The Curious Case of the Self-Deprecating First Man.
In search of self-deprecating first ladies.
I enjoyed watching the DNC convention. My favorite speeches were Michele, Barack, and Kamala. But the one I keep thinking about is Doug Emhoff.
I was taken by the way he was so charmingly self-deprecating and actually funny as he stepped into his possible new capacity as the official First Gentleman of the first female President. This got me thinking about how, in my lifetime, the 14 first ladies I witnessed all seemed mostly concerned with presenting a gracious but entirely serious demeanor. I could not recall ever hearing any First Lady making a joke at her own expense.
And that got me thinking about an anthropology class I took in college that covered a wide variety of social status and cultural origin theories. The reason I am mentioning it is that 5 decades later, some of that professor’s ideas still hit me so hard that I continue to think about them.
One of these ideas concerned the status assigned to the participants in male to female cross dressing and why male actors dressing up in women’s clothing has been a beloved comedy staple since the plays of the ancient Greeks. The professor’s take on this was that men, throughout history and particularly during the time of the ancient Greeks, were thought of as having much higher status than women as part of their birthright. Therefore the idea of someone of higher status dressing up as someone of lower status would automatically be considered funny. A pass was given to the idea of any loss of dignity because for men, dignity was a given. Whereas a woman dressing up as a man would by definition give her a rise in status. Therefore she was gaining in dignity creating a situation that was not funny.
This gender status stuff also connects to the reason that it was illegal for women to act on a stage until 1661 because it was considered unseemly and indecent. When there were written parts for women, they were played by men. And it wasn’t only that women were expected to be subservient, with their primary ambitions entirely confined to marriage, childbirth and homemaking. It was also that the ancient Greek medical establishment pronounced women to be incomplete and unfinished males. Not fully human. Or as sainted historical figure and philosophical genius Aristotle put it “The female is a female by virtue of a certain natural defectiveness. Therefore a proper wife should be for her husband as obedient as a slave…”
Don’t get me started on this stuff.
Oh well, Too late. I already got myself started. So just hang on for a minute and allow me to briefly vent about the ancient Greeks who, in their early poetry, describe women as ‘a loathesome curse sent by Zeus.’ Or as revered Athenian tragidean Euripides wrote in 431 BC as part of the dialog for the husband of Medea, in the play of the same name, “It would be better if there were no women at all and men could make sons in some other way.”
Women in the ancient world were expected to keep their very existence as secret as possible. It was considered “shameful in ancient Greece for a woman to be talked about by anyone, even if the person was saying good things about her, because it was thought that a woman’s place was to live and die in total obscurity.” And if you think this uplifting theory of a woman’s purpose ended with the ancient Greeks, consider the fact that there was not a single photograph to be found of the wife of the third President of the United States, the honorable Thomas Jefferson. The name of his First Lady was Margaret Taylor and she was entirely invisible until 2010 when a blurry daguerreotype finally surfaced. Before that, there was no physical evidence that she really existed! Talk about self deprecating!
Or as Lyndon Baines Johnson apparently said to someone in the latter part of the twentieth century, “Every politician should be born an orphan and remain a bachelor.”
Clearly the traditions connected to how concepts of gender and status were/are understood almost certainly had EVERYTHING to do with the behavior that was expected of the so-called First Ladies. And maybe also why watching Doug Emhoff confidently throw a pie at himself the other night by recreating the decidedly uncool vocal stylings he left on Kamala’s answering machine the first time he ever asked her out had such an impact on me. “Heyyyy. It’s DOUG” was apparently the message he left her at 8:30 in the morning. His unashamed dramatization of his own goofy naivete was received warmly by the crowd and played to big laughs. He also shared that his message had been so ridiculous that Kamala had played it back to him on every one of their wedding anniversaries since.
The playful way he told this anecdote got me thinking about the public demeanor of the 14 first ladies whose public lives I observed but mostly ignored during my lifetime. And how, for the most part, their’s was a unified projection of solemn respectability. None that I could recall ever dared to take potshots at their own dignity or status.
