Melania Trump’s critics expose feminism’s blind spot

If you haven’t been keeping up, it’s okay to judge a woman on her appearance again. The latest public figure to learn about feminism’s part-time hours is Melania Trump. The First Lady and her husband were photographed on Tuesday as they made their way to the scene of Hurricane Harvey in Texas. But the talking point wasn’t the recovery operation or whether Donald Trump had finally managed to put on a presidential demeanour — it was Melania’s dress sense. For she had flung on a pair of slinky high heels and a bomber jacket for the journey. 

The First Lady may as well have directed the floodwaters personally, such was the consternation her footwear inspired. ‘Melania Trump, Off to Texas, Finds Herself on Thin Heels’ screamed a headline in the New York Times’ style section. In the article, Vanessa Friedman, the paper of record’s chief fashion critic, snipped:

‘When is a shoe not just a shoe? When it is a pair of very high, needle-thin heels worn by the first lady of the United States on her way to the site of a natural disaster.