Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Life

Ivanka, We’re Not Buying It — Your Words, or Your Clothes

The great ambiguity at the center of the Trump campaign goes as follows: Are we witnessing a grand political ambition, or a great big advertisement for a brand? Yes, in a sense all politicians are brands, all candidates selling something. But I mean in the literal sense: Donald Trump is selling, like, widgets. Goods and services (and steaks) with “Trump” stamped on them. If he wins, he’s president! But if he loses, he’s still a brand, one that just got a ton of free advertising.

Ivanka, too, is a brand, and a somewhat more complicated one. If the Trump brand image is ‘crass douche’ or maybe ‘1980s teen movie villain’, the Ivanka Trump one is something like Sheryl Sandberg ultra-lite. Remember in the 1990s when there was “girl power” and it was kind of like feminism but not really? Or more recently, when we’ve been asked to derive feminist significance from the fact that Taylor Swift appears on social media with a “squad” of female friends? It’s kind of like that, but the fantasy is that you’re a successful young businesswoman and ex-model who also happens to have a rich father and rich husband but you’ve kept your name (which is… Trump) and you’re an independent, self-made career woman and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

This may be attributing too much power to branding. Ultimately we all need to get dressed, and if you’re working in an office, you need inoffensive office-wear, which is evidently what Ivanka sells. I wouldn’t assume every woman with an Ivanka-branded shift dress in her closet is or ever was some sort of aspirational Trump-o-phile. But until recently, so what if some women were Ivanka-admirers? Who am I, an occasional goop-browser, to judge?

A political campaign crossed with an ad campaign lends itself naturally to economic boycotts, organized as well as visceral. Trump hotels are discreetly rebranding themselves “Scion,” while Upper West Siders question whether they really want to live in a building called “Trump.” And as Joanna Walters reports in the Guardian, there’s an Ivanka-brand boycott afoot, led by a woman named Shannon Coulter (see the tweet above), and driven by the #GrabYourWallet hashtag, a reference to Trump’s own “grab them by the pussy” comment. “Women Who Work,” Ivanka’s almost comically tepid slogan, still reads as empowering, and thus hypocritical when juxtaposed with a candidate whose disregard for women in and out of the workplace is so pronounced.

Normally, viral-and-aggregated brand boycott stories make me suspicious: Isn’t even discussing the topic just more free advertising? Doesn’t controversy sell? Here, though, the issue seems a bit different. The brand-such-as-it-is is everywhere. Its name is already recognized. Bad publicity is, I think, in this case, a real thing.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood. Her book, , will be published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.