I started wondering ‘Who were these women? How did they wind up as first ladies anyway?’ The wife of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Supreme Court justice at the turn of the twentieth century, may have nailed it when she said “Washington is full of famous men and the women they married when they were young.”
One seldom discussed thing about becoming a first lady is that the participants get no access to any kind of official playbook. Its up to each new holder of the title to guess what is wanted from them. As Calvin Coolidge’s wife, Grace, wrote about her term of service;“There was a sense of detachment—this was I and not yet I. This was the wife of the President of the United States and she took precedence over me; my personal likes and dislikes must be subordinated to the consideration of those things which were required of her.” (Although Grace still managed to differentiate herself for all posterity by being the one and only First Lady to ever keep a pet racoon.)
Thinking back on The First Ladies as a group, it was my impression that the humor card was rarely played by any of them. And if it was, it certainly did not take the form of self-deprecation. So maybe my college professor was right. That the reason it worked so gracefully for Doug Emhoff was that he is entering into his new title with a more unshakable sense of high status simply because of his gender. Therefore he feels more at ease and less fearful of throwing a pie at himself .
Not sure if I had enough info to even pretend to be creating a theory, I decided to do a little online reading about the legacies of The First Ladies. As it turned out I knew very little about them.
I started with The White House Historical Association website, which offers beautifully painted full page portraits of each woman. But which also gives the serious work to which they dedicated their terms (ie: Promoting literacy. Beautifying the highway) the same amount of weight and space in their bios as their attempts at modernizing the dining room or freshening up the sitting room. Even the bio belonging to that arguably most admired of all the first ladies, Eleanor Roosevelt, reminds us that okay, yes, she was the first first-lady to visit an active war zone and hold a press conference. But let us not forget that she also ordered a new state service of White House China while she was tending to her renovations in the kitchen.
This idea of ordering new China dinnerware seems to have been a big priority for a large majority of them. The wives of Presidents Washington, Monroe, Jackson, Polk, Grant, Hayes, Harrison, Theodor Roosevelt, FDR, Madison, Truman, Eisenhower, Wilson, JFK, LBJ, Reagan, Bush and Obama all participated in picking out some new China. So by the time Rosalyn Carter showed up, she was mostly interested in smashing some of these kinds of stereotypes. During her stay, she made a point of never picking a Carter administration China pattern. She also did little if any redecorating . “I was determined to be taken seriously”said she. Admirable. But not really humorous.
It wasn’t until I stumbled upon the very entertaining book “Feisty First Ladies and Other Unforgettable White House Women.” by Autumn Stephens that I started to get a clearer picture of what else was going on with these intentionally subdued human beings.
For one thing, The Ladies, taken as a group, had a wide variety of reactions to the pomp and circumstance of it all, starting with the apparently dour Martha Washington, who commented to her sister ““I am more like a state prisoner than anything else.” She reportedly went on to prove it by looking miserable and sitting stone faced at the social gatherings she was required to attend
FIRST LADIES IN SECLUSION
Before I read the afore mentioned book, I was under the impression that Melania was the only First Lady to go mostly AWOL. But no. Quite a few of The First Ladies only grudgingly stepped into the limelight. Martha Jefferson, Rachel Jackson, Harriet Van Buren, Ellen Arthur and Alice Lee Roosevelt never lived in The White House at all. Letitia Tyler got malaria two months after her husband John Tyler took office and left to recuperate at the Jersey shore. Margaret Taylor took a vow of reclusiveness and shut herself off on the second floor of the White House for 16 months, only emerging when her husband Zachary Taylor collapsed in office in 1850. Jane Pierce, wife of Franklin Pierce, suffered from depression and hid in her room writing hundreds of letters to her dead son. Eliza Johnson, wife of the President Johnson who took office after Lincoln was assassinated, was quoted as saying “I do not like this public life at all.
Not really what you would call a fun bunch.
