The latest Vanity Fair Mexico cover is making waves for all the wrong reasons.
A smiling Melania Trump is front and center, sporting a simple white outfit and twirling silver jewels on a fork like linguini. The February 2017 magazine release on Thursday coincided with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto cancelling his trip to the United States after Trump took executive action to build a wall along the Mexican-American border. In light of current political controversies, some Trump critics have mocked the timing and subject of the story, which touts Melania as the new Jackie Kennedy.
The Vanity Fair interview is nothing new -- literally. Originally printed in English last April, Julia Ioffe’s story was commissioned for GQ, another Condé Nast publication. But the introduction, which was penned after Trump’s electoral victory, gives some insight into how Mexican writers view the first lady and her husband.
“If she suffered a terrible car accident, her husband wouldn’t leave her -- as long as her breasts were still intact, of course,” the editors wrote in Spanish. They called Melania “timid, beautiful, and complacent,” and commented on her pictures from last spring.
“In a photoshoot with Douglas Friedman, the now first lady of the United States reflects that essence of luxury that surrounds her,” they wrote, “A status with which she feels comfortable, happy, regardless of whether in editorial images this seems sarcastic and almost laughable.”