[Pittsburgh, September 25. Image via Getty.]

PITTSBURGH - SEPTEMBER 25: The spouses of the visiting G-20 leaders (top-L-R) wife of Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiv, unknown, Dr Pimpen Vejjajiva, wife of EU Commission Chairman Jose Manuel Barroso, Margarida Sousa Uva, wife of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Therese Rein, Filippa Reinfeldt, wife of Swedish Prime Minster Fredrik Reinfeldt, Laureen Harper of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Sarah Brown, wife of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Miyuki Hatoyama, wife of Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, wife of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Ban Soon Taek, unknown, unknown, (bottom-L-R) wife of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, President of Spain, Sonsoles Zapatero, wife of South African President Jacob Zuma, Nompumelelo Ntuli, Kim Yoon-ok, First Lady of Korea, wife of Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Margarita Zavala, Brazil's first lady Marisa Leticia Lula da Silva First Lady Michelle Obama (6th-L-R), Ani Bambang Yudhoyono, wife of Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, French President Nicolas Sarkozy's wife Carla Bruni Sarkozy, wife of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Svetlana Medvedev, wife of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, Emine Erdogan, and wife of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Gursharan Kaur pose at the CAPA School on September 25, 2009 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. U.S. President Barack Obama and heads of state from the world's leading economic powers are meeting for the second day of the G-20 summit, aimed at promoting economic growth. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

So what do the "spouses" do while their husbands are sorting out the world? Well, that's what the bizarre
"spouses program" is for, something to keep the womenfolk busy with carefully-selected activities as strictly scheduled as a preschooler's day. Laura Bush reinstated the program in 2004. As the Washington Post explains, they can't do anything too important because the focus has to be on the summits - no headline-grabbing, just a polite group photo and plenty of cozy teacup diplomacy. After all, as Fox News knows, those wives are an unpredictable and wild bunch! Much better to keep them safely occupied.

And since the location of the summits change, there are always many new and interesting things to see and do!

Over the years, the spouses have visited a high-tech incinerator in Japan, inspected an earthquake site in Italy and attended a "Harry Potter" party in London. And there has been so much lunching and dining — ravioli carbonara in Rome! — that one wonders whether all the spouses have Jenny Craig on speed dial...Yet for all the group photos, the friendly chatter among accomplished ladies and the serious conversations about women's rights, the spouses program still has the ring of a tradition that might as well date from the era of Jane Austen when, after dinner, men retired to the library for cigars and cognac and a discussion of world events — and the ladies went into the parlor to talk about needlepoint.

While some might think that an educated and sophisticated group of cosmopolitan women might have better things to do than go to a Harry Potter party, Michelle's Obama's people claim brightly that the FL is excited to "put her stamp on it."

The events Obama has announced so far reflect the topics she has focused on as first lady: healthy eating, the arts and the education and support of young people. She will host a private get-to-know-you dinner Thursday evening for the spouses at Teresa Heinz's Rosemont Farm in Fox Chapel, Pa., just outside Pittsburgh. The dinner at the farm, where workers grow fruits and vegetables, raise cows and chickens and collect fresh eggs, is intended to underscore Obama's interest in sustainable farming and her emphasis on locally grown foods. The spouses will visit the Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts magnet school, which has more than 800 full-time students and is akin to the type of professional arts school that inspired the musical "Fame."They also will be given a tour of the Andy Warhol Museum — an artist symbolic of American popular culture who was born and raised in Pittsburgh. That will be followed by lunch.

Repainting the wheel, all right. Not that this doesn't sound like a pleasant weekend - just in stark contrast to the actual work of the summit. Now, obviously the Role of First Lady - and COC, for that matter - involves a lot of tradition and a lot of protocol and that's unavoidable. And yes, this is a wildly diverse group of women whose countries may not be on good terms - it's got to be a diplomatic challenge to plan. But it does seem like at an event that's tackling issues of global economy and international relationships, this makes a backhandedly strong statement. Don't worry, it says; we're not that radical! Dorm-room-approved Pop art is as controversial as it gets. (Well, depending on how much unscripted talk time Teresa Heinz gets; I'm gonna go with not much.)

What makes the whole thing especially weird is that not all the spouses are women: Joachim Sauer, the husband of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, wasn't apparently required to come. And Nestor Kirchner, the former president of Argentina, is now First Mate. In fact, this was a very real chance to change the face of the event organically, de-gendering the event and taking it in a new, more modern direction. (Although last I checked, guys were still allowed to watch Fame.) But, no. Although he's in Pittsburgh, Mr. Kirchner is not allowed to join the women, and will apparently be forced to watch pay-per-view in his hotel room or weep into a lonely Primanti Brothers sandwich. "No boys, just girls," Mrs. Obama's Chief of Staff, Susan Sher, says cutely. Jenny Craig, after all, doesn't take men.

