Ishra Chowdhury

Mud slinging in politics is nothing new, in fact is expected to a certain degree.
We have candidates like Mr. Donald J. Trump, who engineered his entire campaign almost a year ago on the back of one xenophobic, misogynist, sexist, and racist controversial statement over another, and Ex secretary-of-state and former First Lady Hillary Clinton who has had a fair share of brush with the brunt of negative media coverage; with her callous flip-flops on policies to the indiscretion of her husband, to the Benghazi debacle and most recently the leaked emails just a few hours before The Democratic Convention.
Useless to say, with all the material the media won’t ever have any idle thumbs this election.
So imagine how disgruntling and fruitless it was to have seen “nude” photos of a twenty-something then Melania Knauss in a trashy tabloid called the “New York Post”, titled quite abhorrently “The Ogle Office”. Personally I do not care to share exactly what was going on in the photos, and I truly don’t belief anyone with a modicum of decency would want to know in the first place.
In an age where we have no qualms about accepting the female body, as is, where body positivity is celebrated so publicly and openly, most significantly Greatly; this stunt manages to tap on the shoulder of the reader and make them look back at a cringe worthy time of slut shaming, holding the female body to the heights and pedestals of Madonna.
Have problems with Melania Trump and the candidacy of Donald Trump? Have lots of them as a matter of fact, but if one thinks to thwart Trump is to discredit by body-shaming and slut-shaming an ex-model ex-immigrant, for doing her job and making it seem that it is impossible for “such” a woman to be First Lady Of the U.S., ironically is to take a page out of mr Trump’s playbook and go with it.
You can be anti Trump, without stooping to a place where you get off on slut shaming Melania Trump.
And to the liberal media and the liberals, who stand on very modern ethos who had no issue in pointing out mrs. Trump’s previous careers as to site why she is unfit for representing the White House, is not only hypocritical but shallow. If America is as left leaning and progressive as Democrats claim it to be, Donald Trump’s ex-immigrant wife posing nude back in the day shouldn’t be an issue. But left wing papers themselves are making it seem like a first lady can’t have once been a nude model. That’s pretty hypocritical progress, progressives.
This poses a greater question at the end of the day, will the media bring out the past in the case of a potential Future-first-First-Gentlemen, or is it the women in the election who must bear this cross.
Hillary is no stranger to scrutiny, from criticism to her appearance to the way she smiles, unfortunately neither is current First Lady Michelle Obama, or the daughters of the democratic and republican presidential candidates, Chelsea Clinton and Ivanka Trump. There is this awful surviving culture of pitting women against women, that doesn’t leave space for cognitive skills such as dialogue and debate, but takes us back in the day where women were back to nodding and smiling and waving their hands.
This is setting a tone and projecting ultimatums on the type of women, men want to see either running their country or their homes or their businesses, which is to say it isn’t setting a tone, it is dialing back the conversation and progress made so far. Where women were categorized as nothing but a simplified equation for objectification.
The best thing to come out of it, is the sheer indifference and scoffing remarks for the tabloid, mostly from the average guy or gal. But major politicians have yet to say something regarding this.
P.S: topic of conversation and ethical criticism of Melania Trump; plagiarizing Michelle Obama’s speech at the RNC, not being more vocal at the campaign trail.