Anna Duggar And Hillary Clinton Are The Same, According To Bristol Palin

Anna Duggar and Hillary Clinton have one thing in common, and this is confusing Bristol Palin — now she can’t tell the difference between the two women.

According to Cosmopolitan, Bristol Palin recently shared a Patheos blog post asking her fans what makes Anna Duggar different from Hillary Clinton. Both women stayed with husbands who cheated on them, but Bristol believes that Anna’s decision to stand by her man is receiving more criticism because of her “evangelical Christian faith.”

“Why are people so looking down on Anna Duggar for choosing what she thinks is best for her family, when Hillary Clinton stuck by her man?” Bristol Palin wrote.

Sarah Palin’s daughter went on to admit that she was still in grade school whenever the Monica Lewinsky story was dominating the headlines, so it’s highly unlikely that she was gauging the public’s reaction to the scandal — she probably wasn’t reading any think pieces about Hillary’s decision not to divorce Bill Clinton or listening to any water cooler banter about the former first lady’s marriage. However, Bristol says that it “seems like” Hillary’s decision was celebrated at the time.

“I don’t understand why Anna is receiving so much criticism (where our opinions are really not needed),” Bristol mused. “I was only 7 or 8 when Bill Clinton’s sexual affairs were being made public, so I don’t remember much about it. But it certainly seems like Hillary was empowered by her decision to stick by Bill, wasn’t she?”

“What is the difference? Is it Anna’s evangelical Christian faith?”

As Cosmopolitan writer Prachi Gupta points out, Hillary Clinton most certainly was criticized when she decided not to end her marriage, and her decision was lambasted for years after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. In 1999, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called Hillary a “counterfeit feminist” who “let her man step all over her.”

According to Slate, MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry shared her thoughts on Hillary Clinton in 2009. She said that Hillary “made an appalling choice as a feminist—not that she stayed with her husband, but that she did not speak out in defense of a barely-older-than-teenage girl who was harassed by her husband… And then she used that experience to create sympathy for herself.”

Anna Duggar is also being criticized for staying with Josh Duggar after he admitted to sexually molesting his younger sisters and cheated on her (possibly with an adult film star). However, Anna certainly isn’t being criticized because she’s killing her feminist cred. Instead, many writers are expressing their concern that Anna Duggar feels like her only viable option is to stay with Josh, and her fear of leaving him is a direct result of the “Evangelical Christian faith” that Bristol Palin is trying to defend.

As the Hollywood Gossip points out, Anna Duggar “was homeschooled in a very religious household until age 16 and received no further education.” The only life the mother of four knows is that of a stay-at-home mom, and she’s likely been taught that a woman’s place is in the home. Anna’s parents are allegedly encouraging her to stay with Josh Duggar because they think divorce looks bad, and a source close to the Duggar family told People that Anna isn’t even “allowed to get mad” at Josh because “it’s not godly for a woman.”

Many of the articles about Anna’s situation have been sympathetic towards her. Salon writer Rachel Kramer Bussel even wrote a piece titled “Stop judging Anna Duggar: Concern trolls want punishment for Josh, not what’s best for his wife.”

“There’s a difference between criticizing the culture Anna Duggar grew up in and the mindset that may lead her to believe she has no choice but to stay, and criticizing Anna herself,” Bussel wrote. “The former tackles the broader system, the latter placing individual blame on a woman who’s likely struggling to figure out what her life will look like from now on.”

Duggar fans worry about what kind of future Anna would have if she did decide to leave Josh. They worry that she wouldn’t be able to find a job and support her four kids, and they worry about her losing her self-identity because so much of it was tied to being Josh’s wife. No one had these concerns about Hillary Clinton when she was making her own big marriage decision — they knew she could take care of herself.

So yes, Bristol Palin, Anna Duggar and Hillary do have something in common, but the circumstances surrounding their situations are very different. And unlike Anna, Hillary couldn’t depend on you to come to her defense by saying that she was only being attacked because of her faith.

[Image credits: Spencer Platt/Getty, 19 Kids and Counting Facebook]