The First Wives' Snub [Washington Post]
Despot Housewives [Fox]

Although foodies everywhere have applauded the First Lady's commitment to healthy eating in the form of a widely-publicized White House organic garden, food writer Amanda Hesser takes issue with Michelle's stated disinterest in that food's preparation.

When The Washington Post asked Mrs. Obama for her favorite recipe, she replied, "You know, cooking isn't one of my huge things." And last month, when a boy who was visiting the White House asked her if she liked to cook, she replied: "I don't miss cooking. I'm just fine with other people cooking." Though delivered lightheartedly, and by someone with a very busy schedule, the message was unmistakable: everyday cooking is a chore...Both times Mrs. Obama missed a great opportunity to get people talking about a crucial yet neglected aspect of the food discussion: cooking. Because terrific local ingredients aren't much use if people are cooking less and less; cooking is to gardening what parenting is to childbirth.

Now, the objections to this statement are obvious: Hesser (herself a busy working mom) acknowledges that the First Lady is a busy woman with a lot of important things on her plate, and it would be disingenuous to pretend that her life, or cooking opportunities, are like that of the average American. While food and cooking, to someone in the food world, is at this point not a gendered issue, to Michelle Obama it's probably not incidental to distance herself from generations of recipe-swapping First Ladies who aligned themselves firmly with the domestic. And because Mrs. Obama does not cook much these days does not imply unilateral scorn - Mrs. Obama has mentioned cooking in the past, they've hired a chef well-versed in organic and sustainable cooking, and this year's Easter Egg Roll incorporated a cooking class for kids. A garden can teach a lot about nutrition and the environment even to those who can't or don't have the opportunity to cook. And Mrs. Obama clearly enjoys and appreciates good, healthy food - perhaps as important as anything. Besides, should a First Lady have to censor her every word? Be an example and a role model at every turn? At the end of the day, probably a lot of people can relate to a First Lady who doesn't always talk from the script - and doesn't cook.

But that would, of course, be Hesser's point - that too many people can relate. And that every word, from someone so admired and imitated, is an opportunity. One could certainly argue that the food issue is one the Obamas have been strong-armed - and Anthony Bourdain and his Waters-hating ilk would likely argue just that. But having taken on an issue, one must see it through. And having acknowledged a crisis in our nation's diet, one can't separate the issue of cooking from it. Cooking is essential to changing the nation's habits - locavore restaurants are great, but it's not Blue Hill that's going to feed the man on the street. The issue here is a tricky one, though, because Mrs. Obama has to tread a fine line: while there's nothing remotely elitist or luxurious about scratch cooking to its champions, the simple truth is that this is far from a universal view, and Mrs. Obama would risk just as much criticism from devoting time to, say, a course of cooking classes, as by her current flippancy. Hesser suggests that watching the First Lady master the preparation of food would be a great example for the country, and it would - but if it's that important, it would be nice if her husband could be in there with her occasionally - and would do quite a bit to un-load the issue.

The Commander In Chef [NY Times]

I wouldn't be surprised if the writers of Mad Men loosely based the character of Betty Draper on Betty Ford. Both women had been fashion models living in New York City before they traded in their independence to settle down in a post-WW II suburban lifestyle to raise families and create homes for their husbands. Just like Draper is depicted on the show, Ford said that she felt as though her identity was lost in her new and limiting role as a wife and a mother. She began drinking to deal with the depression, and continued to take pain meds she'd been prescribed for a pinched nerve in the early '60s.

The lack of fulfillment felt by these two Bettys mirrors that of the women profiled in the book of another Betty: Betty Friedan's seminal The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963, which argues that women are victims of a social structure that dictated that the importance and meaning of their lives be identified through their husbands and children.

In the documentary, Ford says that once her husband became Vice President, and then later President, she had a podium and an audience, and she took the opportunity to unleash the voice within now that there were people listening. She says, "I was amazed that I was this important person."

Ford worked to ratify the ERA and, after being diagnosed with breast cancer, was open about her disease in a way and at a time that many women weren't; in fact, she became an activist for breast exams and early detection.

In this clip, she speaks candidly about premarital sex and being pro-choice.

After her husband lost the election in 1976, and she no longer had such a public platform, depression set in again and her addictions became worse, until her family staged an intervention and she sought treatment in 1978.

Interestingly, when she established the Betty Ford Center in 1982, she insisted upon gender-specific treatment for addictions, because she noticed that women were able to speak more openly about their problems when men weren't in the room.

