Why the world hates Erika Kirk as a modern widow: What does society expect from grieving women?

Widowhood tends to enter global conversations in waves—during pandemics, wars, royal funerals, or the deaths of towering public figures. In recent years, the world spoke of widows in the shadow of the Israel–Hamas conflict, the Russia–Ukraine war, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The language then was grief, loss, and sympathy. Governments promised support; communities offered sorrow.

But over the past year, the global gaze has shifted to a different kind of widow, one not draped in quiet despair, but in spotlight and strategy. Over the past year, the world has been eagle-eyed over a particular widow. Talking, not about her loss but gain, not regret but happiness and not sympathy but indifference, all to remind her that they are watching and judging. That woman is Erika Kirk, widow of

Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA.

Ever since the assassination of her husband on September 10, 2025, at Utah Valley University, Erika has suddenly jumped into the limelight. But as much as she is illuminated by the spotlight on her, people are much more focused on the shadow behind her. The question echoing across media platforms is not simply who she is, but what kind of widow she has chosen to be.

Born Erika Frantzve in November 1988 in Scottsdale, Arizona, she was raised by her mother in a Catholic household after her parents’ divorce. A political science graduate and former NCAA women’s basketball player, Erika’s early life blended discipline, ambition, and visibility.

Before meeting Charlie Kirk, Erika was making it in life or trying to, like every other woman on the internet. She began her career as a model and won Miss Arizona USA in 2012. At 17, she set up a non-profit Everyday Heroes, aiming to promote existing charitable foundations in her community.

A year after meeting Kirk, she set up a faith-based fashion brand Proclaim and also created her own religious podcast, Midweek Rise Up. She guest-starred in an episode of the Bravo reality series ‘Summer House’ in 2019. Before becoming the ideal conservative tradwife and taking over TPUSA, Erika’s last job was as a real estate agent in New York with The Corcoran Group, a real estate agency founded by Shark Tank investor Barbara Corcoran.

At 37, Erika Kirk is the CEO and chairperson of TPUSA, a conservative youth organisation co-founded by her slain activist husband. The couple met in 2018, when Kirk was interviewing Erika for a job at the Turning Point USA office. He invited her to a burger restaurant in New York and realised she was “beautiful, smart, elegant and Christ-like” which led him to ask her out on a date, leading to marriage in 2021. Together they built the image of a modern conservative family—faith-driven, politically active, homeschooling parents of two.

That image would fracture in 2025.

The first time the world saw Erika Kirk after her husband’s death was in a video filmed in the studio where he used to record his podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show. “You have no idea of the fire that you have ignited within this wife, the cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry,” she said before describing Kirk as the “perfect” husband and father. A week later she had been announced as the new CEO of TPUSA.

However, she appeared in public on September 21st, 2025 at a memorial service in memory of Kirk at State Farm Stadium in Arizona. The memorial which began with a shocking firework included her forgiving her husband’s murderer Tyler Robinson and also sharing a hug with US President Donald Trump.

Over the course of the past year, Erika has gone on tours, interviews and hosted events as the head of the right-wing organisation that has been attached to Trump at the hip since 2016.

She has firmly positioned herself as a political force rather than a grieving recluse. And that, perhaps, is the rupture.

Gender roles have helped decide much of the trajectory of a man’s and a woman’s life in advance. From being a kid to a partner, the roles and responsibilities are pretty much the same for everyone, except for the timing. While some are able to follow the script entirely others face hiccups and exits.

Widowhood is one such hiccup, the arrival of this stage in life is never expected and least, prepared for. Not because one doesn’t know what to do now, but because they don’t understand how to follow the path laid down by society already and just accept it as it is. Across cultures and centuries, widowhood has come with choreography.

For women in the Victorian era this meant donning black, two years of isolation and mourning, only leaving the house for church, and waiting for her husband’s will to reveal if she was rich or penniless.

In South Asia, especially in countries like India, women donned white clothing, shaved their heads, and depended on their husbands’ relatives. Till the 19th century, it also involved the custom of Sati, where a widow would immolate herself on her husband’s pyre, willingly or unwillingly.

African widows followed periods of mourning, cutting their hair, changing their name, along with rituals of cleansing and even becoming the younger brother’s wife in some cultures.

Islamic women practised a waiting period called Iddah of four months and ten days before considering remarriage. Widowhood has rarely been neutral. It is prescriptive. It demands silence, modesty, and containment. Erika Kirk appears to have declined the script.

