâs issues. âHow curious can you be? Unless, of course, youâre interested in becoming a voyeur, which Iâm not. Iâm appalled and ashamed of the motion picture industry today. Movies are attempting to destroy something thatâs supposed to be the most beautiful thing a man and woman can have by making it cheap and common. Itâs what you donât see thatâs attractive. What theyâre showing is animals.â Apparently, what happened behind the scenes on the MGM lot was fine as long as a porn director didnât show up. Decades later, some people are still confused about whether Nancy was a feminist icon or a prude, or somehow, both: in 2016 Bustle deemed her legacy âbeautifully empoweringâ because she used to be an actress before being First Lady and stood up for her choice to be a wife and homemaker, while others like Slate have denounced her rhetoric that gender inequality could simply be solved if women chose to stay in the home and settle into their societally-assigned gender roles. The Nancy Throat Goat memes get a lot more satisfying when you remember that Nancy really, actually, sucked.As of writing, the Nancy Reagan cosplay porn scene is bereft, as is the fanfic world. A void to be filled, perhaps. I have reached out to the Reagan Foundation for comment, and will update if I hear back.
