It’s a measure of just how hilariously awful Donald Trump’s choices to fill his administration have been so far that when the idea began to circulate last week that his daughter Ivanka Trump might end up serving as his de facto first lady, I actually thought, hey, I don’t hate this. It’s not so much that I’m willing to hand-wave the ethical problems with the Trump children’s involvement in their father’s government or that I’ve learned to excuse what the New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum described as Ivanka’s “weaponized graciousness,” the beaming dishonesty she uses to moderate her father’s ugly, erratic behavior. It’s that of all the ways Trump wants to disrupt government, the first lady’s position is one that could actually use a good shaking-up.
It remains completely bizarre that there is a position in the federal government that a person is required to take simply because their spouse is elected to a complementary job, regardless of that person’s interests, inclination or passion for the career they actually chose. It’s even weirder that this job, which demands long hours and an extraordinary public performance as the nation’s surrogate mother or cool friend, is both mandatory and unpaid. In a way, the continuing existence of the first lady’s job is a high-profile barometer for how roles for women have or haven’t evolved in the United States. The backlash to women who have tried to change the position too much demarcates very clear limits on how little it’s possible to innovate within that confined space.
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