The Smithian

…we get a blander, more toned-down version of the real person, with rarely a glimpse of the strong opinions or naughty humor. Michelle Obama giving a speech these days is like an Olympic gymnast doing a floor routine: she’s practiced in advance, she executes with precision but no spontaneity, and the results are generally very impressive. This is part of the contradiction of the job of first lady: no president makes it to the White House without a canny, sharp wife, but once they arrive, the women are forced to recast themselves as helpmeets, disguising some of the qualities that made them such effective partners in the first place. (One Obama friend once told me that the secret to their marriage is that “those two never let each other get away with anything.”)

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princerogersnelsons:

suicideblonde:

rockstarsuits:

Bowie in his wedding tuxedo by Thierry Mugler. (Iman in Herve Leger)

THIS IS EPICCCC

AWWW. 

[meaningful glance]

Dallas, Texas today, where they will join former presidents in inaugurating the presidential library and museum of George W. Bush…

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She was reckless to the point of oddity; he always drank like a professional, collapsing the arc from charming to churlish early on…theirs was surely one of the most fascinating literary and romantic partnerships, symbiotic to the point of cannibalism…

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obama2016:

B..E..A..UTIFUL people.

[look of the hour]

‘It was at a friend’s wedding that I began thinking of…the ones who really don’t want to get married but do anyway, just because it’s a goal they feel they have to reach. From the short story it grew into the idea of various kinds of relationships and different women and how people react to love.’

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The widow of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, who was killed by a white supremacist outside his Jackson, Miss., home in 1963, laments that her husband is remembered primarily as an assassination victim. This June, to mark the 50th anniversary of his slaying, a series of events will pay tribute to Evers’ work toward racial equality during his 37 years.

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…brings stereotypes of “yellow fever” and “gold-digging immigrant” into compelling interplay. No radical cultural deconstruction ensues, but preconceptions and expectations are discreetly overturned in the wake of real-life experience.

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Beyoncé and Jay-Z in Havana, Cuba

[look of the hour]

“He’s got a little swag, you know? That’s okay…I mean, I’m proud of him. He’s a stylish, I think, man who is healthy and he’s smart and he’s passionate and he’s inspiring. And who wouldn’t fall in love with that, you know? It’s OK.” —Michelle Obama

What is a good husband, though? In [Yvonne] Brill’s case, it appears to have been one who supported her professional aspirations. In her interview with the Society of Women Engineers, she says that he agreed before they got married that she’d keep working; she said she’d seen young women engineers held back by husbands who were jealous of their success, even as she’d been helped by one who was “self-confident” enough to joke, at parties, about getting to spend the money she earned. At one point, she moved for a job of her own—one in London. He stayed behind in New Jersey.

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