With her bouncy blonde blow-dry, impeccable manicure and groomed brows, it’s fair to say that President Trump’s eldest daughter Ivanka looks like your stereotypical privileged Upper East Side woman. But her glossy demeanour hides a surprising phase in her youth: Ivanka was into grunge.
The revelation was unveiled in her mother Ivana’s memoir, Raising Trump, which features lengthy passages relating to her daughter’s attempt at a rebellious streak in her teenage years. Like most young people coming of age in the ‘90s, Ivanka was a fan of wearing flannel shirts and ripped jeans, with an obsessive love of Nirvana and more specifically frontman Kurt Cobain. She even dyed her pristine blonde locks blue, perhaps in homage to ultimate punk rock girl Gwen Stefani, who was also popular at the time (although music snobs will tell you that the ska scene was way different to the Seattle grunge one).
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Writing in her mother’s book, she relates an anecdote about how her glamorous mother reacted to her hasty dye job, saying: ‘During my punk phase in the nineties, I was really into Nirvana. My wardrobe consisted of ripped corduroy jeans and flannel shirts. One day after school, I dyed my hair blue. Mom wasn’t a fan of this decision. She took one look at me and immediately went out to the nearest drugstore to buy a $10 box of Nice’n Easy. That night, she forced me to dye my hair back to blond. The colour she picked out was actually three shades lighter than my natural colour… and I have never looked back!’
Many people on Twitter were quick to point out that Nirvana was actually at the forefront of the grunge music scene, rather than punk, with several making jokes at her expense.
Of course, as readers will know, Ivanka’s love of grunge icon Kurt was destined for tragedy, as the frontman committed suicide via self-inflicted shotgun to the head in April 1994. Her mother however was apparently one of the few people in the world who didn’t know who Kurt was, and therefore only had so much sympathy for her grieving daughter, as Ivanka explains: ‘It wasn’t too long after this that Kurt Cobain, the singer, songwriter, and guitarist for Nirvana, committed suicide. It was a shock and I was distraught. Mom had no idea who Kurt Cobain was, and she sympathised only so much. After twenty-four hours of my crying inconsolably in my room, alone—major melodrama—Mom had to pull me out of there to go down to dinner.’
In a parallel universe where Kurt Cobain didn't kill himself in 1994 and was still alive, we can't imagine he'd be a fan of President Trump.
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