Ivanka Is Just Donald Trump in a Shift Dress
They like to keep their business dealings in the shadows, they’re not really into apologies, and they’re nothing without their brands. Like daddy, like daughter.
ERIN GLORIA RYAN
09.27.17 9:00 PM ET
Ivanka Trump is a lot of things. Wife, mother, overenunciator, presidential softener. But also, Ivanka Trump is her father.
A casual observer could point out that Donald and Ivanka are very different people. But they’re both brands. Their cash crop is a curated version of themselves.
Ivanka, like her father, has nothing if she doesn’t have her brand. Ivanka’s brand is soft, placid femininity, working hard in an all-white office all day and then coming home at night in time to post some Instagrams of her mothering her children, with the family’s two nannies conveniently out of frame. Ivanka’s brand is women who work, who do some vague sort of work that doesn’t involve getting dirty or lifting anything or going outside. Ivanka The Brand, a handful of lifestyle bloggers, and a newly lobotomized Megyn Kelly are all drifting toward the same vaguely “empowered” but not actually powerful feminine ideal, insistently pastel in an urgent world, whipped cream floating on a river of bullshit. Ivanka Trump is a stack of year-old women’s magazines in the waiting room of a medical spa, to be thumbed through mindlessly, better if you don’t think about it, while you’re waiting to get botox. Ivanka is a champagne popsicle on Memorial Day.
Donald Trump is not soft, nor is he placid. But he is also a brand, and buying into it requires a similar mindlessness. His brand is loud, cartoon rich man from the 1980s, his disdainful Eastern European model wife in tow. It’s saying what he feels, as though the act of having a feeling and refusing to temper it for public consumption is an act of patriotism, of morality. Trump’s brand conflates a lack of self-control with bravery. While the commander in chief and his daughter may express themselves differently, below the surface they’re similar.
Beyond artifice, the similarities are plentiful.
This week, the AP reported that information about Ivanka Trump’s line of clothing, accessories, and footwear for mid-income basics has quietly disappeared in recent months—which makes it difficult for watchdogs, or investors, or people concerned with whom a top-level presidential adviser is doing business with, to find out how far Ivanka Inc’s tentacles reach. This is a problem because most of Ivanka’s branded Ivankawear is made in China, a country with a fraught relationship with the U.S., a country that could exert sway over the personal finances Ivanka.
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