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Some say the New York Post went too far. The Sunday cover of the newspaper, which had endorsed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the New York primary, featured a controversial image of his wife.
Under the headline âMelania Trump Like Youâve Never Seen Her Beforeâ (NSFW), she was shown completely nude, save for a pair of black pumps. Her left hand strategically covered her nether regions, and a Post art director had the decency to blur out her nipples. Additional nude photos were featured inside the publication. The images of a then-25-year-old Melania were taken in New York in 1996 and featured in Max magazine, a now-shuttered French publication.
Speaking on CNNâs Reliable Sources, Donald Trumpâs senior communications adviser, Jason Miller, brushed off the photographs as âa celebration of the human body as art.â He added, âThereâs nothing to be embarrassed about ⌠sheâs a beautiful woman.â
But in other circles, such as on the Young Conservatives website, readers found the images the Post ran âtasteless,â âdisgusting and sexist,â and âdisgraceful.â
The Wrap described the cover as âthe latest in a series of public humiliationsâ for Melania Trump. Slate denounced the cover, calling it âtrashyâ and pointing out that Melania Trump is not running for office. âA woman should be able to agree to take naked photos for a European magazine in her twenties with the expectation that they will not show up on the cover of a newspaper/tabloid some 20 years later under the headline âOgle Officeâ when her husband decides to run for president,â Emily Tamkin wrote.
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Ehhhh. The cover is trashy. Itâs also sexist. Melania Trumpâs bad decisions from the â90s are being regurgitated as a way to shame her husband and point out further his unfitness for office, as if raging racism, his own blatant sexism, and his profound ignorance and inexperience werenât valid enough.
The New York Post isnât right here, but sorry, Iâm not rushing to denounce the publication as unfit over its latest despicable move. I am wondering where all of these people who are suddenly outraged by the treatment of a presidential candidateâs wife have been all this time.
Michelle Obama hasnât ever run for office, either, but that hasnât stopped her from catching total hell for the better part of a decade, first on her husbandâs campaign trail, then again as first lady. She has constantly been compared to various primates; a magazine cover depicted her as a slave; she was called a âbaby mamaâ in 2008, her 16th year of marriage; she took constant jabs about her weight, the size of her ass, her bare shoulders and her arms; and she had a cartoon on the cover of the New Yorker depicting her as an Afroed, militant, gun-toting domestic terrorist.
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As if that werenât bad enough, ever since Donald Trump emerged as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, the conservative media have been on a nonstop campaign about how Melania Trump will bring âclassâ back to the White House, as if Michelle Obama were not the breathing epitome of that word. Where was the outraged fuss about how the woman isnât running for office when the main target was a black woman?
The third Mrs. Trump may not be running for office, but she is no longer off-limits. (If the Post had run these images when Melania Trump wanted to sit on the political sideline, I would have said the publication was wrong.) She willingly hopped onto the Republican National Convention stage and into the arena. Sheâs no longer just laying up with a racist, ignorant psychopath; sheâs campaigning for one to unleash his terror and idiocy on all of us. She is no more off-limits from a digging and a dragging than Michelle Obama was at this phase. And she is going to take this heat and these body blows just as Michelle Obama did and does.
If it's wrong for one, it's wrong for everyone, including Michelle Obama. So many of these newly outraged folks are a millennium late and a dollar short, getting all upset now that the mediaâs getting greasy with someone they find more relatable or sympathetic. Stop it. Get out of here with the knee-jerk reactions to protect whiteness. Don't start acting as if now that this crazy ish is happening to a white woman, it's suddenly gone too far. It's been gone too far. Melania Trumpâs whiteness should not be treated like a mystical protective cloak or invisible shield that keeps her from experiencing the same mess FLOTUS has received and still receives after all these years.
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Demetria Lucas DâOyley is a contributing editor at The Root, a life coach and the author of Donât Waste Your Pretty: The Go-to Guide for Making Smarter Decisions in Life & Love as well as A Belle in Brooklyn: The Go-to Girl for Advice on Living Your Best Single Life. She is also a blogger at SeeSomeWorld.com, where she covers pop culture and travel. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
