Once upon a time, but not so very long ago, there appeared in the land a new type of creature. It was a designed creature, designed to look female, but not simply female. It was an animated doll.
It was not that the appearance was so different from the rest of us females. The dolls looked like us, but with specific modifications. What was noticeably different was that they were designed to be deployed, not as individuals, but as a brand: American princess politico.
The first model was given the name “Sarah.”
Sarah was pretty, in a white-bread conventional way. Her shiny brown Hair flowed past her shoulders. She was shapely and flat-stomached, despite being a multiple mom. She wore expensive clothes, moderately high-heeled shoes and avocational camouflage. She killed animals. She had been a mayor of a town most of us had never heard of, and then governor of a state most of us never think about.
She wore glasses, a notable aspect of the brand at that time, because her academic background was meh, and her professional experience even more meh. So the glasses were an important brand accessory: they offered her the vague aura of intellect, a thin veneer of geek. If you weren’t paying too much attention.
She did not do very well as a new princess on the national stage. She was inadequate for the job, made an aggressive fool of herself when she talked, and answered questions like the ignoramus she actually was. She was an 8 x 10 glossy without a third dimension.
Thus she failed. And the Dr. Coppeliuses who built that first model yanked her off the public stage (although she resisted for a number of years, demanding stages wherever she went, a problem with developing animated creatures whom you believe you control) and scurried back into the lab to work on a beta/better version.
But while they were tinkering, and to their consternation, an improved princess doll showed up on their periphery and soon stalked onto center stage.
Actually, it was a pair of dolls, each of whom displayed improvements upon the Sarah one and upon each other. The first one, the Melania configuration, retained the flowing, shiny brown Hair but the Hair had been made much longer. The body stayed the same, but the glasses had been discarded because it was determined this model wouldn’t be talking. At all. So no reason to disguise putative un-smartness with spectacles.
The second model was a leap forward from the Melania one. The shiny brown Hair had become very blonde, an important innovation because blonde Hair was in effect a personal spotlight focused on the model’s head and face, and traveled with her no matter where she went. (No need for glasses. This model had a college degree from an Ivy League university, although nobody dug into the quality of the degree. Had it been manufactured in a lab? Didn’t matter.)
The body had been blown up here while but the stomach remained remarkably flat. The shape was enhanced by the wearing of slim or tight dresses of great cost.
On the lowest ends of both the Melania model and the younger blonde one were the Heels. Much needs to be said about the Heels. They were absurdly high. Maybe seven inches, or even a foot tall.
Have you ever tried on or bought 7-inch stilettos? I never have. I’ve gazed upon such Heels in shoe stores and am convinced it is physically impossible to walk in them, let alone in any sort of comfort. Anyone who wears them is forced into mincing entirely on tiptoe.
Meanwhile, as the Melania-Ivanka model duo took over the scene, the Dr. Coppelius factory was working day and night to establish their own national princess model, taking whatever they could from the M-I model, and to maneuver the creatures into positions from which they can practice skills required for higher office.
Do they all look similar?
The model princess is meant to be a cynosure on the national political stage: attention-getting for every superficial reason: pretty, long-haired, tall on their Heels, shapely, tightly clothed, and a schmear of pseudo-intelligence. But, given those Heels, they are unable to threaten powerful men. Because it is obvious they can’t move very much. They can stand there (next to or behind the men), they can wiggle to dance beats as long as they don’t have to move their feet, they can mince across lawns and agonize up and down airplane steps. While smiling.
We should keep our eyes on the Hair and Heels Show knowing its purpose and its producers.