Breasts are pretty cool things.  I have some, and I like them.   They’ve served me well.

Having breasts is like, hmmm.  How to put this?   You know those poor, landlocked countries that the modern world seemingly left behind, but then they have some sort of fabulous undiscovered raw material lying under the earth’s crust and they dig it up and then everyone who lives there is super rich and happy because of it?   They’re like that.  Breasts are an asset.   A resource.  Something that a woman – any woman, but perhaps especially a woman who maybe doesn’t have much of anything else going for her in this world – can exploit when the situation requires it, to better her lot in life, even if only temporarily. Women have been capitalizing on that pair of natural resources since time began, in one way or the other.   Breasts can be a woman’s business.  Her bread and butter.  A woman wants to make some money off of her breasts, I say God Bless America.

Thus, I find it dismaying that people who claim to be hardcore liberal feminists are still, over a month after the election, complaining about Melania Trump because she posed topless back in her modeling days.   If you call yourself a liberal feminist but are freaked out because you saw Melania’s girlz in GQ and it’s like totally un-presidential, or un-first-lady-like, or something…you may want to think a little harder about how you define yourself.  If you really, really believe that women have an ultimate right to self-actualization, you must accept that some women are going to use their bodies for financial gain during their youth, and some of those exact same women are going to stop doing that as they get older and settle down, get married, have a family, enter politics, and so on.

This HAS TO be ok, if feminism is to really help improve the lives of women.   Within reason, female choices must be legitimized whenever possible, even when we don’t personally embrace them.  Right??  I mean, I never really felt motivated to pose in soft core porn photo shoots personally, but I’m glad that another woman was able to make some scratch doing it.   I didn’t strip my way through college, but then again I didn’t have to.  Diffrent strokes for diffrent folks.  Women should not be perceived as “tainted” in perpetuity when, for reasons of choice or circumstance, they decide to profit from their bodies in the short term, for long term benefits for their lives or their children’s lives.

Most liberals are generally on board with that principle for anyone who is NOT Melania Trump.   There’s a bit of a double standard at play here where anything the Trumps do is like zOMG shocktastic.  Melania posed topless.  In a men’s magazine.  By consenting adults, for consenting adults.  Big whoop.  She was doing her job.  Her body got her out of a Soviet bloc country and into a lifetime of wealth and comfort.  She hurt no one and in fact probably made more than a few people happier.

In the meantime, there are people who are doing things significantly more questionable than Melania’s photoshoot, who are given a pass due to their politics.  Katy Perry attempts to go on Sesame Street in a blouse that barely covers her nipples.  More recently, former Disney child star Miley Cyrus let a crowd of people feel her up (is this not just a little tiny bit weird?  I find this concerning.  Dolly, please intervene.) https://youtu.be/fQe2IoJVyhw   Liberals, ya can’t complain about the one person’s behavior and not about the others, it’s hypocritical.  You can’t glorify sexuality incessantly on the one hand – even at times when the majority of people think it’s icky and inappropriate –  and then try and paste your political opponents for their unladylike behavior.  Discriminate slut shaming is like trying to kill a mosquito with a sawed off shotgun – you may hit your target but you’re blowing a hole in everything else at the same time.

Guess what – the First Lady of the United States is NOT Mrs. Santa Claus.  She is not necessarily an asexual granny with a string of pearls and a platter of cookies.  That is not a prerequisite for the job.  The only thing the First Lady needs to be, is married to the President.  Melania Trump is a woman who had a life and a career before her husband decided to run for office, and her life and career led her to make a decision to use some of her God-given gifts to earn a buttload of cash.  Good for her.  I wish her the best of luck.