It’s official, Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner are getting divorced and Jonas’ PR team appears to be working overtime to make him look as bad possible. Prior to the official word of their split coming from Turner’s and Jonas’ respective Instagram accounts, rumors because to swirl about Jonas and Turner, and specifically about their relative abilities as parents.
The 27-year-old Game of Thrones star was labeled—by way of anonymous “sources” giving quotes to extremely misogyny-friendly outlets like TMZ and The Daily Mail—as someone who “parties” a lot and that Jonas would rather be home with his kids. The 34-year-old singer of the Jonas Brothers fame drinks on stage and has been on tour for a while but sure, he’s the one who would rather be at home.
What this extremely obvious PR campaign is meant to do is paint Jonas in a better light than his former wife. No one asked for an explanation but Jonas’ team sure was quick to make it clear that he’s a good dad, with the clear implication being that she’s a bad mom while they’re getting divorced. Smells fishy if you ask me. And fans are quickly recognizing this as an unsubtle PR-driven smear campaign.
The reality is that this has always been a classic Hollywood PR move when a couple breaks up. The difference now is that fans and the general public have begun seeing through the bullshit and recognizing when someone is trying to put a PR spin onto something. Instead of simply putting out the joint statement and letting their divorce go on in private, this PR move from Jonas’ team makes it seem as if there is something he’s trying to hide in this fight—or at the very least, that he’s a pretty scummy person in general.
Don’t shame the mother of your children to make yourself look better
It seems obvious that on every level, this should be a private matter. Yes, they’re celebrities and have to tell the press and fans what is happening but that doesn’t mean the shaming of Sophie Turner has to take place. For the most part, we all would have simply been upset the two didn’t work out and then carried on our merry ways without having strong feelings about either party. This PR stunt, though, has caused a lot of us to go from not caring to now being actively angry at Jonas.
We also can’t ignore the deep misogyny at play here. Jonas’ strategy is all to make himself look like a good guy, an innocent party in this. His PR team, and by extension he himself, is framing Turner as a bad mother, which is, in many ways by many people, viewed as the ultimate indefensible sin for a woman. All this is doing is instantly making everyone suspect of Joe Jonas.
This is really a prime example of what not to do while getting divorced in the public eye. The blatant attempt to control a narrative and to specifically control a general perception of a woman is so gross and it’s genuinely heartening to see so many people see straight through it.
(featured image: Lionel Hahn/Getty Images)
