First Ladies

Presidential elections are approaching, and with them yet another woman is going to find herself First Lady.  Or maybe a guy, since we have a heterosexual female in the running.  Bill might get out of it - we've had Presidents whose First Lady was a daughter or niece.  I always feel for these women.  They just can't catch a break.

Mary Lincoln thought the American people needed to see her as prosperous, to combat that whole Civil War bleakness.  Instead they called her frivolous and wasteful.  Nancy Reagan, a Hollywood woman, was also called these things because of her expensive tastes.  Yet Michelle Obama is "cheap" for buying clothes most American women can afford.  Barbara Bush, and to a lesser extent, her daughter-in-law Laura, were practical women and thus labeled frumpy.  So...  the First Lady is standing in her closet, knowing she's going to be mocked no matter what outfit she chooses.

It's become tradition that the First Lady choose a pet cause.  Jackie Kennedy famously renovated and redecorated the White House, saving a good deal of history from ending up in a landfill.  Yet it seems she's the only one to get proper credit for her efforts.  Nancy Reagan went after drug abuse and "Just Say No" is laughed at.  Hillary and Michelle get called all kinds of names for wanting actual regulations.  Again, the poor First Lady is damned if she does and damned if she doesn't.

I'd hate to be in her shoes, whoever she may be.  Because nothing she's going to do is going to be right.  If she wears fancy clothes, she's a snob.  If she's frugal, she has no sense of style.  If she comes on too strong with her pet cause, she's a shrew.  If she comes on not strong enough, she'll be laughed at and/or ignored.  She'll be too old or too young.  She'll have a scandalous past or she'll be boring.

Sometimes I think Rachel Jackson had the right idea - when her husband was elected, she promptly dropped dead.