MELANIA Trump has defended her past work as a nude model, calling it a form of art in “celebration of the human form” and blaming “the media” for scrutinising it.
In a video clip posted to her social media accounts to promote her new book, the former first lady provided some of the most extensive remarks she has given about the topic since her departure from the White House in January 2021.
“Are we no longer able to appreciate the beauty of the human body?” Melania, 54, asked in the video, as images of classical paintings and sculptures cycle across the screen.
“We should honour our bodies and embrace the timeless tradition of using art as a powerful means of self-expression.”
Her defence of nude modelling, with its broader call for artistic expression, was part of a series of videos promoting a memoir released recently, Melania. But the latest message struck a somewhat jarring chord: Her career as a model has not been the subject of broad news coverage since the 2016 presidential race.
However, many reviews say that the promotional comments were the most interesting part of the 182-page book by the former model who immigrated from Slovenia and married then-Manhattan-playboy and tycoon Donald Trump in 2005.
Revealing a strong pro-choice stand on abortion rights, the book glosses over the 2020 election with what the Vanity Fair has described as “wobbly depictions”.
(She points a finger at “the media, Big Tech, and the deep state,” and perpetuates unfounded claims of “suspicious voting activity.”)
Melania had not said much during the current campaigning of this toxic election season marred by two assassination attempts against her husband.
In July, after her husband was grazed by a bullet in the first attempt, Melania wrote an open letter condemning a “heinous” act of violence that had threatened to change her life forever. She has offered no such comments since her husband was apparently targeted a second time, and her office did not respond to a request for comment about whether she planned to provide any.
And so it goes for one of the most inscrutable first ladies in modern history. Melania has seldom felt the need to explain herself, preferring instead to let her comments, as cryptic as they are, serve as her first and final thoughts on any given matter.
In promoting her book, she has published a string of videos that appear to reflect some of her most deeply held beliefs: a commitment to her family, a reverence for privacy, an embrace of conspiratorial thinking and a growing mistrust of institutions.
In a video posted in early September, she mused darkly about the July assassination attempt.
“There is definitely more to this story,” she declared, “and we need to uncover the truth.”
In her memoir, the former US first lady details her life – too much some say – coalescing around certain central themes from feuds, cheering and chanting, motherhood, and her special ability to communicate with her husband Donald.
And this is where it gets interesting, the Guardian writes: Donald Trump’s logic is impossible to follow at the level of the sentence for many.
“He can’t reliably say which state he is in, or which candidate he is running against. He will start a thought on immigration and land it miles away, on the merits of his own body and how much more beautiful it is than Joe Biden’s.”
So, with her self-professed “special communication ability”, Melania unintentionally invites us to “imagine their domestic life: him rambling about sharks, her tuning him out, possibly wearing noise-cancelling headphones”. — Agencies/©2024NYTC