Betty Ford: The Real Deal [PBS]

Related: The Feminine Mystique [Amazon]

It's unclear why the term is used so frequently in the People article, especially since Michelle is never quoted using the word herself. The article says (emphasis added):

Just one month on the job, the First Lady takes a break to talk to PEOPLE about loving her family's new life in the White House, her juggling act as mom-in-chief and helpmate to leader of the free world-and, yes, when we'll get to meet the First Puppy.

She is, all at once, so many different things to so many different people: the first African-American First Lady; mom to two very young girls; Ivy League-educated lawyer on hiatus from her own career; fashion icon; traditional hostess and wifely helpmate.

She recognizes that "helpmate" has taken on a whole new meaning as she watches her husband getting grayer by the month.

For now, she's just focused on the job at hand, saying she wants to live up to being the helpmate and role model Americans are looking for in a First Lady.

According to The American Heritage Dictionary, the word means simply, "A helper and companion, especially a spouse" and comes from a translation of the Bible that refers to God promising Adam "a help meet suitable for him." Obviously, the word could be interpreted to mean that a wife is nothing more than a helper to her husband, but does the term always have a negative connotation? Melissa McEwan writes:

The most obvious word to use would be partner, which I'm guessing was not used for the very reason I like the word-its implicit suggestion of equality.

However, it's actually not the first time Michelle Obama has been described as Barack's "helpmate" rather than his "partner." In a Reader's Digest article on Michelle last year, author Melinda Henneberger wrote:

If Barack is elected, Michelle insists, she has no interest in a role beyond that of helpmate and mother.

And in a December USA Today article, Obama family friend Barbara Engel used the term, saying of Michelle:

She's a down-to-earth woman with consummate self-confidence and excellent judgment, complete integrity, and capable of keeping her kids grounded while being a helpmate and adviser to her husband ... I think Michelle is going to make history as first lady. ... She will keep it real.

In the same article, Ann Stock, White House social secretary under President Clinton says, "The first lady has always been a helpmate and sounding board for the president, his most trusted adviser, and that's always a given." It's likely the use of the word has more to do with Hillary Clinton than Michelle Obama. While it's true that "partner" seems like a more modern term for your spouse, Michelle sanctioning the frequent use of "helpmate" probably has less to do with her not being considered her husband's equal, and more to do with reassuring the American people that Barack's "partner" isn't going to be overhauling the health care system anytime soon.

Lovely Lady Helpmate [Shakesville]
Helpmate [Dictionary.com]
Michelle Obama Interview: Her Father's Daughter [Reader's Digest]
What Kind Of First Lady Will Michelle Obama Be? [USA Today]

It's no secret that fashion is not a diverse industry, and as New York's Amy Larocca points out, there was a conspicuous contrast between fashion's vocal support for our new president and the industry itself. "During the campaign, designers, from Marc Jacobs to Tory Burch, celebrated Obama in a frenzy of T-shirts and tote bags that conflated change and style. But despite such liberal goodwill, the industry is overwhelmingly white, both in its makeup and its view of its customer." Were diversity a matter of course, Italian Vogue's all black issue would not have been the huge cause for excitement that it was. And while that issue may have sparked a flurry of all-black fashion week shows and isolated celebrations of "the other," these were quite conscious exceptions. If Michelle Obama is to become a muse, in a certain sense it will serve as a rebuke: the embrace of a woman who's gotten where she is, stylistically and otherwise, in spite of the industry.

The other issue, says Larocca, is the role fashion plays in the First Lady's life, the fact that "she uses fashion but is not defined by her interest in it."

She’s no Jackie Kennedy, whose tenure as First Lady is remembered precisely for her interest in style. This seems an unlikely course for Michelle Obama. Here is a beautiful, well-dressed woman for whom fashion is a sidebar. Hers is the kind of résumé that can induce a certain self-hatred among people who’ve devoted their lives to tracking hemlines and hairdos.

Michelle's attitude seems to be an eminently sensible one: as long as one needs to wear clothes publicly, have fun with it, make them beautiful and interesting, champion smaller designers. But the need comes first, then the whimsy. At the end of the day, she doesn't live for fashion. And this, while probably the only way the industry can thrive in the coming years, is more novel than it should be.