Then there was Ida McKinley, who hid from the public because she was epileptic. She spent three years in seclusion crocheting thousands of woolen slippers, which in and of itself is kind of amusing. But when she did appear at a social event, President McKinley would seat her next to him so if she had a seizure, he could “place a napkin or handkerchief over her face to hide her contorted features.” Then, according to the reports, he would simply continue talking as if nothing had happened. Which sounds like a scene from a Peter Sellers movie. That President McKinley didn’t rise and make sure his wife, a woman who lived in seclusion, was returned to the privacy of her bedroom, but instead continued with his conversation as though nothing had happened sounds like it could have been written by Monty Python. And speaks volumes about a possible personality disorder of William McKinley.
There were, of course, a few First Ladies who were perfectly suited to all the White House brouhaha. Julia Grant, wife of Ulysses S., reportedly loved every minute of being a First Lady. She became popular for, among other things, serving 29 (!!) course dinners. And reportedly said “I wish it might have continued forever.” Same with Dolley Madison, who was both popular and a partier who snorted snuff in public. She was sometimes called Lady Presidentress.
FIRST LADIES WHO WERE ALMOST FUNNY
But back to my original point of inquiry concerning the use self-deprecating humor, which by definition requires a certain ease and comfort with vulnerability. The closest any First Lady came in my lifetime might have been Betty Ford, who spoke about her health issues with a lot of off-the-cuff candor, though not necessarily humor. And as it turns out, Barbara Bush had a few moments of self-deprecation of which I was unaware. For example, after assuming the mantle of First Ladyhood, she told a reporter “My mail tells me a lot of fat, white-haired wrinkled ladies are tickled pink.” That remark is not only self deprecating but also took a fair amount of self confidence.
Then, of course, there were (and still are) the never ending trials and tribulations of Hillary, who can be quippy at times though not often self-deprecating. She was, after all, always under attack from so many different ridiculous factions of dunderheads that she didn’t dare allow herself to be seen as vulnerable. The best example of a joke she told, according to the ‘Feisty Ladies’ book, was at the White House press correspondent’s dinner in 1999. It was, however, a joke at Bill’s expense, not her own.
"I saw my in-laws down in Arkansas over Easter. We like it down there. Bill didn't know much about rural life when he returned from up North. Georgetown and Yale don't have a real strong ranching program. But I'm proud of Bill. He's learned a lot about the rural life since that first year when he tried to milk the horse. What's worse, it was a male horse"
And of course she got a lot of shit for telling it that no male staff member would have gotten. Immediately the always deplorable Rush Limbaugh suggested that the First Lady's joke "confirmed how low this Administration has brought the morals of the country….I mean, here she is, talking about masturbation--of a horse! By gosh, doesn't she know that kids will hear this stuff. It just sickens me." Hopefully a substitute host was near enough to Rush in the studio to put a handkerchief or a napkin over his head, then continue the broadcast for him while he recovered.
Of course, Hillary was most famously castigated for her quippy remark after a debate where Jerry Brown accused Bill of "funneling money into his wife's law firm." When she was asked about Brown’s comment, she responded: "I suppose I could have stayed home, baked cookies, and had teas." This remark created a firestorm of responses from outraged stay-at-home wives and mothers feeling dissed. But infuriatingly, the full quote from Hillary was never reported by the often irresponsible main stream media. The rest of the quote actually went on to say, "The work that I have done as a professional, a public advocate, has been aimed . . to assure that women can make their own choices, whether it's full-time career, full-time motherhood, or some combination." Small wonder that Hillary had no inclination to be self-deprecating.
FEMINIST FIRST LADIES
There were also a few ardent feminists in the First Lady lineup. For instance, Abigail Adams, wife of the second president John Adams, voiced a lot of challenges against the idea of male dominance while also supporting equal educational opportunities for women. She even complained that women were excluded from full participation in the American revolution. “American women are determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by laws in which we have no voice or representation.” said she. Admirable and impressive. But not exactly the kind of thing that begs for ways to be funnier.
A lot of the first ladies had notable educational backgrounds. Lady Bird Johnson, who I remember as being polite and mostly behind-the-scenes, turns out to have been an independent business mogul who created a media empire. It was her money that financed Lyndon’s political career! I have no memory of the fact that during her term, she hosted a series of “Women-Doer luncheons” that focused on female accomplishments. (And as a reward for continually asking her husband “What did you do for women today?”, LBJ eventually said: “Every politician should have been born an orphan and remain a bachelor.”)
