Gypsy-Rose Blanchard is not just an internet sensation. She’s a victim and a felon. If you occupy the same spaces online as I do, surely you know that by now.

For those of you who are scratching your heads in confusion, you’re not alone. Although Gypsy’s story was well known in the true crime community, people with less macabre interests weren’t as looped in. Now, though, Gypsy-Rose seems to be an incredibly relevant figure. Why?

It begins with the case itself. Gypsy-Rose had a role in killing her mother, but that is not the intriguing bit of the story by a long shot. Her mother, Clauddine, or “Dee Dee” Blanchard, had something called “Munchausen Syndrome,” which is a fancy way of saying that she lied for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Now, everybody tells the occasional tall tale. I can recall times in my childhood when I exaggerated the toll of a light cough to miss school. I’m sure most of us can. I’ve grown up since then, as I assume you have. 

Munchausen typically manifests through untruths about one’s own health, but this was not the case for Dee Dee. That would’ve been too simple. Dee Dee instead fabricated lies about her daughter’s health. Everything from cancer to muscular dystrophy to some rare, unknown chromosomal disorders — according to Dee Dee, Gypsy-Rose had it. If Dee Dee was anything, it was committed to the lie. She had Gypsy-Rose sit in a wheelchair hooked up to various tubes whenever they left the house, she regularly shaved all of Gypsy-Rose’s hair off, and she even went as far as forging birth certificates to make her appear younger. On top of the way Dee Dee had presented her daughter, she also had extremely invasive medical procedures forced upon her, for example, the removal of her salivary glands. If she did not go along with her mother’s whims, she was subject to physical violence.

Unfortunately for Dee Dee, her life of control and deception was not a sustainable one. In 2012, Gypsy-Rose began chatting online with a Wisconsin man named Nicholas Godejohn. This relationship swiftly took a sexual turn. It is true what they say about online relationships moving quickly because, by 2015, the two began planning out a way to kill Dee Dee Blanchard.

On June 9, 2015, they did it. Godejohn was the one who inflicted the stab wounds, all 17 of them, but Gypsy-Rose let him into the house and provided him with a knife. Because of this, Godejohn will spend the rest of his life in prison, whereas Gypsy-Rose Blanchard was released on parole on December 28, 2023.

Such a unique case unsurprisingly picked up traction and intrigue. Multiple television shows based on the story have been conceived and created. One of them, The Act, even stars the girl from The Kissing Booth. Good for her (?) In terms of popularity, this case naturally holds no candle to cases like Ted Bundy’s, but as far as murder seems to go, the murder of Dee Dee Blanchard is relatively mainstream. Another unique aspect of the situation is that most people at least somewhat agree with the actions of the killers, mostly Blanchard’s instead of Godejohn’s.

So what now? She’s out, and the public’s perception of her is largely positive. She’s published a book. She’s done interviews with CNN and Good Morning America. I urge you to listen to some of them. As bad as it sounds, I think that I, and many others, expected her to be a lot more… awkward, considering her life experiences, but she doesn’t come across that way. To think about the hurdles that she had overcome to become an effective communicator is inspiring. I begin to ask myself who wouldn’t be at least a bit charmed by her.

Perhaps that’s why she has over nine million followers on TikTok, with over 57 million cumulative likes. Comments from all kinds of internet users express their support and excitement about this new chapter of growth in Blanchard’s life. Other commenters express concern and uncertainty about this traumatized woman becoming a pop culture figure. While I understand where this might come from, I don’t think that media attention is inherently bad in this situation. Blanchard has the freedom to speak her mind and her truth; a luxury that she could not afford before now. Not only can she speak freely, but she can also speak to an audience. That can be something powerful.

Now some of you may be thinking of some of her questionable statements, specifically the time that she said that “the ‘D’ is fire” in reference to her and her husband’s sex life. If her saying this makes you uncomfortable, that is completely okay, but I don’t think that her talking about her sex life makes her stupid. In this situation, our perceptions of her as an abused child can get in the way of seeing her as she is in the current day. 

Blanchard is an adult woman engaging in consensual acts with her husband. After decades of repression, perhaps it is liberating for her to talk about intimacy. And yes, perhaps in the future, she will regret her openness about this aspect of her relationship, just like anybody else might. This alone should not be something that makes us think less of her. As high school students, we are living out rather average teenage lives. Blanchard did not get this privilege. It is important to remember that being a person comes with major learning curves, but that does not mean that Blanchard does not deserve a voice.

From being horrifically abused to living in prison for 8 years to now being somewhat of an influencer, not a single aspect of Gypsy-Rose Blanchard’s life has been normal. Now that there is a spotlight on her, people expect certain things. Many people may expect her to immediately be a very strong advocate for a plethora of issues. Let’s let her breathe first. That bridge can be crossed at a later time. Although I believe that it can be positive and liberating for Blanchard to have a following, that can only be true if we as an audience have some decorum.