A Glossary of Ivankisms

By Esther Wang | October 4, 2019 | 5:32pm

Politics

Ivanka Trump has a way with words. This has been apparent for a long time, from writing that spending time with her nephew was “the best part of an otherwise incredible day” to her odd embrace of “architect” as a verb. But it’s become especially clear lately, as she continues to roll out the White House’s Women’s Global Development Prosperity Initiative, or W-GDP (or what I would call her desperate attempt at a public relations campaign to shore up her rapidly declining brand).

Unlike her father, though, who reduces the English language into a stream of consciousness, grammatically incoherent fever dream, Ivanka often has a tendency, as Katy Waldman put it in 2017, to “speak in the melodious, lavish tones of ad copy.” What this amounts to in practice is sounding a lot like a bot that’s been programmed to speak solely in corporate aphorisms. Ivanka just loves to use—excuse me—utilize, multi-syllabic corporate-speak when plain language would do just fine.

Architect

Architect, as you may know it, is a noun: a person who designs buildings. But not for Ivanka! In her book Women Who Work, she uses some form of the word as a verb at least seven times, usually as part of the phrase “architecting a life you love.”

Here’s just a taste:

“All women benefit immeasurably by architecting their lives in a way that honors and supports their relationships and pursuits outside of work.”
“Your mission statement is your manual for architecting a life you love; it is your true north that will keep you on task through time.”
“By this point, you’ve no doubt devoted lots of thought to what you care most about, what your passions are, and how you must prioritize them to architect a life you will love.”

It’s okay to say “build,” Ivanka!

Effectuate

Here’s what Ivanka said in September to a group of women participating in a W-GDP global exchange program: “We are going to be relentless in leaning on you to effectuate the kind of change we know you have the potential to.” What a sentence, damn.

It’s not the only time Ivanka has been relentless in leaning on the word “effectuate” when “create” or “make” would suffice.

“The presidency of the United States is an incredible thing,” she told Harper’s Bazaar in August of 2016. “You have an ability to effectuate change at the highest level.” Before that, in 2015, she also described her father as “a man who uses his platform and uses his voice to effectuate change.”

Actualize

It would be unfair to say that only Ivanka actualizes. Marianne Williamson actualizes. Goop horoscopes actualize. But Ivanka wants more women in the world to join her in actualizing: like in this tweet, where Ivanka states she wants W-GDP participants to “actualize our mission into the incredible work they are doing.”

Executing

Ivanka does not do, she executes. Here she is “executing women’s economic empowerment”:

And here she is again, “executing” when a simpler, and less subtly threatening word, would perform the same function:

And here’s an execution throwback, from a simpler time:

Empower

Did you know that everything is empowering and anything can be empowered? Ivanka knows!

The upward distribution of wealth is empowering:

Publicity campaigns for fail daughters are empowering:

Sanitizing your administration’s record of fighting to strip people of access to basic healthcare is empowering:

The sentient corpse of Wilbur Ross is empowering!

Ivanka Trump, just empowering and architecting herself to effectuate and actualize the execution of women!