Believe everything and nothing when it comes to Donald Trump. That's the message for American news consumers following Saturday's New York Times piece by Michael Barbaro and Megan Twohey about the Republican presidential candidate's personal and professional interactions with women. He'll call a woman he just met a "stunning Trump girl" as though she were his property, then defy his father by appointing a woman to a powerful position in constructing one of his actual properties. (It all got more complicated when Rowanne Brewer Lane, the "stunning Trump girl," went on Fox & Friends to say the Times misrepresented her.)
So how do we make sense of Trump's actions towards women? It matters when we're talking about a person who could one day meet and negotiate with world leaders like Angela Merckel and Christine Lagarde on behalf of the American people. What we do know is that the Times wrote a piece about the type of man we've probably all met before, who loves both his mother and the women in the pages of a Victoria's Secret catalogue. He believes beautiful women are an asset to a carefully-cultivated image, but also knows they can achieve great things. There are men in my family who think this way, and I love them dearly. I don't know personally the husband of Donald Trump's main political opponent, but history suggests he shares a few of these traits, along with more than a few other elected male politicians currently roaming the marble halls of Washington, D.C.
However: Also true is that promoting a woman does not mean Mr. Trump would be a good president for women, any more than saying, "I have friends who are Jewish" would mean Mel Gibson is not an anti-Semite. Mr. Trump is not off the hook for being a sexist just for giving a handful of women professional opportunities that they might not otherwise have had under other chauvinist tycoons; indeed, he takes advantage of them by acknowledging, according to former employee Barbara A. Res, that women have to work harder than men.
For many people, whether they're youth or adults, reconciling Trump the sexist with Trump the promoter can be tricky business. Working at The LAMP, an organization that teaches young people to be more critical of the media they engage with on a daily basis, I see how difficult it is to unravel these messages. I'm not surprised Brewer Lane told Fox & Friends she wasn't offended by Mr. Trump; when you're in an industry like modeling that traditionally values only your outward appearance, a statement like that from a man like him is a career endorsement. Whether Fox & Friends viewers took that context into consideration when they considered her role in the Times piece is another question; in my interpretation, the Times reporters did not. They assumed Brewer Lane was being insulted, whether she knew it or not at the time.
The Times, Mr. Barbaro and Ms. Twohey would have their work cut out for them if they took on a larger-scope, follow-up piece about unraveling these contradictory messages. How do we hold men responsible accountable for saying, and even doing, vile things that they might not know are wrong? (For the record, I think Trump knows fully what he says and does. I can't say the same for some of the men in my family.) I believe it's important for women and girls to call out misogynistic behavior at home, but this isn't always easily done. The LAMP encourages this in its programs and tools, in which young people talk back to even subtle stereotypes not just around women, but also around men, age and race. Still, much more needs to be done in this area, and more allies are needed.
Mentioned in the Times piece is an incident from the 1970s where Ivana Trump, then Ivana Zelnickova, attempted to order fish at a restaurant. Donald Trump's father Fred made a scene, insisting that she would have the steak, and Ivana pushed back. Later, Donald Trump stood by his father's behavior. Fred Trump may have been set in his ways, but imagine if Ivana had the language at hand to show her future husband how condescending and insulting it can be for a man to impose his will on what a grown woman eats. Today's menu of media might look very different.
Stay tuned for more news, and get plenty of resources for decoding media, by following us on Twitter at @thelampnyc or visiting us online at www.thelamp.org.