The Strangest Job in the World
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The role of first lady couldn’t be stranger. You attain the position almost by accident, simply by virtue of being married to the president, but then it comes with punishingly high expectations. The moment’s prevailing ideas about womanhood and marriage—right now, very confused and fluctuating ones—are projected onto the plus-one, who must conform or find some way out from under this burden. Katie Rogers’s new book about our most recent first ladies, from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden, looks at exactly this struggle to play a part for which there is no longer any clear script to follow.
“Every first lady in modern times has been a on the book: Perhaps, she argues, none more so than … Melania Trump. Having largely ignored what a first lady is supposed to do—including not even in the White House for a long stretch of time—Trump broke the mold, one that keeps being refashioned with each new partner who finds herself (or, hopefully one day, himself) in the role. Helen’s essay made me think about the memoirs by first ladies, which now seem almost like a genre unto themselves. One of the earliest entries, largely forgotten today, was by a woman who may have been closer to running the country than being a kindly helpmate: Edith Wilson.
