This is what Laura Pennie has written about Melania:
"Attacking any woman in order to hurt her husband is lazy sexism, and doing it by way of her figure or fashion choices is lazier and more sexist still. This puts me and any other writer with feminist principles at a disadvantage, because at first glance there’s nothing else to Melania: over the years, she has been systematically stripped of all personality signifiers whatsoever beyond her body and what she puts on it. This is how Trump wants his women: as “pieces of ass”, to use a favourite phrase. She drifts in the Donald's wake like a fibreglass mannequin, a woman commentators regularly declare “a mystery”, despite the fact that her background, private life and, indeed, most of her body are available to inspect at the click of a button.
None of which, incidentally, speaks less of her. It is galling to watch left-wing men, in particular, muster to fling mud at a woman who clearly has, in her own way, very few choices, and is very publicly starring in the reality-television adaptation of American Psycho. We should be better than this."
www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2016/12/we-should-be-kind-americas-first-victim-melania-trump
Pennie sometimes makes me squirm a bit, but in this case, I agree with her.
I once discovered that the mother of one of my pupils was a 'Russian wife' who had met her future husband on a dating site. My pupil was her son and had been adopted by her British husband. Over the years, the son let slip some details of his parents' relationship. My initial reaction was that I couldn't understand why the wife stayed with her husband - I certainly wouldn't have done. However, I had more choices than she did. She had escaped a repressive regime and was undoubtedly better off financially than she would have been and her son was getting a decent education. Who knows?