Watching Her Steps: Melania’s choice of footwear for the Inauguration will have implications for the Balkans

Writing in The Huffington Post, Amra Sabic-El-Rayess, Research Assistant Professor in TC's Department of Education Policy & Social Analysis, notes that during the recent Presidential campaign, Melania Trump received a pair of stiletto heels from the Bosnian Serb shoemaker Bema, and invited Bema’s president to visit after the election.

“Bolstered by Trump’s fear of Muslims and his affinity for Serbs’ closest ally, Putin, Bosnian Serbs are now empowered with a new kind of audacity,” Sabic-El-Rayess writes. “They’ve planned a referendum to secede from Bosnia, as early as this year. Bosnia and Melania’s native homeland, Slovenia, were sister republics in the former Yugoslavia, where Melania grew up prior to that country’s violent dissolution in early 1990s.” Conclusion: “Melania’s Inaugural shoes, in their stylish turn, may signal that Bosnia is once again up for grabs. Secession would trigger another bloodshed in the heart of Europe and a region already infused with pain and suffering.”

Published Wednesday, Jan 18, 2017