It is no secret that there is no love lost between Vogue and the Republican Party.
While the fashion mag gave its glossy treatment to First Ladies Jill Biden and Michelle Obama, Vice President Kamala Harris, and even former Biden press secretaries Karine Jean-Pierre and Jen Psaki, Vogue never got around to profiling Melania Trump after her husband took office. Instead, the outlet has largely criticized her style – sartorial and otherwise.
Case in point: Vogue’s reaction to the first lady’s tuxedo look in her official White House portrait, which it mocked as “Apprentice cosplay.” On Friday’s show, Megyn was joined by Victor Davis Hanson, author of The End of Everything, to discuss the criticism and what it says about culture today.
Vogue Pans Melania
A week after the inauguration, the White House released the official portrait of First Lady Melania Trump, which was taken in the Yellow Oval Room of the White House residence by Régine Mahaux. In the black-and-white photo, Trump is standing before a table clad in a slim black tuxedo and crisp white blouse as the Washington Monument towers behind her.
It was a marked departure from her predecessor’s portrait, which saw Biden smiling in the Rose Garden in a light pink top, but it wasn’t all that different from Trump’s 2017 portrait in which she appeared cross-armed in a black suit jacket and undone neck tie.
As you might recall, the controversy surrounding the 2017 photo was that Trump appeared too airbrushed and now, it seems, the controversy is that she seems like… too much of a boss?
In an article headlined “Melania Trump Cosplays The Apprentice in Her Official White House Portrait,” Vogue fashion writer Hannah Jackson snarked that the First Lady “looked more like she was guest starring on an episode of The Apprentice than assuming the role of first lady of the United States.”
She blamed, in part, the outfit choice. “Trump’s clothing certainly didn’t help the boardroom pastiche. The first lady wore a black Dolce & Gabbana tuxedo jacket with satin-trimmed lapels over a white button-up, which she paired with a Ralph Lauren cummerbund and trousers,” Jackson wrote. “The choice to wear a tuxedo—as opposed to a blazer or blouse—made Trump look more like a freelance magician than a public servant.”
Jackson claimed Trump chose to eschew “248 years of tradition” and “refuse[d] to abandon theatrics” with her wardrobe. The takeaway: “Attempting a no-nonsense businesswoman approach in her situationally inappropriate tuxedo, it seems that Melania Trump still struggles with sartorial messaging.”
Vogue Praises Bianca
Megyn noted the criticism of Trump’s look is “something they would never say about Jill Biden,” and it was a dramatic departure from how another Vogue writer characterized Bianca Censori’s naked appearance on the Grammys red carpet.
On Tuesday, columnist Raven Smith penned an op-ed titled “The Naked Truth About Bianca Censori’s Grammys Look” that praised the sheer slip dress that revealed the model’s genitals as empowering. “At its best, fashion, for me, has always celebrated a body’s sensuality rather than the unimaginative, base-level provocation of a woman’s nakedness,” Smith wrote.
“While I’m not necessarily advocating for snatch on the red carpet, it could also be argued that it’s Bianca’s body, and therefore Bianca’s choice,” she continued. “I hate to state the obvious, but a woman can wear whatever she wants. A woman can wear as many sheer bodysuits and thongs as she likes.”
As Smith sees it, “a woman can court the male gaze. A woman can make a zillion choices we wouldn’t personally make ourselves and still not have that mean she’s being coerced, that she’s a victim of an overbearing force, that something predatory has happened.”
Ultimately, “because Bianca isn’t speaking up, because we’re bereft of any deeper motivations (or personality), the silence has us scrabbling for answers of our own,” she concluded. “But maybe that’s exactly what Bianca wanted.”
The Hypocrisy
The hypocrisy, Megyn said, was on full display. “You see, Melania Trump is a pathetic magician who is performing theatrics and is situationally inappropriate, but Bianca is totally appropriate and a bad ass girl boss,” she noted.
While Hanson called Trump “the most photogenic, fashion-conscious” first lady since Jackie Kennedy, he said Vogue is trying to have it both ways with its defense of Censori. “It was just a few years ago we heard about objectifying women during #MeToo,” he noted. “And so the problem with all of this is that that writer can’t decide whether feminism is a Victorian prudery that you look at a woman or you touch her shoulder and that is a mortal sin; or you can get naked and you can be more provocative sexually than any time in the history of America.”
He said that lack of clarity is what took down the #MeToo movement and what will ultimately undermine these hypocrisies. “We have rules and laws against people walking around naked for a very good reason… We inherited all of this tradition, and it has served us very well,” Hanson continued. “What’s destroying all of these internal contradictions is that they are all contrary to human nature.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Hanson by tuning in to episode 1,003 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.