Why does Melania Trump want us talking about decades-old nude modeling pictures?

Melania Trump made news this week with an out-of-nowhere defense of nude modeling work she did literally decades ago, and the world asked … why?

The immediate answer is that she's promoting a book, specifically a memoir, and as a Trump she knows what will get media coverage. But still … why? As in, why is she promoting a memoir at this specific moment? Why did she choose this of all the things in her memoir that might have drawn attention?

I see two possibilities here, which converge in the end. Possibility one is that Melania timed the release of her memoir without consulting her husband's campaign, because she is looking for maximum profit and figured that pre-election would be her best chance for sales. If Donald loses, her memoir will be forgotten. If he wins, maybe she can extract some sales from the platform she gets, but she might as well have sold as many books as she can beforehand. In this possibility, it's all about profit for Melania.

Possibility two is that she did consult her husband's campaign on the timing, and they felt it was advantageous to Donald to have attention on his wife as he battles for women's votes.

Since Donald is not pretending to have read his wife's memoir, it's probably possibility one: an individual play for cold hard cash.

Either way, though, the specific choice to ask the world to talk about nude pictures Melania posed for as a professional model in 1995 and 2000, pictures no one was discussing, was a cynical one. She started the conversation by pretending that she had faced attacks and that she was, as a woman, rising above it all to defend "my celebration of the human form in a fashion photo shoot." 

In translation: Please, Democrats, attack me so I can play the victim and Republicans will rush to my aid, preferably by buying my book and/or voting for my husband. But mostly the first one. It's a kind of pathetic reach for attention. But in the category of "Things Trumps Do For Attention," it's more of a halfhearted eyeroll than a gasp.