Critics describe her as theatrical—bold eyeliner replacing the traditional widow’s veil, speeches oscillating between tears and laughter, high-energy events instead of hushed remembrance.

When it comes to being a widow, Erika has been teetering away from the guidelines since the very beginning. Earlier, the woman was an ideal housewife and claimed to “love submitting to Charlie.” She was the idol of every conservative household that was swayed by TPUSA. She joined her husband in his tours, home-schooled her kids and portrayed the picture of every conservative American family that followed the path of god.

However, post the death of her husband, Erika stopped ticking the societal boxes. Rather than weeping at home and greeting visitors who came to mourn, she was on a phone call with TPUSA employees, just 15 days after the assassination, ensuring them that everything was “stable and safe.”

Unlike most public personalities in politics, she was not ushered in as the new head by some established figure, she took the helm herself.

Rather than being spotted protecting her children or supporting her in-laws, she is seen crying AND laughing on stage, preaching the right path of Christianity to the American youth.

And for all of this, the last thing she needed was public support. Erika is backed by the President and Vice President of the United States of America. She has her hands and mind on an organisation that has already been set up for success and now, the only task on her hands is to ensure that people are watching.

This, she makes do in her own way. From her ‘demonic’ stare to reality TV past, from hosting an alternate Super Bowl half-time show to subtly removing her wedding photo from her husband’s bookshelf. Erika has people obsessed with everything she does, in sympathy or hate. And as an observer on the internet, you could call this a planned character assassination of a woman or a strategic plan of relevance executed by a sharp-minded widow.

For supporters, this is resilience. For critics, it is a contradiction. But is it hypocrisy or evolution forced by circumstance?

If you go into the base of Erika Kirk’s tussle with the media, it all lies in her being a female. As a matter of fact, the very behaviour she executes stands against the organisation’s aspirations for women. As per a Southern Poverty Law Center report, at a TPUSA conference for young women before Kirk’s death both he and Erika emphasised the importance of young women choosing to have families and leave the workforce. “I don’t want you to be chasing a paycheck and a title and a corner office and sacrifice such a short window” to have children, Erika told the audience, while Charlie told young women to “be clear” that the reason to go to college is to obtain an “MRS degree”—that is, to find a husband.

But Erika’s situation is different. She is now a widow, who has dabbled in numerous careers and stuck to none. The only stable and massive source of income she has is TPUSA along with her media interviews and appearances.

When asked about balancing her role as a new CEO and a mother, she herself said there is “no such thing as balance. ” “There is really no blueprint for what I’m going through. It’s really a one-of-one type of situation,” she said. Thus, even if it was not her passion for the limelight, or need for a career, she would have had to pick a job.

A video of her 2014 audition for ‘The Amazing Race’ along with her boyfriend at the time, JT Massey had the internet in shock. But isn’t it normal? Don’t numerous women, men and couples audition for reality shows in their lives? And many have a dating life prior to the one they get married to. Why is it a problem for her to have done reality TV or dated men before Kirk?

Many might argue that she hasn’t practised what she preaches, as is obvious in her speeches, but then, who hasn’t been changed trajectories in life?

The only difference is that once Erika Kirk was just another American conservative wife, confined to the worship of god and the boundaries of her home.

Now, she has taken her man’s place, his stage, his organisation. And thus, a world that wanted nothing to do with her, is now enraged at her for doing everything.

There are women being killed in Iran for protesting against the administration, in America one was fatally shot down by ICE in Minnesota and another was dragged away from her car by agents. Yet as a society or social media user, one is more obsessed with Erika Kirk.

Why? Because fighting for a woman- her rights, her freedom, is against the agenda of fighting against her- her behaviour, her operations.

Men in the spotlight have had much more scandalous lives than Erika Kirk, but they are not trending on X every week. The owner of the app itself has fourteen children from multiple different women and he can still be a “tech tycoon”. The President can have attended Jeffrey Epstein’s parties and still bravely claim to have no connection to a convicted child sex offender. But can Erika Kirk not have a life after her husband?

When a widow who steps into power, speaks loudly, and appears unbroken? That unsettles.

The backlash may reveal less about Erika Kirk and more about what society expects from women in grief.

Conspiracy theories are the life of internet users. From Erika Kirk having plotted her husband’s murder to her “demonic” stare and “fake” crying, everything sparks up a suspicion. From sociopath to psychopath, followers of different principles have dubbed her personality with every term on the internet.

