What we spend our time doing shapes us. It shapes how we see the world and how we interact with the world. I briefly noted once elsewhere:
The US seems to largely miss the significant impact Reagan's acting career had -- and still has -- on the presidential image. His presidency marked a sea change in how our presidents get depicted in photos and video clips because Reagan was always keenly aware of what was behind him and how that would impact the impression made upon the public.
His wife at the time he was president was Nancy Reagan. She had also been an actress and was controversial for accepting free clothing from fashion designers while she was first lady.
Barbara Bush was the first lady after Nancy Reagan. The thing I most remember about Nancy Reagan is her criticism of Barbara Bush's appearance when she said to someone behind the scenes "What are we going to do about Barbara?" who was less Hollywood beautiful and stylish than Nancy Reagan.
My impression is that this is a conflict between a first lady who had a paid career and one who didn't and, instead, did the traditional wife and mom thing. Then came Hillary Rodham Clinton who openly insulted all first ladies before her by claiming that her paid career gave the country a "two for one deal," something I've written about before.
I don't know off the top of my head who was the first first lady who had a paid career outside the home. My first awareness of this as a source of conflict for the US is Nancy Reagan's catty remarks about Barbara Bush.
It's a blog post, not a PhD thesis. There's limits to how much I'm willing to research this piece but after making initial notes I began wondering why the US even has this tradition which other countries seem to lack and I did look up readily available background on the term.
According to Wikipedia:
The use of the title First Lady to describe the spouse or hostess of an executive began in the United States. In the early days of the republic, there was not a generally accepted title for the wife of the president. Many early first ladies expressed their own preference for how they were addressed, including the use of such titles as "Lady", "Mrs. President" and "Mrs. Presidentress"; Martha Washington was often referred to as "Lady Washington". One of the earliest uses of the term "First Lady" was applied to her in an 1838 newspaper article ...
I will briefly note that Martha Washington wasn't a traditional homemaker cooking and cleaning for her well paid, powerful husband. She was an heiress and a commentator on a TV show drily joked "George didn't just marry her for her money. He also married her for her stocks, bonds and land." (or something along those lines).
So it's possible the term began as a polite acknowledgement that George Washington married well, was obscenely wealthy -- possibly more obscenely wealthy in context than our current president -- and this was a power marriage. George supposedly said "There wasn't much fire between the sheets." in their relationship and historians agree he was "a young werewolf, desperately looking to find a rich bride."
I've not seen any coverage of her motives for marrying him. What women did and wanted is frequently left out of the historic record as if our ideas and goals have no impact.
But the birth of this country and George Washington's power likely wouldn't have happened at all without Martha's vast wealth and whatever she chose to do to support his goals.
I have always assumed it was a kind of acknowledgement that in olden times and traditional marriages, there's no clear bright line between his accomplishments and his wife's contributions. It gave honor and respect and public acknowledgement to full-time wives whose support was essential to their husband's political success.
Friction has been steadily growing throughout my lifetime between the traditional role of first lady and the career women wives who increasingly get that title and the UNPAID responsibilities and duties that go with it. I've written before that I think the US should retire this practice in order to set the example that women can have paid careers and shouldn't be assumed to be chattel property whose labor and good ideas get thrown in for free if you elect her husband president or otherwise hire him.
I'm NOT a fan of Donald Trump. I'm also not a fan of Americans calling him Cheeto and similar schoolyard insults like we are all five years old.
The current first lady is not respected and gets dragged for having posed nude in her modeling days and I think that's inherently problematic for this country to do.
There's three kinds of women who care what they look like in the public eye:
1. Career women.
2. Traditional wives of powerful men whose job is supporting his career, sometimes by attending public functions.
3. Prostitutes.
The first and last sometimes look rather similar and people don't want to openly wrestle with the fact that we mostly let women make their money off of sex appeal as singers, models and actresses and mostly don't let them into the old boys club.
Nancy Reagan was an actress and had to look pretty in a way similar to prostitutes. Barbara Bush looked much more like a traditional homemaker and Nancy dragged her for it.
And now we have a former model who posed nude in the past as part of her work life and she's upwards of twenty years younger than her billionaire husband and rather than have a hard conversation about the problems with heteronormative culture and how second and later marriages for wealthy men are frequently polite forms of prostitution where she's probably not cooking and cleaning and such but merely needs to look good on his arm and how this is problematic generally for all women, we drag Donald Trump and we drag his wife Melania.
Melania seems to not even like the role of first lady but for whatever reason isn't arguing that it's high time this archaic practice be retired. The US openly hates on her just like it openly hated on Nancy Reagan and Hillary Rodham Clinton but doesn't go "Gee, maybe it's time we stop glorifying married well full-time homemakers as the ultimate ideal success for women in this country and stop acting like an UNPAID hostessing role isn't putting lipstick on the pig of this country STILL treating women like chattel property."
But now what we glorify is a goal of marrying a man rich enough that you can afford a maid and to get meals delivered and your only real contribution to his life that anyone can obviously identify without knowing you well is sex. And then when a woman achieves that and her billionaire husband becomes president, we decry HER as a trashy ho but see nothing wrong with the SYSTEM that created this ugliness.
Full-time homemakers like Barbara Bush spent their time raising children and supporting their husband's career and otherwise engaging in activities for decades that helped prepare them for playing hostess for what are often diplomatic events involving world leaders from other nations. Former actresses and models don't necessarily have those skills and shouldn't be expected to pretend they do at no pay while we hate on them for looking like "whores" (AKA actresses and models).
If you imagine yourself to be a feminist -- in my mind that means someone who is pro career for women -- why in the hell are you decrying what a "whore" Melania Trump is rather than decrying this outdated practice of treating the President's wife as slave labor and pretending that's an honor rather than a glaring example of how backwards this country is?