Viral photographs of former President Donald Trump's running mate J.D. Vance wearing a long blonde wig while at Yale Law School sparked a hilarious drag name inspired by a viral rumor that he had sex with a couch: Sofa Loren.
Social media has been flooded with jokes and memes suggesting that Vance once engaged in a sexual act with couch cushions. The viral claim that Vance wrote about having sex with a couch in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, is untrue.
On July 15, the day Vance was confirmed as Trump’s running mate, X user @rickrudescalves claimed that Vance might be the first vice-presidential pick to have admitted in a New York Times bestseller to "f***ing an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions (Vance, Hillbilly Elegy, pp. 179-181)." Vance never describes anything of the sort in his book.
On Sunday, a photo of a man who looks like Vance dressed in drag went viral on X, formerly Twitter. The image appeared to depict a man in a blonde wig, wearing a large necklace and a floral skirt. The photo's source, Travis Whitfill, claimed it was taken by a Yale student in 2012, during the time Vance was attending law school there.
Whitfill shared the image with podcast host Matt Bernstein, who then posted it on social media, writing:
“I have obtained a photo of JD Vance in drag while at Yale Law School.”
The Daily Beast was told that the photo was "from a group chat of Vance’s fellow classmates and is from a friend of a friend," and that it "was grabbed from Facebook and was taken at a Halloween party.”
You can see the photo below.
Travis Whitfill
Later, Bernstein shared that he'd received another photo of Vance that you can see below.
Travis Whitfill
And shortly afterward, one X user dropped the perfect drag name for Vance, who introduced the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” a bill intended to criminalize facilities that offer gender-affirming care to minors, and has promoted baseless Republican attacks that drag queens are "groomers" who sexualize children.
They said:
"Yo, [J.D. Vance] you look slay mama. What's your drag name? Sofa Loren?"
You can see the post below.
The name plays off not just the couch rumor but on the name of Hollywood's most enduring stars: Sophia Loren.
Loren, an Italian actress, became an international sensation starting in the 1950s with roles in films like The Pride and the Passion (alongside Frank Sinatra), and Houseboat (with Cary Grant).
Although Loren's status as a sex symbol was firmly established, she proved herself to be one of the finest actresses of her era, winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Two Women and garnering a multitude of awards in her native Italy and elsewhere for performances in films as diverse as Marriage Italian Style, A Special Day, and The Life Ahead.
It was clever as can be—and people couldn't get enough of it.
Vance is of course not the only Republican politician to be called out for wearing drag despite running on an anti-LGBTQ+ platform.
Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee was forced to respond to a resurfaced photograph of him dressed as a woman in his high school yearbook as he prepared to sign an anti-drag show bill into law. Lee said comparisons between the performances targeted by the legislation and an old yearbook photograph of him in drag were "ridiculous."
The photograph, from a 1977 Williamson County high school yearbook, shows a young Lee dressed as a woman, alongside girls dressed in suits and ties. He could not point to any specific instances in which drag queens had ever sexualized children, only saying it is imperative to protect young children from "obscenity" even though Tennessee already has obscenity laws on the books.
And perhaps most notably, gay former New York Republican Representative George Santos' drag past under the name "Kitara Ravache" while living in Brazil came back to haunt him after a Brazilian drag queen named Eula Rochard, who knew Santos under the name "Anthony," told reporters that Santos was a "poor" drag queen who could only afford a simple black dress when he started.
Rochard added that Santos was nonetheless "always a liar" and a "dreamer" who wanted to be Miss Gay Rio de Janeiro.
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