AFRICA/MELANIA: “In the end the most viral moment of Melania Trump’s five-day, four-country solo trip, which came to a close Sunday [10-7-18] when she stepped off the plane at Joint Base Andrews, had to do with clothes, as it so often does. To be specific: her irritation with everyone’s interest in her attire. It happened after she had met other first ladies and heads of state in Kenya, Malawi, Ghana and Egypt, after she had toured hospitals and cuddled babies and pet elephants, after she had done what she could to offer a new, friendlier face of the Trump administration not just to the African world but to everyone else. It happened during an impromptu news conference at the foot of the pyramids…But the fact is, chafe against it as she will, what she does is inextricably bound up in what she chooses to wear while doing it, and the same would be true of anyone in that role. After all, that’s what you see in the pictures, and the pictures are what most people see first. The clothes are simply a symbol of the actions, and the actor. Is it superficial? No more than paying attention to any kind of symbolism is.”
–Vanessa Friedman, “Melania Trump: Out of Africa, Still in Costume,” The New York Times online, October 8, 2018