Betty Ford, a trail-blazing first lady whose footsteps are not often followed

The title “first lady” comes with a lot of baggage, beginning with the word “lady,” which Merriam-Webster defines as “a woman of refinement and gentle manners.” A lady is polite. A lady is well-groomed. Whatever her real or perceived power, a lady does not rock the boat. But to be a first lady? That’s something else entirely: both a privilege and a requirement that a woman’s conduct be at its most public and polished.

As the tributes and outpourings of admiration during the past week have emphasized, Betty Ford, who died at age 93 on July 8 in Rancho Mirage, Calif., was one of the United States’ most beloved — and progressive — political wives. A lot of this was thanks to Mrs. Ford’s unique ability to act like a lady while subverting the expectations for female subservience that it demanded. (As the Rev. Lane Hensley said at a memorial service Tuesday in Palm Desert, Calif., Mrs. Ford showed the world that “there are new and better ways to be a first lady.”)

Loading...

Comments

• Weigh In
• Corrections?

Personal Post

Anna Holmes

Anna Holmes is a contributing columnist for the Style section. She is the founder of Jezebel.com.

Archive

More on this Topic

• Obituary for Betty Ford, 93
• Betty Ford from The Post archives: ‘I wanted to keep life normal’
• Dec. 29, 2006: Betty Ford, Again Putting On A Brave Face
• Reaction to Betty Ford’s death from presidents, first ladies and Twitter

View all Items in this Story

View all Items in this Story

• Blazing a lot of firsts as top lady

A former dancer, fashion buyer and stay-at-home mom, Mrs. Ford had June Cleaver looks and an all-American biography that belied a ferocity and willingness to embrace provocative politics (Roe v. Wade, the Equal Rights Amendment) that — coming on the heels of the stilted, seemingly staid households overseen by Mamie Eisenhower, Lady Bird Johnson and Pat Nixon — seemed truly revolutionary. She was, as her fights with breast cancer and substance abuse made abundantly clear — the embodiment of the political made personal.

“She liked the idea that a woman could express herself rather than the views of her husband,” says Donna Lehman, an archivist at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum in Grand Rapids, Mich.

This “take me as I am, warts-and-all” approach to life was, in its way, a feminist act, but it was also an expression of her Midwestern upbringing. In a 1997 interview with Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes,” Ford visited the studio of artist Ray Kinstler, who was finishing a portrait of the first lady that would hang in the entrance of the Ford Museum.

“It’s lovely,” Mrs. Ford, then 79, told Kinstler as a camera crew looked on. “I just expected something . . . more mature.” (Kinstler later agreed to add more evidence of her age, i.e., wrinkles, to her face.)

At Tuesday’s memorial service, Rosalynn Carter, who followed Mrs. Ford into the White House after Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford in 1976, extolled her friend’s honesty and graciousness, saying that she “was never afraid to speak the truth even about the most sensitive of subjects.”

The audience, nodding, followed along in a bound program, the cover of which bore Kinstler’s completed portrait.

Blazing trails

Unfortunately, the trails that Mrs. Ford blazed — particularly her belief in radical honesty and personal transparency — have been somewhat lost in the maze of modern partisan politics. Now, almost 40 years after her departure from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., it’s difficult, if not impossible, to think of a contemporary first lady, particularly a Republican one, who has been so consistently and unapologetically outspoken in her activism.