When Donald J. Trump criticized Hillary Clinton last Tuesday for playing the "woman's card," Zach Wahls, a 24-year-old Clinton supporter, thought a lot about the insult.
Then early on Wednesday morning, partly inspired by a tweet suggesting how the Clinton campaign could capitalize on Trump's comments, Wahls had an idea: He wanted to create a deck of cards featuring powerful and influential women.
Is the Clinton campaign selling woman cards yet? Greeting cards, maybe, or a deck of playing cards with famous women on them.
— Adam Smith (@asmith83) April 27, 2016
He ran upstairs from his mothers' basement to awaken his sister, Zebby, a 21-year-old illustrator and painting student, who had already been sketching Clinton. The former secretary of state became the deck's ace and a new sketch of Beyoncé, who'd just released Lemonade, was an obvious choice for the queen.
Wahls consulted friends with Kickstarter experience and raced to buy the domain names womancard.com and womancards.com. He was surprised and pleased to learn that both were still available. (The Clinton campaign has since offered its own "woman card" to financial supporters.)
Together the siblings, who live in Iowa City, Iowa, filled out the rest of their deck with notable American women like Red Cross founder Clara Barton, civil rights icon Rosa Parks, Stonewall era transgender activist Sylvia Rivera and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (The King).
"It was important to us that we had a deck that looked like the women who’ve shaped America," says Wahls, referring to women of diverse backgrounds and experiences. "If it’s not intersectional, what’s the point?"
They launched The Woman Card[s] just before noon on Thursday and met their $5,000 goal within four hours. With 29 days left to go, the project has more than 800 backers who've pledged more than $35,000.
"It was important to us that we had a deck that looked like the women who’ve shaped America."
The proceeds will mostly cover production costs, though both of the Wahls plan to use some of the extra funds to pay for personal expenses, including a trip for Zach to attend the Democratic national convention in Philadelphia as a pledged delegate for Clinton. Backers will receive rewards that include a signed deck of cards and full-size prints of the illustrations.
Wahls says he and his sister welcome suggestions for a second edition deck that would feature 52 women, and have already received hundreds of recommendations, including labor activist Dolores Huerta, former NASA engineer Margaret Hamilton and former labor secretary Frances Perkins, the first woman ever appointed to a U.S. cabinet position.
Wahls didn't expect the project to be such a hit, though he's gone viral once before. In 2011, he spoke about being raised by two mothers before the Iowa House of Representatives as legislators considered banning civil unions in the state. The video of his impassioned speech has been watched millions of times.
"The biggest thing I’ve learned from that is that you really have no control," says Wahls. "The Internet decides what goes viral ... but I did know that a big component is being in the right place in the right time."
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TopicsSocial MediaDonald TrumpElectionsHillary ClintonPolitics
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