Brianna Wu, Running For Office In MA, Called Out 'The Boston Globe' For Using A Gamergate Photo In Their Coverage & Got Real About 'Dressing Professionally’

Brianna Wu, a congressional candidate in Massachusetts’s eighth district, called out The Boston Globe on Tuesday for the photo they chose to depict her against other candidates. While the men running against her were shown in suits, the picture chosen of Wu featured her in a t-shirt with dyed hair. 

While The Boston Globe has since changed their imagery, Wu took this as an opportunity to start a conversation about dressing professionally. “I have dressed professionally every day for 2 years to present myself as a serious candidate,” said Wu. Wu also said that The Boston Globe has “a responsibility to represent [her] accurately to voters.” 

Author Diane Hessan added to the thread that she reached out to The Boston Globe about the controversy. Hessan noted that it was a team of women who worked on the article, and The Globe actually called Wu to personally apologize. Wu responded saying that while she doesn’t think that the imagery was meant to be malicious, its important to recognize our biases. “Studies show women only have a 2 PERCENT less unconscious bias against other women than men,” said Wu.

By trade, Wu is a software engineer and the founder of Giant Spacekat, a video game development studio.

According to The New York Times, Wu rose to popularity in 2014 after Gamergate, the campaign to harass women in the gaming industry, turned her into a target. She decided to run for Congress because she felt that there was nothing she could do besides get involved herself after President Donald Trump’s victory. 

“I look at my own party, and I see that we’ve taken this technocratic, academic, elitist liberal class philosophy as far as it can go, and we got our butts kicked — and I don’t know what else to do other than get involved myself,” Wu told The Times.

Her Campus has reached out to Wu for comment.