Newsweek attacked President Donald Trump's female relatives for wearing high heels in public in a piece published Thursday, saying it showed they were subservient to men.
"Melania, Ivanka, and Ivana Trump Wear High Heels, a Symbol of Everything That Is Beautiful and Horrifying About Them," read the headline.
"The female consorts of the Leader of the Free World do not set foot in public without first molding their arches into the supranatural curve that Mattel toy designers once devised for Barbie's plastic feet," the author complained.
Newsweek argued that high heels are designed primarily to attract men, not for the comfort of the women wearing them.
"So to deconstruct why Trump women wear high heels: They are just buying into traditional binary views of male and female," British psychologist Paul Morris opined.
"High heels thrust out the buttocks and arch the back into a natural mammalian courting," an American anthropologist agreed. "Rats do it, sheep do it ... lions do it, dogs do it. It is a naturally sexy posture that men immediately see as sexual readiness. [Heels] are a 'come-hither' signal."
"When women wear high heels at work, they send sexual signals that should be avoided if they want to be taken seriously," she said.
Newsweek further noted that the first women to wear high heels were "Italian prostitutes in the 17th century" and that "the high heel was a staple of Victorian porn."
"Stiletto pumps are the ultimate test of a certain type of femininity. They signal the taut combination of power and weakness that conservative women must cultivate in order to survive among ideologues who are crafting our tax-free 'Handmaid's Tale' future," Newsweek concluded.