Saturday Night Live decided to savage more than the president in its latest episode, taking on Trump’s daughter Ivanka and branding her “complicit,” for refusing to halt her father’s agenda.
The skit, a faux fragrance ad starring host Scarlett Johansson, shows the starlet strutting through a Mar-a-Lago-esque dinner party in a sparkly gown, with Ivanka’s signature nonplussed expression on her face.
“She’s Ivanka,” a voiceover says, as Johansson turns heads in the event. “And a woman like her deserves a fragrance all her own. A scent made just for her. Because she’s beautiful. She’s powerful. She’s … complicit.”
Obviously, the intent is to accuse Ivanka of defying her own intelligence and political beliefs to support her father’s administration—at one point, “Ivanka” looks in a mirror to see Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump staring back, putting lipstick on.
But the ad doesn’t stop there. Celebrity feminist Johansson and the SNL writers go on to use Johansson’s spot-on impression to accuse Ivanka of being a traitor to women.
“A feminist. A champion. An advocate for women,” the narrator says as women on screen look confused. “But, like, how?”
Unlike Johannson, of course, Ivanka failed to appear at the Women’s March on Washington and wear red last week. So despite her influence on the party’s priorities —forcing Trump to incorporate a maternity leave policy and include working women’s issues in his domestic agenda—she can’t officially be considered a feminist.
“Complicit: The fragrance for the woman who could stop all of this,” the narrator finishes, ” but won’t.”
The sketch itself isn’t badly done, but the message to Ivanka seems abundantly clear: adopt the de facto progressive platform attendant to modern feminism or face endless ridicule, even if you are trying to make inroads within the Trump Administration. (She and her husband are credited with being moderating forces on everything from West Wing employees to the admin’s environmental policy).
The SNL sketch is just the latest attack on Ivanka’s “fake feminism.”
On International Women’s Day, the Daily Show‘s Michelle Wolf claimed Ivanka’s commitment to women’s rights was limited to her concern for rich women and is tarnished by her white privilege; Ivanka couldn’t call herself a “feminist” because she hasn’t been vocal on specific issues like “domestic abuse” and “reproductive rights.”