Melania Trump, naked and discreet
Trump's third wife, born in Slovenia, aspires to recover the traditional model of first lady
We have seen Melania Trump in unusual situations, for which it is useless to seek precedents among the first ladies of the United States. For example, naked on a fur blanket aboard a private jet, with the left wrist handcuffed to a mysterious briefcase. Or even more naked - that is, without the bracelets or the diamond necklace - on a less aristocratic bed of air, while another woman - naked, this becomes repetitive - hugged her from behind. Beyond the photographic reports, we also know atypical statements about her, such as those of that telephone interview with the announcer Howard Stern, in which he commented on some details of her relationship with Donald Trump: “We have incredible sex at least once up to date ”, Melania communicated to the world. You couldn't see it on the radio, of course, but on that occasion she also admitted that she wasn't wearing much clothes.
And yet, despite so much nudity and so much exhibition, it does not seem that anyone is very clear about what Melania really is. Trump's third wife, twenty-four years his junior, is a strangely opaque person, who prefers to stay in the background and rarely ventures outside of established scripts. During the campaign, she has given much of the role to Ivanka, daughter of Donald's first marriage, and everything indicates that her role as first lady will mean a return to the classic, homey, submissive model, without the political hyperactivity of a Hillary Clinton or the continuous and fun visibility of a Michelle Obama. Of Melania, of course, nobody expects jokes or a sense of humor, because she always strives to appear as a formal woman to the point of exaggeration, and neither does she stand out precisely as a heroine of equality between the sexes: "We know our roles," she said about her marriage with Donald Trump-. I didn't want him to change Barron's diapers or put him to bed.
Melania, then Melanija Knavs, was born in the small town of Sevnica, at the time when Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia. Yesterday, to celebrate the triumph of Donald Trump, who has never visited the town, an American flag was raised in the square and the Rondo pizzeria served a special strawberry sweet named Melania. The biography of the new first lady is often presented as a contemporary fairy tale, starting in the grim concrete blocks of communism and ending in the White House, but there are nuances that tone down that violent contrast. Melania's family led a more comfortable life than most of her neighbors: the father was a driver and a member of the party, while the mother worked for a state-owned textile factory and sometimes traveled to other countries, from where she returned with fashion magazines and brightly colored paintings to liven up your home. The Knavs vacationed abroad and even ended up moving into a single-family home.
The Clintons, invited
Melania, a diligent student who did not drink and hardly went out, began to study architecture, but by then she had already made her debut in fashion, after a photographer fell in love with her non-stiff beauty and otherworldly eyes. Independent Slovenia was too small for her, so she jumped to Milan, Paris, New York, and it was there, at a party, that her path crossed with that of Donald Trump. The magnate waited for his companion to go to the bathroom - she was, by the way, a Norwegian heir to a cosmetic empire - and approached Melania, who refused to give him her phone number. They were married in 2005: the bride wore a Galliano gown worth more than $ 100,000 and among the guests at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's 118-room mansion in Palm Beach, were Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Somehow, despite her unconditional and devoted support for her husband, Melania seems designed to expose Donald Trump's contradictions and shortcomings. She is the immigrant wife of the man who is fiercely critical of immigration: she always insists that her arrival in the US was completely legal, but some research has shown that she worked as a model with her first tourist visa. And, in fact, her husband advocates putting an end to the "uncontrolled abuse" of the visa that later allowed him to settle in the country, the H-1B, reserved for "skilled workers." Also, her interests as first lady seem chosen on purpose to expose Trump: her plan is to raise awareness in the country about cyberbullying. “It is never okay to be teased, harassed, or attacked by a 12-year-old boy or girl. It's terrible when it happens at recess and absolutely unacceptable if it is done by someone with no hidden name on the internet, ”she said in an interview. Surely, in the time it took to say that long sentence, the sanguine Donald had already lashed out at someone through a tweet.
Melania is not going to be the first foreign wife of a US president, but almost: the precedent, from the first half of the 19th century, is the wife of John Quincy Adams, an English daughter of Americans. Nor will it be the first model, because Betty Ford and Pat Nixon were ahead. It does seem that none of them have spoken five languages before: she is fluent in Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, German, French and English, although her strong accent fascinates imitators. One of your first tasks will be to transform the White House into a home to your liking, with the help of a team of decorators and those responsible for preserving the building: perhaps it should be recalled here that, in the almost century-old MarWould a fur blanket look good in the Oval Office?
