It was a race between the first dude — Bill — and the first nude — Melania. And in the end, the first nude won, appearing next to her husband in the early hours wearing a white jumpsuit straight out of Charlie’s Angels. It may seem unfair to judge Mrs Trump so early on, but judged she will be. She awaits her turn, just as Hillary Clinton once did.
How will she fare? Well, liberal American voters will want targets, and she looks like one. People are already making jokes about Michelle Obama writing Melania’s first speech, to save her the trouble of plagiarising again.
There is so much for her to live up to. She must be as elegant as Jacqueline Kennedy; as eloquent as Mrs Obama; as astute as Nancy Reagan; as political as Hillary Clinton. For an immigrant from a former Eastern Bloc country whose strongly accented English is far from perfect, who has naked photos of herself plastered all over the internet, whose face looks too obviously gummed together, and who only received her green card in 2001, it’s a tall order.
Above all, Melania must stand up to the scrutiny of America’s women as they come to terms with the reality of a president who thinks sexual assault is by-the-by and who apparently fancies his own daughter. ‘I like him the way he is,’ Melania says.
Perhaps the sisterhood will be kind; but it is more likely that she’ll be made into either a victim or an apologist. The newspapers will spend their time dredging up old stories about her. And she will never be able to escape the ghost of Hillary, the woman who almost became the first female president.
Her life will be part fairytale, part gothic horror.
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