Melania’s Accidental Self-Portrait – by Clare Coffey

Melania
by Melania Trump
Skyhorse, 256 pages, $40

THAT TRUMPS, UNTIL VERY RECENTLY, was a mainstay in the Styles section is a fact—embarrassing to different parties for different reasons—that Melania Trump’s new memoir won’t let us forget. The book’s photographs, which form a significant part of an already slim volume, include a glamorous maternity photo shoot by Annie Leibovitz and a Vogue wedding cover story. In Melania’s story, Anna Wintour herself flew with her to Paris to help her choose the wedding dress.

These images come from a cultural landscape that has since been significantly rearranged, but which is impossible to memory hole entirely – one in which the primal male love interests Sex and the city was characterized (positively) as “the next Trump.” The brand was once inescapable as aspiration, not just as a mass of negative polarization.

You can assume that Melania is its author’s attempt to survive the current fall from grace by inflating the soft landing bag of her own brand. The book announces itself with drama (and a tribute to Tom Ford’s $140 coffee table book): a monochrome black dust jacket from which the sharp white letters MELANIA shine. Faint strains of Kraftwerk play when I look at it.

Visually, the book suggests a bid for icon status. Icons like Cher or Big Dom don’t need last names (or, for that matter, the embattled husbands who bestowed them). Icons are luminous images, disturbing and potent in their ambiguity, like a biblically accurate angel. They may provoke hatred, but they transcend judgment. If you’re an icon, for every screenwriter making TikToks about white female empowerment, there’s going to be someone else calling you some unprintable and adoring variation of “mom.”

Arresting, bizarre images were already one of the most memorable features of Melania’s tenure in the White House: debonair villain clothing; her cryptic “I really don’t care, do you?” jacket; her menacing, sculptural, Christmas-in-the-disco decorations. So if you liked Melania the photo but loathed Melania the first lady, Melania may look promising. Perhaps this is her opportunity to show us how the various sharp points we saw during her husband’s administration belong to the same continuous edge of her personality. Is it finally time to #freeMelania, spill the tea, don the blue Tiffany gloves and embrace ominous red cone Christmas?

THIS IS UNFORTUNATELY FALSE HOPE for two reasons.

The first is that once you get past the cover, you’ll find that the book contains disappointingly little drama. Melania‘s treatment of Melania is consistently closer to a first-draft cover letter than a juicy tell-all. Consider this passage, which I chose at random:

During the first half of 2017, I split my time between New York, Washington, and Mar-a-Lago, managing my duties as First Lady and supporting my husband’s administration. From waking Barron up in the morning to attending rallies and meeting with foreign leaders, every moment was filled with purpose and excitement. Juggling two full-time roles in different locations was exhausting but rewarding and I embraced the challenge wholeheartedly.

The whole book reads like this.

The second reason is that the memoir is obviously a campaign book.

During Trump’s presidency, the role of softening, translating and visibly advising him fell, somewhat disconcertingly, to Ivanka. Melania has taken over, it seems. Her account of the border controversy, in which her deep concern for detained children helped prompt an executive order overturning family separation, seems primarily an attempt to burnish her own legacy. Her comments on abortion, leaked before the book was published, creating a sense of ideological distance from her husband while imbuing him with plausibly deniable pro-choice sympathies (while repeatedly taking credit for the overthrow of her pro-life supporters. Roe v. Wade). Again, ambiguity is potent: the motivated reader can read him as they prefer.

But Trump comes in for his fair share of outright praise and defense, a decision that’s hard to analyze within the confines of the distancing. And why, aside from the pressures and needs of a campaign, would you make the dizzying attempt to paint Trump as an observant family man, the leader of a recognizable nuclear ménage and the hero of their shared love story?

One of Melania’s early gripes with the press comes from her courtship: “They couldn’t see our 24-year age difference. The gossip columns labeled me a ‘gold digger’, insinuating that my love for him was motivated solely by his wealth.”

This is probably fair enough. Perhaps no man is so devoid of qualities that he is married exclusively for his money. But the accusation itself is more important here than the original incitement. Melania may be a campaign book, but attentive readers will see the places where the personality of its author could not be suppressed.

IF YOU HAVE AN INCREDIBLE INTEREST in public figures, Melania was always an interesting specimen – a model who seems stiff and repulsive on camera; a signatory to the cold but relatively moderate trophy-wife bargain who appears to have gotten a lot more than she thought she bargained for. As a personality, Melania steps right in Melania only here and there, between droning lists of heads of state who were met with sense, duties fulfilled and actions correctly performed.

