Ladies, we need to talk about Melania
Polly Vernon asks why America’s First Lady makes it so difficult for women to like her
How do you solve a problem like Melania Trump? On the one hand, you’re a woman who fancies herself a noble and righteous feminist, the type who would never judge another woman for her personal choices, let alone hold her responsible for the actions of her husband… On the other, OMG, how could anyone stand to be married to Donald Trump. How? And what does she look like?
Many of us have given in to the impulse to mock the First Lady, for her too-perfect hair, for her possibly surgically-altered face, for the exaggerated hyper-glam of her wardrobe (with particular reference this week to the sky-high heels she wore to visit hurricane-hit Corpus Christi on Tuesday, oh and also? The faux-utilitarianism of that silken bomber jacket…)?
Most of us know darned well that this sort of behaviour plays into the sexist construct that compels women to sneer at each other’s physical appearance, because that sort of thing reassures men that we really are all in competition with one another for the attention of literally any of them… And yet, at the same time, what sort of a person does wear four-inch heels to visit a disaster zone?*
Melania Trump confounds a lot of feminists. How do we approach her? How do we talk about her? How do we think about her, feel about her? Do we damn her, or do we pity her? If we make a victim of Melania, is that better – or worse? If we tweet in virtuous tones of how concerned we are for her well-being, if we wear Free Melania T-shirts to the Women’s March, are we helping her? Or are we disempowering her? Patronising her, reducing her, dismissing her agency? Or is she to be written off as nowt but an epic gold-digger, the grabby trophy of a brash businessman with an awful lot of dosh?
We could do this, I guess – except that we know this line of reasoning is not terribly feminist, that it’s more properly a form of slut-shaming (something feminists take a very dim view of, when it’s applied to… well, us). In which case: do we anoint her a feminist icon in her own right, as a triumph of self-actualisation (from a lowly child of Communist Slovenia, to FLOTUS, in four decades)? That could just about be perceived as an act of empowerment – couldn’t it? Honestly: I don’t know.
I do know there’s no point in seeking guidance from the celebrity and fashion community. They are not proving extremely helpful. Take the swathes of fashion designers who, in the direct aftermath of Trump’s inauguration, announced they would not be dressing his wife as an act of protest. There was no real indication that any of them had even been asked – certainly no indication any of them would stop her buying their clothes for full price if she attempted to (which presumably, they couldn’t). So what exactly was the end goal, there? Was the hope that Melania – denied mountains of freebie frocks – would finally be spurred on to berate her husband over his policies? (If I were feeling especially cynical, I might point out that half the designers who “denied” Melania were somewhat obscure, and quite possibly more interested in the business of self-promotion, than political activism.)
Dolce & Gabbana kicked off a micro-stink in June, when the label produced a range of $245 T-shirts emblazoned with the legend #BOYCOTT, a gesture intended to infuriate all those who’d called for the brand – which unapologetically persisted in dressing Melania Trump – to be boycotted.
As for the celebrity feminist commenters, we non-celebrity feminists routinely consult for a steer – they tend toward lazy denouncements of Melania. Take Chelsea Handler, comedian, talk show host, shining beacon of outspoken, potty-mouthed femininity reimagined, a woman I really, really like; who once said she had no interest in interviewing Melania, because she “can barely speak English”. Ignoring that Melania speaks five
languages, is it just lil ol’ compromised-feminist me who thinks this could come off as a tad racist? Is racism OK when applied to Melania?
Melania Trump has, without question, committed some dubious acts; the sort of thing one can denounce without simultaneously undermining one’s attempts to prop up the feminist cause. She dismissed Trump’s leaked paean to the possibilities of uninvited pussygrabbing, as “boy talk”. Her speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention was alleged to have plagiarised Michelle Obama’s 2008 address to the Democratic Convention. But her major crime, as far as most of us are concerned, is to stay married to Donald Trump.
Can we hold Melania responsible for her husband’s actions; for his response to Charlottesville, for the precarious situation in North Korea, for his pardoning of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio?
I genuinely don’t know. Maybe we can. Maybe, in certain instances, women can be defined purely as extensions of their husbands. But if that’s the case with Melania, we should probably stop giving her footwear a right slagging, while hoping we can pass it off as satire.
*It turned out: not Melania Trump. The heels were worn for the purpose of boarding Airforce One for the trip to Corpus Christi; by the time she disembarked, Melania had switched them for bright white sneakers, and a baseball cap which read FLOTUS.