CHALLENGING MARRIAGES
The LBJ marriage was certainly not the only Presidential marriage that must have been challenging, to say the least. Louisa Adams, wife of John Quincy Adams, and referred to as a “tart tongued feminist” was married to a President who was not embarrassed to have said to someone: “There is something in the very nature of mental abilities which seems unbecoming a female.”
And while we’re on the topic of challenging Presidential marriages, let us not forget old Jackie Kennedy who was somewhere in the confusing middle of it all when her tenure began. “People told me 99 things I had to do as First Lady and I haven’t done one of them” she told a reporter. But considering what we now understand about what she was putting up with from JFK, that she ever had the concentration or emotional capacity to even try to accomplish anything at all is astounding. Because she was beautiful, educated and seemingly self-possessed, she eventually found herself voted ‘Most admired woman in America’. She also became known for re-fashioning The White House into more of a museum and a center for arts. But if humor was a card she played, I was unaware of it. Unless you count the time she introduced one of JFK’s MANY romantic liasons to a French journalist at a party thusly: “This is one of the young women who is supposed to be sleeping with my husband.” That is not only kind of self deprecating, it is very funny.
RETRO FIRST LADIES
And let us not forget the mostly serious Nancy Reagan and her campaign to “Just Say No.”(to drugs) which, in light of what is currently known about the workings of addiction, could be classified as (unintentionally) funny. Gloria Steinem called Nancy “The rare woman who can perform the miracle of having no interests at all” And Queen Elizabeth herself apparently said of her “That woman! Who on earth does she think she is.” To which Mrs. Reagan had a pretty good comeback: “ I’d never wear a crown. It would mess up my hair.” But when accused by the press of too much meddling in government affairs, she came back with something that was pretty close to funny: “This morning I had planned to clear up U.S.-Soviet differences on intermediate range nuclear missiles. But I decided to clean out Ronnie’s sock drawer instead.”
There were also a few anti-feminists among the First Ladies. Like Mamie Eisenhower who said to a reporter “I never knew what women would want to be liberated from!” And who apparently followed her own advice when she said “Every woman over 50 should stay in bed until noon” But it wasn’t as if she was wasting time. According to the Feisty Women book, she was very careful never to miss an episode of a soap opera called “As the World Turns. So if you needed an update on what happened after Julia kidnapped her ex-husband and tried to force him to have sex with her so she could get pregnant, Mamie was your girl.
AND, OF COURSE, THIS
In closing, I would certainly be remiss if I didn’t bring special attention to the only one of the First Ladies who is currently starring in her own (reportedly hilarious) Broadway show. Titled “Oh Mary,” the show’s creator/star Cole Escola takes great pains in interviews to assure everyone that he wrote it without doing even the tiniest amount of research about Abraham Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. Although portions of her life certainly lent themselves to broad satire, (once you remove the unfortunate truth about her real-life mental illness.) For example, she referred to herself as Mrs.President Lincoln and on her way to the inauguration stopped to buy herself sixteen fancy dresses and would fall to the floor, screaming, if they were not a perfect fit. I certainly hope Cole Escola somehow incorporated that.
ANYWAY….All this by way of observing that it will be interesting to watch Doug Emhoff walk the invisible line that all these other ladies have left behind for him to use for a reference as he attempts to carve a place for himself as the first man to swim in this particular cold, deep ocean. Hopefully the good nature he was showing when he spoke at the DNC convention is something he will be able to continue to maintain.
Though I, for one, will be disappointed if he doesn’t find the time and make the effort to pick out a new set of White House China.
This was fascinating, both the deep dive into First Ladies and the observation that a First Gentleman has different ways that he will need to talk to the public. I live in sort of a Coolidge-obsessed place where everything is named after him, but I never knew about Mrs. Coolidge and her raccoon.
Ironically, it appears that Mrs. Reagan was in fact more involved with nuclear missiles than she was with sock drawers. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/01/nancy-reagan-ronald-cold-war/