We see her for a moment in the introduction to her family, which must be Melania. On page 10 we hear about the famous Raka onion.

When (Melania’s grandparents) returned to their village of Raka, nestled in the peaceful countryside just south of Sevnica, Anton wasted no time in pursuing his passion for farming. It was here that he would continue to breed a culinary masterpiece – the famous one healthy saebulaor Raka onion, a sweet red variety that quickly became a favorite among the Slovenian people.

No ghostwriter or campaign consultant would insert this. Why should they care healthy saebula? But Melania, it seems, is the kind of person who can be proud of an onion. I want to hear more! I want to sit down with her over an ice cold bottle of plum rakija and have her tell me all about the family onion! Unfortunately, she immediately leads us on.

From rocks like this, an indirect self-portrait slowly emerges. What we are going to see is a mind like a set of gears, a mind that likes sports cars and industrial design and names like Citroën and Chanel; who derive satisfaction from duties laid out in well-marked grooves and rewards that you can see and touch.

It’s also a good mind to hold a grudge.

The first notable grudge comes just as the young Melania has won an Italian modeling contest. (“And … I won.”) Distracted by the shouting photographers, she gives the envelope containing her prize money to one of the pageant organizers to hold for her. When she gets her things back, the money is gone.

As a recognized studio, Cinecittà should have maintained a higher standard of professionalism. The loss of the money itself was insignificant compared to the breach of trust that occurred. . . . A week later, an organizer contacted me and invited me to return to Rome and collaborate with their studio.

“We want you to come back,” he said. But my answer was a resounding “no”. I had no desire to associate with persons of such a deceitful nature. The lesson I learned from that experience is far more valuable than any material reward. Such dishonesty has no place in my life and never will.

There’s something almost admirable (or at least, if you’re of the nag team, very relatable) about the bizarre tenacity that would push Melania to go out of her way to name-drop in print over a thirty-year-old injury , throwing a leaden note into what is meant to be a triumphant montage of Melania’s steady ascent. But she clearly can’t help herself. The first grudge is another Raka Onion – a moment where she emerges as a distinct personality, and in some ways a likable one. Like Taylor Swift, Melania can’t forget what it felt like to be on a precarious ascent, and can’t forgive the people who stepped on her toes.

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However, the RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ONION AND VAG quickly becomes unbalanced. The same basic anecdote resurfaces. Melania climbs the hill of excellence with unmatched professionalism, integrity, talent and prudence. Melania’s trusting nature betrays her to an unforeseen setback at the hands of treacherous or incompetent others. Melania learns her lesson, rises above and lives to fight another day. Melania’s caviar based (yes) skin care line (don’t bother trying to find a sample on the internet, I’ve already looked) is going up in smoke because of her business partners waive. In Chapter 8, “Why Wasn’t the Speech Investigated?”, her speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention becomes the focus of a plagiarism scandal thanks to speechwriter Meredith McIver’s incompetence (again, Melania is willing to name names). The media is constantly spreading lies about her.

For the reader, the effect is a growing uncomfortable discomfort, akin to listening to an acquaintance tell you at length how much she “hates drama”. That’s not to say her grudge is undeserved. An incident from the 2016 election, where nude photos from an out-of-print magazine were circulated in an apparent attempt to humiliate her and portray her as a tacky creature of demimonde unfit for the White House, was an extremely ugly piece of work.

Her two-step argument about the photos provides another glimpse of personality. First, she defends herself with the rationale of art.

“The female form was once revered and honored in Western culture. Historically, artists produced magnificent paintings and sculptures that exalted the beauty of the feminine figure. Nudity was a medium through which humanity was exalted and celebrated.” Fair enough. But as if unsure of this line of defense, she falls back on the territory where she feels most comfortable: not inherent, but socially negotiated value.

“To me, these images were artistic and tasteful, appropriate for a publication like Maxwhich showcased many well-known supermodels.” This is Melania’s home turf: prestige, name recognition, brand. It’s no wonder she was drawn to modeling, which is a pure career of sorts—a job whose only product is an image of glamour, whose sole purpose is to get and stay at the top among the people who produce images of glamour, it’s no wonder she was drawn to Trump.

Petty vendettas, grubby profiteering, servile aspiration, brands without products: this is Melania Trump’s world, which is the world of the rich and fashionable. The Trumps have now openly shown how well the skills inculcated in that world will serve you in the theoretically separate world of politics. I suspect that it is for this visible blurring of the two worlds that so many ugly realities escaped containment, and not for their crimes and misdeeds, that they will not be forgiven by either.