Melania doesn’t seem to like her husband, but the naked truth is she’s Trump’s match

Melania Trump doesn’t understand why the media wants to talk so much about her nude photographs. We know this from one of the short videos she has released on her social media, talking about her nude photographs – a subject that no one had raised, except her, now, having brought it up while promoting her forthcoming memoir.

“Why do I stand proudly behind my nude modelling work?” the former first lady asks in the video, as though repeating the question of an unseen interlocutor. “The more pressing question is, ‘Why has the media chosen to scrutinise my celebration of the human form in a fashion photo shoot? Are we no longer able to appreciate the beauty of the human body?’”

Mrs Trump goes on: “Throughout history, master artists have revered the human shape, evoking profound emotions.” What’s more, “We should honour our bodies and embrace the timeless tradition of using art as a powerful means of self-expression.”

It is a truly heroic rebranding of a lad mag shoot.

In 2000, she posed nude for GQ, in a tableau that most would struggle to describe as artistic. The photographs were taken on her husband’s private jet. They have a vaguely James Bond air.

In one, Melania lies naked (but for her diamonds) on a fur rug, handcuffed to a briefcase. In another, she stands beside the jet wearing sunglasses and a red g-string, pointing a golden revolver at someone (something?) just out of shot. She is also photographed on a white leather couch, again with the golden revolver, with the briefcase open. Jewels spill from it.

Melania Trump on the cover of the January 2000 issue of British GQ.Credit: GQ

It is not subtle, and I’m not talking about the nudity.

Whatever Melania decided to do in her erstwhile modelling career is her business, and I have no interest in slut-shaming her as her husband has slut-shamed countless women (while himself boasting of his promiscuity). But it is illustrative of how perfectly she matches Trump, despite the fact she doesn’t seem to like him very much. It is interesting that she is the one who keeps bringing up the nude photographs, and these were not shots she was conned into by an exploitative photographer when she was a young, vulnerable model just arrived from Slovenia. She and her husband lobbied for the opportunity.

Dylan Jones, the editor who commissioned the shoot, told the Hollywood Reporter in 2016 that “we were bombarded by requests to shoot Melania. And so, given that she was obviously so keen to be featured in GQ, we came up with a rather kitsch and camp story for her to feature in,” Jones said.

Melania’s history of nude modelling resurfaced in 2016, not because it was raised by the media, but because it featured in an attack ad by her husband’s political rivals. A super PAC (political action committee) called “Make America Awesome” put out an ad in Utah that featured the GQ pics. “Meet Melania Trump. Your next first lady,” the ad read. “Or, you could support Ted Cruz next Tuesday.”

The campaign ad that Ted Cruz denied knowledge of. Credit: Ted Cruz campaign

Cruz, Trump’s rival for the Republican presidential nomination, denied any involvement, but that didn’t stop Donald Trump from insulting Cruz’s wife in retaliation.

(Anthony Scaramucci, the financier who famously served just 11 days as Trump’s director of communications in 2017, has remarked in his popular podcast that Trump often insults the wives of his political rivals and colleagues as a means of asserting power and emasculating these men.)

Melania Trump is part of the cohort of celebrities who give media interviews to complain about their lack of privacy – a species closely related to actors who give media interviews where they claim they are actually very shy. But Melania is something of an enigma. She is far more private than her husband. She has barely appeared on the campaign trail with him, and has said she found out about the second assassination attempt on Trump when she saw it on the news.

She never pretended to be particularly interested in the traditional charity-promotion aspect of being first lady. Nor did she seem particularly interested in being a first lady in a ceremonial sense. She was often absent during Trump’s presidency, and the headlines she made were unfortunate – for example, in 2018, when she wore a jacket emblazoned with the words “I really don’t care. Do u?” to visit immigrant children at a detention centre.

Melania later told ABC News she intentionally wore the jacket to send a message to “the people and the left-wing media who are criticising me”. Which tells us that she does care, quite a lot, about being criticised, if not so much about the immigrant children separated from their parents under the morally repugnant policies of her husband’s administration.

Melania is inscrutable and soft-spoken. She seems not to crave the constant attention which is her husband’s oxygen. But she apparently has the same instinct for hustling as he does, and the same instinct for the strategic exploitation of conspiracy theories.

She has used media appearances promoting her book, titled Melania, to hint darkly about the “truth” behind the first assassination attempt on her husband. On her personal website, Melania is selling signed “collector’s edition” copies of the book for $US250 ($363). A regular copy of the memoir costs about $US40. Her website also sells digital “collectibles”, such as a 3D picture of a rose.

Some proceeds from the sale of these digital assets will go to the foster-children charity she supports, but other items – such as the $600 “Vote Freedom” gold vermeil necklace – are accompanied by no such promise. Neither are the $US90 Christmas tree ornament and the $US245 Mother’s Day necklace.

The gender politics of first ladies are a fascinating topic. The wives of powerful men are usually deployed to soften the image of the husband, to humanise him, and to show the public that if a good woman loves him, he must be a good man. Melania, as much as she will play the game, seems to be a quieter and more discreet complement to her husband.

Transactional, and intent on making as much money as possible from the political ride before it ends.

Jacqueline Maley is a senior writer and columnist.