Ivanka and the Roles She Plays

Recently, I read this tweet:
https://twitter.com/espiers/status/1289716136318128128

I am here to take up the challenge.

TL/DR: Ivanka’s aesthetic is confusing because she doesn’t know what role she is playing or what image she ought to project. This is unsettling because, as somebody who sometimes, sort of, represents our country and sometimes plays at least a nominal role in its policy-making, she really ought to know what role she is playing and what image she needs to project.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, I want you to consider: how do you know what to wear?

In day-to-day situations, how do you choose? How do you know whether to opt for an open-toed, high-heeled, strappy sandal or a sensible loafer? Whether a short skirt is acceptable? Whether you should wear a jacket?

Well, it depends on where you’re going and what you’re doing, you’re saying to yourself. And, of course, you are right, it depends.

We navigate around that “it depends” by relying on what organizational theorist James March termed the “logic of appropriateness.” March argued that our decisions are shaped by a combination of our own identities, situational awareness, and the rules that govern behavior in that particular situation. To find that logic, we ask ourselves “What does a person like me do in a situation like this?”

In practice, most of us answer this question heuristically, using mental shortcuts to narrow down the range of choices to black or cordovan loafers for work on a fall Tuesday, without having to consider the whole gamut from flip flops to work boots. We have a good sense of our identities and the roles we play. We inhabit similar situations regularly, so we learn the rules that govern them.

It does take effort to learn who we are, the role we play, and what rules govern the situations we may find ourselves in. We figure it out by observing carefully — looking at what others do in similar situations — by doing research, by asking questions, by getting feedback when we make or miss the mark. Sometimes we have a shortcut in the form of a uniform or a dress code in the employee handbook.

We then adapt those rules to our own aesthetics. We get style cues from our parents and friends, our heroes, fashion magazines. We modify them according to current trends, silhouettes, and colors we feel flatter us, and the constraints imposed by practicality. But even this improvisation tends to adhere to the logic of appropriateness. We may admire a fairy-tale princess ball gown, but we know not to wear one to work (unless we work at a theme park), and instead find ways to incorporate a bow or detail from the ball gown into our personal uniforms.

In those instances when we move into a new situation, when we don’t know the rules, how we fit in? When there is no obvious logic of appropriateness, we typically tread conservatively until we can figure it out. Better to blend in for a while until we get the lay of the land.

Most of us spot these rules intuitively. We develop that intuition in the course of becoming adults, deciding what we want to do professionally, how we want to express ourselves, how we like to look. We gather experience by making mistakes, and then we typically don’t make the same mistakes again.

When we get into trouble, it is often because we inhabit multiple roles, which may engender different sets of rules and logics of appropriateness. For example, one early Saturday morning, we stopped at a park for my kids’ soccer team photoshoot on our way to synagogue. It only occurred to me that I looked out of place in my dress and heels when one of the other moms, dressed appropriately in leggings and a t-shirt, looked me up and down and asked me where we were heading. Each of us sits at the center of a unique Venn diagram of roles and situations, and it is difficult — if not impossible — to dress for all of them simultaneously, even when we understand the rules of each game and our place within them.

Which brings us back to the original question: what does Ivanka’s current style say about the role she thinks she’s playing? I think the answer is that she is simply confused.

Let’s start with Ivanka’s Twitter bio: “Wife, mother, sister, daughter. Advisor to POTUS on job creation + economic empowerment, workforce development & entrepreneurship.” That’s at least five roles just on twitter.

But wait, there’s more! In addition to her family roles and her official/unofficial White House position, she still has a stake in the Trump family business. She had a fashion and accessories line through 2018. She is a Trump surrogate in front of the media and at events like the G-20 summit. She is sometimes kind of a diplomat who is included in state visits. She fights for women and small businesspeople. She is a commencement speaker. She gives speeches at the IMF. She is her father’s bible-wrangler.

This is to say nothing of the broad range of pre-Trump presidency roles she inhabited: Executive Vice President of Development & Acquisitions for the family business; guest host on the Apprentice; model; female empowerment author; philanthropist.

Do you know how to dress for all of those roles? Do you know how to dress for any of them?

Do you really think Ivanka does? Could she possibly do better than what a friend famously summarizes as “Barbie goes to work,” trying the look she thinks best “matches” the occasion?

Let me be clear, I am not here to judge Ivanka’s intelligence any more than I am her style. I just find it hard to imagine that any of us could juggle that many sets of rules or even understand our place within that many different roles without intentional study, a great deal of self-awareness, a desire to actually try, and at least a little bit of luck. Part of our success would depend on our ability to spend sufficient time in each role to apprehend its norms and expectations, and given the number of roles here, I doubt Ivanka could do that even if she tried.

Ivanka’s insufficiency to this particular task is in part a result of her lack of role models. She is not the first lady. She is not the teenaged daughter of a president, living in the white house. She is not a member of the royal family with official duties. Each of those roles carries a fairly circumscribed set of rules and style options; Ivanka’s does not.

Her problem is exacerbated by her starting point. In a previous post, I reminded us of French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, which encompasses the habits, tastes, and understandings we accumulate through our life experiences. That is, our upbringing, our values, our geographic location, our education, our social connections, and even our work all contribute to the cultural and symbolic capital we carry through life. Our clothes are just one outward manifestation of our habitus and are hard to change without intention (and even then, kind of tricky).

Ivanka’s habitus is a product of her upbringing, and she grew up with a set of over-the-top parents. Her father regularly objectifies women (including his own daughter) based on their secondary sex characteristics. Her mother exemplifies the teased-and-hair-sprayed-bangs-and-oversized-shoulder-pads look of the 1980s (and has not updated her look in the intervening years). Divorce courts were a regular feature of her childhood.

Let’s also acknowledge that Ivanka’s brand of TV, entrepreneurship, and fashion were all highly stylized, allowing her to make her own rules. The rarified world of wealth and privilege in which she came of age cannot have helped her understand the typical working woman, particularly those who work in sartorially conservative politics, especially in Washington, DC.

This kind of habitus is hard to shake off — and why would one want to, when one’s fashion idiosyncrasies are, in many contexts, signifiers of status and privilege? A tiger doesn’t change its stripes after 38 years just because it moves into a lower-rent new zoo.

So, what does Ivanka’s dress say about what she thinks the role she’s playing is? I propose that it says she doesn’t have a clue. Specifically, she cannot answer with any degree of precision any of the three questions required to deduce the logic of appropriateness: who am I, what is my role, and what are the rules of this game. Her background, lack of experience, over-commitment to too many disconnected roles, and possibly overconfidence and lack of curiosity together mean that she does not know how to navigate these waters, and it is clear that nobody who might is helping her.

This conclusion is important because Ivanka presumably has some power. If her clothing tells an accurate story, and she truly does not know what she is doing, she ought not to hold that power.

Fashion is not a game if you’re doing it right. Politics shouldn’t be, either.