Amanda Knox Is Still Fighting To Take Back Her Own Narrative

Despite being exonerated, Amanda Knox is still living the aftermath of being convicted of the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher.

A new mother, Knox has been vocal in speaking on her experiences and the social media/press failures that caused a tragedy to become a national firestorm that was filled with sexism and manufactured sexual exploits.

Jessica Bennett interviewed Knox for The New York Times and confessed in the audio of the article that even she, someone who was in Seattle at the time and interviewing the subject, didn’t know much about the case. As a true crime fan, this is something I hear a lot about when it comes to the Amanda Knox case. A lot of rumors transformed into facts and are now forever linked to the the narrative of who Amanda Knox is and what she did/did not do.

For the record: Amanda Knox didn’t kill her roommate, the “making out” with her boyfriend at the time was exaggerated, she did yoga poses to relax but was not doing cartwheels, and her desire to buy clean underwear was seen as “lingerie shopping” by the press. All these things transformed the young woman into “Foxy Knoxy,” a parody of an over-sexed American woman.

“To this day, people are like, ‘She’s guilty, right?’” said Jonathan Martin, the investigations editor at The Seattle Times, to the NYT. “It’s amazing to me how powerful that stampede of early tabloid coverage — a lot of it leaked straight from the prosecution — was to shape the narrative.”

And that narrative is something that has made even people I see online, ten years later, bring up the idea that her being “weird” or having “strange eyes” is enough to decide that someone is guilty of taking a life. That makes her forever attached to the subject, much like Monica Lewinsky, who was also mentioned in the Times article.

How do you move forward when the tiniest details of your life can spur a tabloid frenzy? How do you get a “regular” job when your name overshadows everything you do? How do you grapple with using that name — to build a life or an identity or a career — when there is a dead woman whose tragic story is dredged up every time you speak?

“That’s the sort of trap I’m in, where I’m constantly having to be in conversation with something that I would rather not,” Knox explained. “I’m constantly told that I should just disappear.”

It has been ten years, and Amanda Knox could try to disappear, but in the end, why should she? She is not responsible for the death of Meredith Kercher. Rudy Guede is, and he has just been released from prison.

One of the great injustices of the case is that despite the DNA evidence proving Guede’s responsibility (he denies his guilt), he is not a household name. He may get to do the moving on that Amanda Knox has been unable to do.

Meanwhile, Meredith Kercher further fades into the background of her own death.

(via Times, image: Emanuele Cremaschi/Getty Images)

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