The interesting question is what the high priests (and more to the point, priestesses) of the fashion world will do with this opportunity. Will they use it as a chance to see fashion and diversity embraced in a natural, organic and practical way, or will Michelle become an excuse, a solitary nod to difference that allows them to pat themselves on the back and then never put another black woman on the cover of Vogue for another two years? It's in some ways unfair to address Michelle Obama as anything but the individual she is, and yet the fervor with which fashion has embraced her does make one wonder: exactly what is it they want to be on board with? Just Michelle - which is, perhaps enough - or what she could start?
Michelle O [New York Magazine]

In contrast to the rest of the White House gang, says Varadarajan, Laura Bush will be missed. No one's ever really minded Laura Bush much; in fact, she's been noteworthy for the lack of strong feelings she's elicited. Sure, "Stepford" has been tossed around — but she was never Cindy McCain fun — and with her vaguely not-anti-choice sentiments and "stand" against the Burmese junta, she's not so gung-ho ideological as a Palin. And let's face it, given what she was allied with, plenty of people would have kept a low profile. This, in Varadarajan's view, were her strengths: those of an "old-fashioned First Lady" who took a back seat to her husband's antics. Did she deceive a nation into war? Well, no. And subvert the justice system? Not as such. Did she oversee the biggest financial meltdown in history? Negative. Well, when you put it that way, you're right, she's great! Hence, one of the most patronizing paragraphs ever written:

Laura Bush was self-effacing by choice, and by an exquisite understanding of her role in the White House...Mrs. Bush is of a certain American type: wholesome, inclined to good works, a homemaker and mother, a supporter of the man she married, a smiling hostess. She is not flashy or colorful, overly intellectual or palpably shrewd, demonstrably independent or politically aggressive.

Which, he feels, is how a First Lady should be.

My guess, as America changes, is that the Laura Bush type will fade away, and that more and more first ladies will be (however one interprets the phrase) "people in their own right"—and thus, potentially, a huge pain to the body politic. (Think Cherie Blair ...) There is some danger that Michelle Obama, a forthright and independent woman, could hew more to the Hillary model than to the Laura Bush way —although her demeanor in the election campaign suggests that she's not unaware of the public boundaries that Hillary, as first lady, failed to respect.

If Varadarajan is hoping the tragically "forthright and independent" Michelle Obama will hew to the Laura Bush mold, he's in for a rude shock. First Ladies are, I fear, very much "people in their own right" and, dare I say it, we take this into account when we cast our ballots. (If he wanted to get into a serious discussion of the real issue of partnership and responsibility in a more complex age — which he obviously does not — I'd argue that the very "shrewdness" and personality he bemoans has, not shockingly, correlated with an increase in public exposure. No one is being "tricked" into a puppet government here.) Because, it may appall him to know, some people like the idea of a leader whose marriage allows for partnership and mutual influence.

In an ideal world, yes, we could patronize First Ladies — the international model, in some ways, for American women — who hewed to the "certain American type" of docile dim-wits he seems to have derived vaguely from 1950s sitcoms. Because, while, as he tells us, this is how First Ladies have been for the past 60 years (neatly stripping them of any struggles, strengths and personality), a First Lady unwilling — or unable — to involve herself with her husband's government is, tragically, probably a thing of the past. Which is too bad: the Bush presidency, helmed by this archetype, turned out so well!

In Praise of Laura Bush [Forbes]

First of all, Mme. Sarkozy wears couture — a lot of it. There's no fear of looking elitist or spending too much...Bruni is customarily seen in Dior, sporting Galliano's creations with the comfort of, well, a model. Whereas a first lady expert speaks approvingly of the naturalness of both Obama and McCain's looks — ""these aren't costumes" — Bruni seems to revel in her first lady costumes. This is a woman who's posed nude and walked the runway in swimwear and now — pillbox hats?! And that's why it's so appealing, probably; it feels like she's having fun. She does suits, sure, but they're retro-styled, deliberate twists on "first lady," more elegant and expensive than businesslike. She's demure in the way Mad Men is demure: it's obviously hypocritical fantasy that everyone's in on. She could obviously rock anything - the woman's a model! — so when she chooses to go demure, it's fun.

And everyone loves it. Apparently chic little suits and pink coats like the one Bruni wore on her state visit to London have flooded the high street, as has her downtime uniform: "Wide jeans, loose-fitting shirt, wide-lapelled coat and scarf." If you tried, it would be hard to come up with a personage less well-cut to the pattern of American political wife than Carla Bruni: model! Pop singer! Lovers! Tell-alls! Nudity! And yet (the
popularity of Michelle's View dress notwithstanding) it's hard to imagine one of our picture-perfect first mates becoming a fashion icon in this day and age. Ironically, it's in Europe that a woman has been more able to reinvent herself, and in America where we demand feminine convention in this regard.

Cut It Like Carla[Daily Mail]
Potential First Ladies Walk The Fashion Tightrope [NPR]