Better Half E4 - Pearls, Pants Suits, And The Golden Age Of Capitalism 1944 - 2022

Scattered Curiosities

This is the final episode of our four-part Better Half mini-series containing six lectures apropos to the First Ladies from the Cold War up to the present time. What is known of the First Ladies of the United States we have covered up to this point comes down to us via the press, memoirs, what can be divined from letters, paintings, anecdotes, and personal artifacts. Following World War Two, fashion became ever more critical as visual media embedded itself into politics. We begin with a material girl who hated the dry-cleaning in WASHington DC so much, she shipped it to KC to be done properly, one whose favorite press time answer was "No Comment", a multi-linguist beauty reportedly "full of the devil", a billboard-busting, millionaire First Lady that word-skirmished with Catwoman, "a good piece of literature on a shelf of cheap paperbacks" circuiting a leper colony, a fashion model dancing instructor credited with a life-saving blip, a promiscuous FLOTUS who shook hands with a serial killer, a "Glamourous paragon of chic" going to war with drugs attired in "misappropriated" crimson finery, a FLOTUS to have three Air Force bombers named after her and a private cabin on the Love Boat, the first to be a lawyer/Senator/Secretary of State/Presidential Candidate/Grammy Winner, the only First Lady with a master's degree in Library Science, the first African American First Lady, the nation's second foreign-born FLOTUS single-handedly takes on cyberbullying, and a Quaker City sports junkie controversially uses her rightfully earned title.