What makes Melania Trump the first First Lady of her kind

She is redefining this US role her very own way for better or worse

- NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.

Melania Trump, First Lady of the US, began her first term in the White House with #FreeMelania trending online, as observers imagined that she was held hostage to her husband's ideology rather than a true believer. The saying also captured the peculiar job of the First Lady as a sort of compulsory plus-one to the president.

Now, months into her second term, there is a different phrase that will likely dominate her tenure: Where's Melania? This is progress. In not showing up as expected, Melania Trump, 55, has both freed herself and continued to transform the role. Few first ladies actually fully enjoy the unforgiving and unpaid job. Martha Washington famously described feeling "more like a state prisoner than anything else." But unlike first ladies before her, Trump will not be bound by the confines of what has become an antiquated position.

She is leaving the 'women's work' to others, namely her husband. It is reportedly the president, not the first lady, who is choosing the gaudy style updates to the White House, from paving the Rose Garden to adding gold tchotchkes to the Oval Office mantel.