Published when Donald Trump had not yet been elected President of the US for a second time, there was still a mild interest in the life of a woman who, like other first ladies before her, did not adopt much of a public role and was not seen standing by her husband’s side at events. Now that she is the First Lady again, she has to face even more intense public scrutiny, more so when her husband is a favourite of cartoonists and meme-makers. Her huge hat that came in the way of a kiss was a meme for days.
When Melania Knauss married the twice-divorced, 24 years older Trump in 2005, the Slovenian immigrant was a successful model, still she was called a gold digger by the tabloids. She writes, with a note of anger in her words, “Countless stories about my childhood have been published, yet they often miss the mark, painting a bleak and inaccurate picture of my upbringing.
In truth, my childhood was filled with happiness, beauty and positivity, far from the typical narrative of a girl raised in a communist society.” She quite rightly points out that as an international model with top fashion brands, she had enough of her own fortune and “could have easily captured the attention of numerous celebrities if I had so desired.”
It is a bit difficult to reconcile her opinion of a warm, charming, energetic and loyal man with the rabid MAGA politician portrayed in the media today, but it is possible she saw in him what he hides from his followers, who want an aggressive leader today.
When Trump won his first presidency in 2016, Melania chose to live in New York with their young son Barron, instead of becoming a White House hostess like her predecessors. This led to her being called an enigma and also wild speculations about the health of her marriage. It does take an outgoing and somewhat thick-skinned woman to live up to the expectations of what conservative Americans expect from the First Lady. With no political or even social ambitions of her own, Melania can decide how she wants to live her life.
Tammy Vigil, an associate professor of communications at Boston University and author of a book on Michelle Obama and Melania Trump, has been quoted in bbc.com as commenting, “She’s been unique among modern first ladies. She does things the way she wants to do them, as opposed to the way she has to do them. But she fulfils the base expectations.”
She does appear with a smile to stand by her husband’s side on important occasions but seldom makes speeches. She is also capable of airing a point of view that differs from her husband’s. Like her pro-choice stance in her memoir, where she writes, “Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate her pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”
She is usually elegantly dressed in public, so she shocked celeb watchers by wearing a jacket that had the words, “I really don’t care, do you?” when visiting a migrant child detention centre in 2018. She, reportedly, opposed her husband’s policy to separate migrant children from their families, and he dropped it.
In a rare press conference, she announced “Be Best,” an initiative that will focus on cyber-bullying and opioid abuse among children. The announcement comes when her popularity is taking an unexpected upturn. In a recent CNN poll, 57 percent of respondents said they had a favourable impression of the First Lady, which is up 10 percent from where she was in January. This is, reports CNN, “the biggest number Melania Trump has experienced in any CNN polling, and higher than any favourability rating earned by President Donald Trump in CNN polling history going back to 1999.”
She broke tradition and posed for an official portrait in a tuxedo, for which Vogue Magazine’s Hannah Johnson hit out at her. “The choice to wear a tuxedo—as opposed to a blazer or blouse—made Trump look more like a freelance magician than a public servant,” she wrote, “It’s perhaps unsurprising that a woman who lived in a gold-encrusted penthouse, whose fame is so intertwined with a reality-television empire, would refuse to abandon theatrics—even when faced with 248 years of tradition.”
Maybe the American public is so puzzled by Melania Trump that they are buying her book and keeping it on the bestseller list – even if it is written in breathy, teenage prose and leaves out more than it reveals. The book ends with the assassination attempt on Trump. Before adding a strange letter to the American people, she ends the book with, “Our nation stands at a pivotal moment; We have a choice: to be torn apart by violence, hatred, and division, or to unite in a spirit of love, kindness, and shared humanity. It is critical that we choose the latter before it is too late.” Hope her husband reads this too!
