Seeing First Lady Melania Trump dressed so exquisitely at the Commander in Chief Ball (and elsewhere) just hours after her husband’s swearing-in ceremony at the Capitol made me reflect once again on a cartoon I created exclusively for American Thinker just about a week ago:

I got a number of positive comments on the site for this particular posting, which was encouraging. In fact, not one comment was negative.

However, “behind the scenes,” in comments and insights from various friends and colleagues, several people thought that focusing specifically on a woman’s beauty was in poor taste. Interestingly, all of these observations came from my male contacts, none from females.

Two of the more notably negative thoughts shared included:

To be honest.....this is the kind of thing that makes Republicans really unappealing to people on the fence...especially women. Objectifying women for their possession of/ or lack of alleged beauty is really nasty....especially older women. Our disapproval of the women in question would be for their policies, not their appearance......this is uncharitable and I’m surprised you sent it around. Reel it in. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder....

And:

Sorry but I never like stuff that talks about women’s looks too much… doesn’t feel right to me...

But I also received these thoughts to balance out the others:

There are some who find Kamala, Jill and [Michelle] to be ‘fetching.’ That word is only used with HRC when referencing stick retrieval.

And:

If it wasn’t true, it might not be so funny. Because in general, the traditional, conservative women do tend to possess the qualities prized by the superficial man.

Of course, many men can be described as “superficial” regarding a woman’s attractiveness. We know that “beauty is only skin deep,” but many times, what’s deep inside manages to make its way to the surface.

Maybe I have a beauty bias here, but I must confess, I’m not sure what the underlying problem is when it comes to complimenting someone on their outward appearance. We appreciate when someone is born with incredible musical talent, sports agility, or scientific genius. But it’s almost like everybody gets a Participation Trophy when it comes to the looks department. Certainly, physical beauty isn’t everything, but it can be rightly appreciated.

There is, without a doubt, something physically appealing about all the women whose pictures I used to surround Melania in my meme. Perhaps, instead of using an “X” over their faces, I should have used a “?”.

However, my annoyance with how the left views Melania is also addressed in a deeper sense in my rendition. Each woman surrounding Melania has appeared on the cover of fashion and beauty magazines. But Melania, a real-life high-fashion model, has been slighted. After becoming the president’s wife, she was seen as being somehow “out of Vogue” among the other ladies.

Years back, when I was working on a television program, I was in the studio makeup room when I happened to mention, quite innocently, that I thought Kari Lake was “easy on the eyes.” I got immediate pushback—not from the older woman doing makeup (who agreed with me), but from a friend there at the time who reacted as if I had said something unseemly, even shameful.

Another idea conveyed about my M.A.B.A. cartoon was a tweak, which was to use the initials M.A.C.A. Would that have been better? The C would stand for either Classy or, more accurately, Charming. One Commenter had suggested Classy—and my twin brother Anthony had used the “classy” idea in his book review of Melania at The Washington Times.

Two last points:

Full disclosure: my twin and I, like Melania, are of 100% Slovenian heritage. Anthony and I are second-generation Slovenes; our grandparents on both our mother’s and father’s side immigrated to America in the early 1900s.

And, finally, I wonder what First Lady Melania Trump herself would think of this M.A.B.A. cartoon?

Or, for that matter, what would her husband think?

Albin Sadar is the author of Obvious: Seeing the Evil That’s in Plain Sight and Doing Something About It, as well as the children’s book collection Hamster Holmes: Box of Mysteries. Albin was formerly the producer of “The Eric Metaxas Show.”