Melania Trump Kisses Justin Trudeau

What the frame captures

A blue evening sky, three figures in the foreground and one more behind them. On the left, in profile, is a man with dark hair in a dark suit. A woman with long light hair in a bright red sleeveless dress leans toward him: her eyes are closed and her face is lifted. On the right, slightly behind, stands an older man in a dark suit with a striped blue tie and a U.S. flag pin on his lapel; his gaze is lowered and his eyes are closed. Between them, in the background, a man in glasses is visible.

The composition is almost theatrical: two people face each other, one looks to the side, and the red of the dress stands out clearly against the blue background. For the joke this is enough, because every viewer sees a story in the frame.

Where and when it happened

The G7 summit took place August 24–26, 2019, in Biarritz, France, at the Hôtel du Palais. According to Ukrainian and Russian media reports, the photo was taken on August 26 during a group photo session on the coast. The shot captured Melania Trump’s welcoming kiss with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau; the same reports noted that nearby, Donald Trump received a kiss from Brigitte Macron.

A kiss on the cheek as a greeting is a common form of welcome in France and many other countries, so there was nothing scandalous about the event itself. The effect was created by the photograph alone: a frozen moment without sound, in which each person’s glance looks significant.

How the photo became a meme

Shortly after publication, the hashtags #MelaniaLovesTrudeau and #MelaniaLovesJustin appeared on Twitter. Typical jokes boiled down to Melania supposedly planning to run off to Canada, and Donald Trump’s facial expression was compared to the reaction of someone whose idea was ignored. There were also captions with a political undertone, but the most durable versions, on the contrary, moved the storyline into everyday situations.

It is important to remember here that people’s emotions in the photo cannot be determined from a single frame, and the jokes are not information about real relationships. The meme rests on a conventional distribution of roles: the one who “gets the attention,” the one who “gives it,” and the one who “watches it all.”

Examples for your own caption

“When everyone in the chat is discussing your idea, but another person is the one who proposed it” — the person on the right becomes the one whose contribution was overlooked, and the red of the dress emphasizes the centrality of “the other one.”

“Me when my friend showed up to the birthday party with the best cake in the world” — a version about envy of someone else’s triumph, with no drama between people at all.

“The boss praises a new employee for the same thing I did a month ago” — a classic workplace version, in which the lowered gaze reads as silent resentment.

“The teacher invited only one student to a consultation” — a school version: two heroes are absorbed in each other, and the third pretends he doesn’t care.

How to use the frame

It works best to caption three roles: one gets the attention, the second gives it, and the third observes. This is the core scheme of the meme, and it works in family, work and friendship situations.

Do not use the photo to claim anything about the real relationships of the people pictured: the meme is funny only for as long as it remains an invented storyline.