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This chapter presents the text of George Gershwin's letter to New York-based newspaper reporter Max Abramson in 1918. This letter was written to tell Abramson about his first tastes of success. Gershwin described his activities and thoughts during this period while on tour with the show Ladies First, just prior to his breakthrough success with the song Swanee. This letter demonstrated the directness of purpose that is among the strengths of Gershwin's letters.

This chapter analyzes, as a performance text, Michelle Obama’s public persona as first lady. Proclaiming herself Mom-in-Chief, Mrs. Obama embodied a variation of the strong black woman, and her strategies for inspiring others resembled those of black club women of the 1890s and early 1900s. Club women taught other women best practices for caring for their families and homes. They also gave advice about, and considered themselves models for, how best to style one’s hair and dress appropriately. Likewise, Mrs. Obama made deliberate choices about hair, clothes, and overall bodily presentation, and she decorated the White House in ways that continued Jacqueline Kennedy’s legacy but that also acknowledged the hostility hounding her first family because it was not white. [119 of 125 words]

This chapter assesses the unusually influential role played by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. A product in many ways of the 1960s women’s movement, Clinton broke new ground as a presidential spouse. Aside from Eleanor Roosevelt, a sui generis first lady, modern presidential wives did not advocate signature public policy causes until Lady Bird Johnson launched her “Keep America Beautiful” campaign in the mid-1960s. Hillary Clinton chose health care reform as her primary cause, but she went far beyond her predecessors by leading a task force that developed legislation and then presented it to Congress. The chapter then discusses the controversy surrounding Clinton’s expanded policy functions as first lady and offers conclusions about how Americans view the position in the context of presidential power and women’s political participation.

This chapter features the extensive television news coverage of Hillary Clinton as a candidate for the U.S. Senate. In many ways, the news broadcasts reflected the memory frames that circulated throughout her time as first lady, from her image as a political lightning rod who suffered from personality problems to that of a victimized wife. Questions surrounding her political authenticity were central to the news frames from the early murmurs of a possible Clinton Senate run. Clinton was correspondingly depicted as an inauthentic political candidate because of her questionable motives for office, her lack of geographical ties to the state of New York, her lack of political experience, and her shifting views on contentious political topics. These inauthenticity judgments suggested to the press and Clinton's Republican opponents that she lacked an overall fitness and preparedness for elective office.

This chapter represents the first installment of Hillary Clinton's news biography and examines the news coverage of Clinton during the 1992 presidential campaign and her entrance onto the national stage of politics. It recounts the baseline news frames that laid the foundation for judgments of Clinton's authenticity against which future frames would converge and diverge. The chapter also describes her most formative media moments during this period, which linguistically and visually acted as stock frames that authenticated Clinton as a feminist and inauthenticated her as a woman of tradition. Her political image was thus framed as a political intruder violating the protocol of presidential campaigning; an anomalous candidate's wife rejecting the trappings of home and domesticity in favor of feminist principles; and a political lightning rod who exuded personality problems that promised to disrupt her husband's presidential bid and undermine the traditions of first lady.

This chapter itemizes and elaborates on four different component parts (described in the book as "ingredients") that make-up presidential foodways. The first ingredient relates to the president: his or her palate, food philosophy, schedule, wealth and prerogative. The second ingredient involves the people who surround the president: the First Lady, the president's physician, and those who procure food for the White House. The third ingredient is White House culture: the workspace, kitchen equipment and technology, co-workers, perks, presidential pets, wildlife in and outside of the White House and racial attitudes. The fourth ingredient is the unexpected influences: the U.S. Congress, public perception, food gifts from the public, and the climate in Washington, D.C. The chapter includes recipes for roast ducks, popovers (a quick bread), and sweet potato cheesecake.

This chapter presents American composer and pianist Oscar Levant's comments on the music of George Gershwin. According to Levant, Gershwin began to impinge on his life even before he met or even heard of him. He recalled his first meeting with Gershwin in a show titled Ladies First starring Nora Bayes and his recording of his version of Gershwin's compositions including Rhapsody in Blue and Rialto Ripples. This chapter is based on an original article published in the November 1939 issue of Town and Country magazine.

This chapter suggests that the national leader, Xi Jinping, has managed to build a new image of political leadership that corresponds with the discourse on masculinity in contemporary times. The archetypal model is constructed with the assistance of Xi’s wife and her modern First Lady image. There are multiple ethnographic vignettes highlighting the popular response to Xi’s policies and performance, and ordinary citizens’ expressions of militaristic nationalism, directed mainly against Japan. In the midst of this, President Xi is shown to have become the epitome of an able-responsible leader who shoulders responsibilities by his tough stance to fight corruption and poverty, and his call for the resurgence of national greatness. Xi’s prolific citations from classical, traditional, teachings to mundane analogies have special appeal on the grassroots level.