One of my first symbiotic touch points with Eleanor was the opening scene of the documentary, when she stated that every powerful woman needs a home in the country to retreat to, a beautiful cottage where she can hear the sound of a brook. I knew this all too well, as I too have a beautiful cottage where I can hear the sound of a very cold spring. (Once you make some money, I highly recommend that you also buy or at least rent a country home where you can shower off the city each weekend; I think I’d be in jail by now if I didn’t have one.) Actually, my home was just twelve miles from Eleanor’s! And we had way more in common than that; like many powerful women in her time and ours, her sexuality was called into question. To be honest, I don’t really know who she slept with, and I don’t care. After learning more about her life, God bless her if she had time to sleep with anyone!
Eleanor Roosevelt was a woman ahead of her time. The First Lady is at least expected to live at the White House, which Eleanor couldn’t be bothered with. She didn’t give a fuck about sleeping with her husband; she had better things to do! It got to the point that it was actually news when she showed up. This was probably because, despite the fact that she bore President Roosevelt six children, her husband maintained a lover throughout their marriage—who also happened to be her best friend. But Eleanor was beyond all that. She and Franklin were actually a very modern couple by the time they hit the White House. I mean, they had a handful of kids, he was banging her best friend, and somehow they still found a way to work together for four terms! Even when they were no longer intimate, they remained close, with Eleanor functioning as Franklin’s social conscience and generally keeping him in check. While he ran the country, she lived at Val-Kill, holding frequent press conferences on the issues of the day and writing a daily syndicated newspaper column called “My Day,” which she used often to disagree with the president. She’d write the column every night at midnight from her room, no matter where she was.
In it, she revealed the consciousness of the true Universal Mother, full of clarity and compassion. Not only did she urge women to get out of the house and go to work; she fought for other groups too. The New Yorker penned a cartoon of the First Lady descending into coal mines to check on how the coal miners were doing. She’d call up her husband and say things like, “Franklin, it’s unconscionable you’re allowing lynching!” He’d say, “Why?” And she’d say, “Because, Franklin, it’s not nice!” At one point he said to her, “Lady, this is a free country. Say what you think . . . Anyway, the whole world knows I can’t control you.”1 To me, this sounds like an understatement, but a generous move by the president nonetheless.
I know no one’s taking a vote, but to me Eleanor needs to be at the top of the list of First Ladies throughout history, and in fact of Americans as a whole. I want to hear her mentioned alongside George Washington and Ben Franklin. Seriously, she needs to be on our money!
After her husband died, Eleanor began her work with the United Nations, which is where one of her greatest accomplishments took place—she coauthored the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was signed by the General Assembly of the United Nations at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris in 1948. As the declaration’s articles flashed on the screen that day, I knew I’d never read anything so fucking simple and beautiful and natural and true. It even said that requiring passports was a violation of our rights as humans—that we were all first and foremost citizens of the world. By this time, I knew Eleanor and I definitely would have been friends. Though I didn’t know much about the document itself, I do believe I was born with an inherent understanding of human rights in my DNA. I mean, passports have always struck me as a huge “Fuck You”; why should I need a document to travel freely on this earth I was born on? I’m a citizen of the world, thank you very much.*
Dear President Obama,
I’m writing you this letter because I think it’s absolutely deplorable that Eleanor Roosevelt is not on our money. In fact, why aren’t there any women on our money? I mean, with the exception of Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea—and nobody even uses silver dollars anyway. This seems like a mercy-fuck offering to the women’s movement at best. I suggest we bump off one of those troublemaker presidents like Thomas Jefferson, who impregnated his slaves, and get Eleanor on instead. Alternatively, we could transfer Jefferson to the silver dollar and give Eleanor the nickel and the two-dollar bill, both of which he currently occupies. Or here’s a better idea. Since every founding father came from a pioneering birthing mother, let’s issue a feminine counterpart to every coin or bill, with pictures of people like Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Betsy Ross, Margaret Sanger, Jane Addams, and Florence Nightingale. If women make over 70 percent of the buying choices in the average home, why aren’t we on the money, even from a purely capitalistic standpoint? I mean, Grover Cleveland is on the thousand-dollar bill! Who the fuck is he?
Sincerely,
Kelly Cutrone
PS: While we’re at it, I suggest we add two new people to Mount Rushmore: Eleanor Roosevelt and, with her, an indigenous person who made a difference in the history of our country, like Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull.
It all seemed so obvious. Of course we are all born into this world from a mother, and of course we all have a right to every particle on this
