Generally, Melania Trump is not a subject in which I find any interest. The role of the First Lady is genuinely thankless and unrewarding. A few might distinguish themselves by championing issues like literacy or healthful living. But overall, the First Lady serves as ceremonial arm candy without pay or official responsibilities.
Melania Trump's residency in the White House has not been very impressive. As with her former career as a model, Melania appears to view her job to be little more than wearing clothes to make a statement.
Who can forget this heartless little number?
Or when she planted a tree on the White House lawn wearing designer clothes, 8" Louboutin stilettos and a Trump-branded gold shovel along with her surgically-enhanced...kidneys.
Or when she channeled Jackie O with her inaugural outfit:
And I don't even know how to process her penchant for wearing jackets like capes.
What she lacks in originality, she more than makes up for in clichéd stereotypical notions of styling as if on a photo shoot.
Which may explain this latest trip to Africa, looking for the all the world like a Vogue Magazine homage to Colonialist Africa.
Clearly, this is intentional styling. But what exactly does she think she's saying to the world with these choices?
It was bad enough that Melania Trump lamented the slaughter of African elephants even though her stepsons hunt them and her husband’s administration made it possible to import elephant trophies into America again.
But observers were further taken aback by the tone-deaf outfit the first lady wore in Kenya. She donned a startling symbol of colonial rule: a white pith helmet, once preferred by Europeans in African colonies and elsewhere.
“It’s like showing up to a meeting of African-American cotton farmers in a Confederate uniform,” tweeted Matthew Carotenuto, a historian at St. Lawrence University in New York.
