White Women Really Turned Out for Melania

Over the weekend, boomer white women managed to pull themselves away from their Taylor Sheridan show of choice and make their way to the movie theater to see Melania, the documentary that followed Melania Trump in the 20 days leading up to her husband’s 2025 inauguration. While that may sound boring to you, according to the data, white ladies in Dallas and Tampa loved it.

Melania soared past its very low box-office expectations over the weekend, reportedly bringing in $7.04 million. That’s more than double prerelease projections, which sat at around $3 million for the Brett Ratner–directed doc. According to Variety, the surprise box-office surge was buoyed by older white women — 72 percent of the audience was white and 83 percent was over 45 — a demographic that is not regularly showing up for new releases. Variety also reported that the movie performed best in what I like to call the Nightmare Bachelorette Party Belt: Dallas, Orlando, Tampa, Phoenix, and West Palm Beach.

While critics mostly despised the movie, the ladies who turned out for it seemed to love it. Melania earned an “A” CinemaScore, which means that most of the people leaving the theater responded positively to an exit poll. On Fox News, former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany claimed that her mother attended a screening that was “standing room only” where people were “cheering through it.” Some women even broke out their DIY FLOTUS drag to celebrate the release:

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Yes, that is a fleet of women all wearing Melania’s inauguration gown, and if I had to see it, then you do too.

As for the white-woman-in-chief herself, Melania seemed very pleased with how her opening weekend turned out. In a post on X, she was as effusive as she gets.

In Melania terms, this is the equivalent of jumping for joy.