While her behaviour can completely be attributed to a single woman ensuring that all her tasks are done to the T, people fixate on her usage of fireworks, crying sessions mid-interviews and connections to the who’s and who’s of America.

This is where, a curious parallel of one of the most famous American widows of the Gilded Age, Theresa Fair Oelrich comes to life. Oelrich approached social supremacy like an experienced engineer, mapping out human relations and engagements with extreme precision. In 1871, Theresa Fair was born in Virginia, Nevada in a family that had earned its wealth from mining. Her father James Graham Fair struck what came to be known as the ‘Big Bonanza’ in 1872, the largest deposit of gold and silver ever discovered in American history.

Her mother, Theresa Rooney Fair was a former boarding operator, divorced her husband in 1883, citing habitual adultery and gained custody of the couple’s two daughters while the father kept the sons.

Soon in childhood, Tessie realised that money could take you to the best of places and have you accepted in any social circle. At 18, she met Herman Oelrichs, a 40-year-old Yale-educated man belonging to an established Baltimore family.

The pair tied the knot in 1890 in San Francisco and represented the merger of new money with old prestige.

While the couple settled in their lavish mansion at the 5th Avenue, Tessie’s interests lay at Newport, where America’s wealthiest families conducted social warfare through invitation lists and elaborate parties. In 1891, she and her husband purchased Rosecliff, an oceanfront property known for its rose gardens and commissioned Stanford White to create her an ‘American Versailles’.

Constructed for $2. 5 million back then, the palace boasted of Newport’s largest ballroom and 30 rooms. Tessie’s prowess of social engineering lay bare in the fact that she manipulated her way into the triumvirate, consisting of Mamie Fish, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont and herself, controlling the access to the American high society.

Tessie was known to keep detailed records on every suitable and unsuitable guest and even had a list of her employees, segregated into good, bad and rotten.

By the 1900s, no social season was complete without appearances at Rosecliff. In 1904, she hosted Bal Blanc, which came to be known as one of the most legendary parties of the Gilded Age. She imported white swans to float in the fountains and commissioned the construction of 12 full-sized white ships to be illuminated in the night with guests dressed strictly in white. Through her sheer force of will, Tessie had established herself at the supremacy of the elite American society, all the while her marriage existed in a cracked gulf. In 1906 when Herman died, he left his entire estate to his brother, leaving Tessie to survive on the money she inherited from her father and revealing the truth about the life of a gilded queen.

If by now you have found it difficult to relate Tessie to Erika Kirk, a simple explanation might just be enough. During her childhood, Erika realised the importance of a successful life and money, just like every child raised by a single parent does.

Throughout her life growing up, she has ventured into every field be it entertainment or fashion to be able to create a name for herself in the world.

Finding love in Charlie Kirk, may have been fate, but it did help her gain a stable ground in the American social circle, possibly a dream of hers. While being Kirk’s wife gave her just the perfect amount of interaction and reprieve from social engagements, his loss pushed her to the brink.

It was a do-or-die situation, she could either cement herself and her future by rising and taking the power into her hands, or wait for the world to decide whether she would have a place in the Kirk empire or not.

Resembling Tessie’s sheer will of power, Erika has made herself a part of America’s modern triumvirate, consisting of Melania Trump, Usha Vance and herself. Together these three hold the access to America’s elite, whether you like it or not.

The fireworks, the weeping are all a part of the performances in her ballroom to keep America participating. And the alternate Super Bowl halftime show, was her Bal Blanc. Like Tessie, she appears to understand that visibility is currency and that in elite circles, power rarely waits for permission.

Widowhood today has no universal blueprint. In a hyper-digital age, grief unfolds under algorithmic scrutiny. Tears are replayed.

Outfits dissected. Body language analysed. The internet does not simply observe widows, it audits them. And perhaps that is why Erika Kirk provokes such intensity. She is not invisible. She did not recede. She did not dim. She stepped forward.

What example is she setting? To conservative purists, she complicates the narrative of submission and domestic priority. To feminists sceptical of her politics, she represents power built atop structures they oppose. To observers fatigued by performative outrage, she may simply be a woman navigating grief and survival in real time. And perhaps what unsettles the world most is this: she is neither saint nor villain, just a widow who refused to disappear.

In an age where women are still expected to shrink in sorrow, that alone is enough to ignite fireworks.