OPINION
YES, I’ve seen the gif. The one from President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The one that shows the First Lady of the United States, Melania Trump, beaming at her husband then dropping her smile the moment he turns his head.
It’s mesmerising and I’ve watched it over and over, just like you, imagining what might have been going on in her mind.
Here it is: A riveting short film about a disillusioned wife putting on a bright face for her tyrannical husband — or so it seems.
These few seconds of footage have gone viral around the world. They’ve been shared more than 210,000 times.
It’s very funny and very humanising for the newly instated FLOTUS. She is, for a moment, almost likeable. It also happens to play into a narrative that we’ve imposed on Melania Trump; one that’s currently gaining momentum, especially among women.
Feminist blog Jezebel had the gif first and used it in a piece titled ‘Melania hates Donald: A theory’. Since then, journalists and casual onlookers have called Melania’s drastically shifting expression “the face of an abused woman”.
One social media commenter wrote beneath a post about the gif: “I won’t get Melania’s face out of my head all day. I know she’s got cash and privilege. But jeez. That feeling. She’s a dead woman smiling.”
The popular theory is that Melania is trapped in a loveless, emotionally abusive relationship — because what other sort of relationship could we possibly imagine, with a man like Donald Trump?
I marched in the #WomensMarch last weekend and saw several protest signs that support this story: Some simply reading “#FreeMelania” and others that said “Melania, blink twice for help”.
The hashtag #FreeMelania has been gaining traction on Twitter and people have gleefully constructed a convenient fiction around the new First Couple of the United States: That she is a victim of some sort of marital kidnapping.
It’s easy to seize on photos like this and make assumptions about Melania and Donald’s marriage. Picture: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/AFPSource:AFP
It’s clear why this has happened. It’s a far more palatable narrative, isn’t it, to think of at least one of the Trumps as a sympathetic figure? It’s better than, say, seeing that every member of that family is as wretched as the patriarch?
It adds to our public revulsion with Mr Trump, to cast him as not only an abusive leader but as a privately abusive man, too.
It’s comforting, even darkly amusing, to think of Melania Trump as a victim in the Trump story. Sympathy is, after all, far less exhausting than anger.
It’s a relief, really, to think of Melania Trump as a vulnerable, naive woman, trapped in a marriage nobody decent could want. It’s better than the alternative: that she’s complicit in Trump’s regime, which has already ravaged the rights of women around the world and threatens to do so more vehemently as his presidency goes on.
But, in imposing this abuse narrative on the Trumps, we are doing several things at once — all of them alarming.
We are indulging a fiction; of which we have no proof. We are creating a sympathetic figure in arguably the most dangerous First Family the United States has elected.
We are equating brief facial expressions to the experience of abuse, which undermines the very real experiences women have in relationships every day. And we are wilfully underestimating the will and autonomy of a woman we ultimately know very little about.
Melania has been by her husband’s side every step of the way. Picture: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/AFPSource:AFP
If Melania Trump is as meek and maligned as we imagine, why did she go on national television in 2011 to support her husband’s birtherism conspiracy theories about Barack Obama?
Why did she tell the global public that Mr Trump “respects women” and that all accusations of sexual assault are “lies”? Why has she been complicit in the building of a political empire out of hate, racism, xenophobia, fear, misogyny and bigotry?
Look. I can’t comment on the state of Melania and Donald Trump’s marriage. It’s not my place, nor my great interest. But I think we should be extremely careful making Melania Trump into a relatable public figure.
She is, after all, the very opposite, for most of us. She is obscenely privileged, powerful beyond anything we can understand and, ultimately, an integral part of a political movement that is changing democracy as we know it.
If Melania’s husband has his way — and he always does — he will profoundly diminish the rights of women, the LGBTQ community, refugees, immigrants, people living with disability and other vulnerable members of society.
He will gaslight the American public, destroy and endanger lives, spread hatred, thrive on fear and be responsible for gargantuan social change in an office he is neither qualified to hold nor morally responsible enough to honour.
There are literally millions of women who deserve our support, sympathy, compassion and protection. Melania Trump is not the first one I care to protect.