Media doesn’t bother seeing if shoe fits, prematurely wails on first lady’s footwear
As heroic rescue workers risked life and limb to save imperiled Texans from Tropical Storm Harvey, snarky reporters and childish Twitter trolls shamed first lady Melania Trump over her choice of footwear yesterday.
As she and President Trump boarded Marine One on their way to tour the aftermath of Harvey, the first lady was photographed wearing — gasp! — high heels.
“For her trip to Texas, the first lady offered up a fashion moment instead of an expression of empathy,” slammed Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan, who dedicated 750 words to the manufactured controversy. “Heading off to Texas, she looked dressed to view a natural disaster from a distance, from on high, not up close. Her ensemble implied that people’s personal stories would be ferried to her after they had been vetted and tidied up.”
“Well if @FLOTUS toes get wet in the floodwaters at least her heels should remain dry #sensiblefootwear,” tweeted BBC North America editor Jon Sopel.
“Someone tell Melania she might want a pair of rain boots,” snarked CNN contributor Amanda Carpenter.
The hysteria seemed all the more ridiculous when the first lady emerged from Marine One after landing in Texas wearing white tennis shoes. So she never wore the heels at all while actually viewing storm devastation.
But by then some in the media had already worked themselves into a tizzy, attempting to portray the shoe fiasco as yet another Trump White House failure.
“What kind of message does a fly-in visit from a first lady in sky-high stilettos send to those suffering the enormous hardship, the devastation of this natural disaster?” griped Vogue columnist Lynn Yaeger. “And why, oh why, can’t this administration get anything, even a pair of shoes, right?”