After Donald Trump’s crushing election victory on Tuesday, a Russian state television channel congratulated the next first lady, Melania Trump, in a very strange way: by showing nude photographs of her during the live broadcast. It is worth remembering that before her marriage to the next president, Melania was a model and published nude scenes on several occasions.
This controversial moment occurred during the broadcast of the program 60 Minutes in its Russian edition, when hosts Yevgeny Popov and Olga Skabeyeva talked about the news of Donald Trump’s re-election and for some reason documented the news with photographs from Melania Trump’s modeling days, including the photo shoot published by GQ magazine in 2000.
Julia Davis, founder of the watchdog group Russia Media Monitor, posted the news broadcast on her X account and accompanied the video with the message: “This is how the country’s most-watched state television channel welcomed Melania Trump’s upcoming return to the White House. Olga Skabeeva is trying not to laugh. This was probably her idea.”
In fact, in the broadcast, the host, Skabeeva, had to hold back her laughter at what may be an international affront to the wife of the next US president. Meanwhile, host Popov stoked the irony: “Now that Melania Trump’s husband has finally won, she is preparing to return to the White House for a second time. This is what Melania looked like in 2000. This is the cover of GQ magazine”.
And it details the succession of images: “The future first lady lies on furs in a negligee. Inside the magazine, there are sensual photos of Melania near a private plane and on board it. In one of the images, the model is wearing only her underwear, lying on a blue carpet with the seal of the United States, as if the editors of the men’s magazine knew something in advance about the future of their model,” they said.
The segment ended with a series of photos of the former model, with her voiceover: “What does ‘my body, my choice’ really mean?“, in reference to the promotional video with which Melania launched her autobiography.
Melania Trump’s modeling career
Melania Trump began modeling at a young age, when a Slovenian photographer discovered her at the age of 16. From there she signed with an Italian agency that gave her international exposure and took her to work in Paris, Milan and New York in the 1990s and early 2000s before marrying Trump in 2005.
At that time, the model known as Melania Knauss, her maiden name, posed nude for GQ in 2000. This publication was already taken up in 2016, when her husband became president for the first time.
However, Melania has never been ashamed of having appeared in this publication. In fact, in September she published a new message about it on her X account.
“Why am I proud of my work as a nude model?” she asked. “The more pressing question is: why did the media decide to analyze my celebration of the human form in a fashion photo shoot? Are we no longer able to appreciate the beauty of the human body?”
She added: “We should honour our bodies and embrace the timeless tradition of using art as a powerful means of self-expression”.