Melania 2.0

I can either put my head in a mine shaft for the next four years or I can attempt to navigate these weird and disturbing days like a researcher studying contaminated microbes. It’s probably going to be a mix of the two.

So to that end: Melania. She has released an official White House Portrait and excuse me if it doesn’t give off health-insurance-company-CEO vibes (alive and not yet assassinated). It smacks of Donna Karan ads from the 90s with her In Women We Trust campaign. Which, I kid you not, imagined a woman as president in the White House. But even Donna didn’t have the stretch to imagine the woman might have been Black. A bridge too far even for the far-off dewy years of the late twentieth century. What were we thinking…a woman as president and not a First Lady? I’m reaching for my Jackie O pearls in astonishment.

Tell me the image below doesn’t draw a straight line from then to now. In looks, in the clothes, the comparison is spooky. It helps that the model has an uncanny resemblance to our First Lady to boot. But art is not imitating life as much as this ad campaign thought it prescient to present us this fiction. Back in the day, it was well within the realm of possibility to believe that this notion of a woman behind the Resolute Desk was not that much of a stretch. And now the delusion has well and truly caught up with our idealistic selves.

In Women We Trust. (But not if they’re a trad wife.)

We now know that the US cannot bring itself to vote for a woman, let alone a Black woman. So in that void, I present to you the First Lady: Melania 2.0

Would that she was a software update and we could skip this version and wait for a better AI agent to take her place. I am striving to reach a point of acceptance for Melania and her ilk but I’m failing spectacularly. I once was a naive young thing and believed that women were at least a muddled but committed voting block. Ya know, the usual stuff: women’s health, equal opportunities for all regardless of race, creed, financial circumstances, good access to public schools and healthcare etc. I had this wacky white woman optimism that at least we could all stick together when it truly mattered. Instead, here we are with Melania staring down at us with who knows what intent. Her image, with its don’t-fuck-with-me glare, rattles me. It says I’m cosplaying because let’s face it, my qualifications IRL would not get me an entry job at a local bank but I’m married to the prez and you better not forget it.

And because she is who she is, we don’t know what influence she may yet wield and its effects on the huddled masses. I long for those bygone days where we deluded ourselves into thinking that she was our secret weapon. At least we’ve been forewarned.

There are no safe words.

In this latest image, the hands are positioned in readiness for the punishment she’ll be meting out to her minions if her needs are not met.  I’m looking at you and my gaze WILL rip you a new one. She is the madam of a BDSM franchise (formerly known as the USA) and she has marked her territory as our Mistress-in-chief. Bow down or feel the wrath of my Louboutin’s inflicting pain in ways you cannot yet imagine. The spike atop Washington’s monument is not in shot by accident.

You like that? You want more..? Oh I got plenty where that’s coming from…