Heels and Holsters: The Complicit Intimacies of Police Wives

• In Event: 50451 - Right-Wing Misappropriations of Feminism

Abstract

Enormous research efforts are devoted to studying U.S. police. One important demographic has been largely overlooked: police officers’ wives. Some use their role to develop personal brands on social media and reach tens of thousands of followers. In this article, I conduct a qualitative analysis of content (images and text) from three police wife influencer accounts (each with over 15,000 followers) posted between 2020-2023. Their posts weaponize the figure of the child (Edelman 2004), emphasized femininity (Connell 1987), whiteness, and their perceived vulnerability to make pro-police claims that help to shape the public image of policing. This research points to an important theoretical and methodological direction: studying how individuals who are linked to certain groups and institutions primarily through their sexual and familial relationships rather than official affiliation can parlay allegiances in intimate life into participation in the public sphere. Police wives provide one case of these complicit intimacies. Future studies may consider how public performances of “private” life can be mobilized to promote ideologies with broad implications for society at large.

Author

• Adora Lily Svitak, Yale University