Quote of the Day:

If you haven’t been keeping up, it’s okay to judge a woman on her appearance again. The latest public figure to learn about feminism’s part-time hours is Melania Trump.

–Stephen Daisley in the [U.K.] Spectator

Stephen Daisley gives a good rundown on all the digs that the first lady and her high heels endured from the supposed feminists in the mainstream media and on the internet, and then draws a comparison:

How different it was when Hillary Clinton was running for the Oval Office. Then, objecting to her giving speeches about inequality in a $12,000 Armani outfit was sexist, in the eyes of Mic. Ms Magazine sighed that the row ‘exemplified how gender roles and expectations shape the lives of women in politics—and how the double-standards applied to them put their appearances, and not just their politics, in the national spotlight.’ Melania Trump would love to hear about double standards right about now. 

There is an echo here of the unseemly spate of articles accusing Donald Trump of being unkind to Melania. Typically, a few frames of video would be selected, social media mined for ‘evidence’, and pop psychologists would diagnose Melania’s emotional wellbeing from New York newsrooms. 

Inherent in all this is a sense that the rules are different for liberal women than for those whose politics are conservative or, as in the case of the First Lady, not fully known. Of course, Melania Trump is married to Evil Incarnate and so it is permissible to take cheap shots over her shoes or psychological health. If Trump cannot be got at, then his wife is fair game. She will be demeaned, dismissed, and scoffed at because of who her husband is. She will be written about as if she were an emotionally-dead clothes-rack because of who her husband is. She will have entirely different rules applied to media coverage of her because of who her husband is. It’s a peculiar feminism that stands mute while this happens.

Just a quibble: feminism doesn't stand mute. It was people who undoubtedly identify as feminist who were the heelgate ringleaders.