Eleanor Roosevelt holds up a Spanish-Language copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which she helped to author
If you’re thinking “Eleanor Roosevelt, hot?” you don’t grasp the nature of Hot Liberals. Look at the banner graphic. Morality is hot. Intelligence is hot. Progressive values are hot.
Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the most admired women of the 20th century, had all these things in excess, and more. It would take far too long to list all of her various achievements and activities here – indeed, there are dozens of novel-length biographies of this great woman that barely scratch the surface.
From the beginnings of her relationship with husband (and fifth cousin once removed) Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eleanor was an independent-minded and self-guided woman who did the things she thought was right. Developing her relationship with FDR over the objections of her own parents and with great misgiving on the part of his, Eleanor is credited with introducing FDR – who had led a fairly sheltered live as a member of one of the best-known “old families” of the American Northeast – to the reality of the poverty and squalor in which some Americans lived through her charity work in the slums of the East Side of New York City while she was a member of the New York Junior League at 17. This experience alone was a major influence on FDR’s politics and social conscience.
But let us not fall into the trap of measuring a woman simply by what she’s done for her husband – Eleanor Roosevelt was an amazing, beautiful, and profound human being in her own right, by all accounts from a very young age. Born into what we would today call “the one percent,” Eleanor’s compassion and empathy for “those less fortunate” was a guiding principle of her life. From her work as a teen in New York to her lifelong civil rights activism which included co-authorship of the United Nations Declaration Of Human Rights, Roosevelt’s compassion and intense focus on the improvement of living conditions for and empowerment of all people are unparalleled in American history.
Plus, she was a self-directed thinker, going so far as to campaign against her own cousin, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., in his run for the governorship of New York (which he lost) at considerable cost to her family relationships. In keeping with this same theme of independent and progressive thought and attitude, Eleanor entirely redefined the role of First Lady, moving her from simple decoration and hostess in a man’s White House to a pivotal role that employed her public status for the benefit of those who lacked access to such a prominent platform. Without Eleanor Roosevelt, there would be no Jackie Kennedy, no Pat Nixon, no Rosalynn Carter, no Nancy Reagan, no Barbara Bush, no Hillary Clinton, no Michelle Obama.
The affinity with Hillary was more than simply one of influence; Eleanor, too, chose to preserve her marriage in the face of infidelity, and it’s widely accepted as fact now that the Roosevelt’s marriage eventually included outside partners for both; while there have long been rumors of a lesbian affair between Eleanor and her friend Lorena Hickock – to whom Eleanor once wrote “I can’t kiss you, so I kiss your picture good night and good morning” – that relationship has never been firmly established as an erotic one. Still, both Franklin and Eleanor had partners outside their marriage through the years – Franklin first with Lucy Mercer and later with his secretary Missy LeHand, Eleanor with (perhaps) Hickock and later with her bodyguard Earl Miller. In short, they developed a marriage which was both a strong friendship and partnership and what might be called a quietly open marriage, prompting one biographer to write that they were “strong-willed people who cared greatly for each other’s happiness but realized their own inability to provide for it.” In this case, the “happiness” in question seems to have been of the romantic and/or sexual type, as their relationship as partners and friends is widely said to have been eminently satisfying for them both.
So here you have a woman who devoted her live to civil rights and human dignity, who engaged in at least a somewhat “open” marriage in a time when such a thing was considered highly controversial while living under the brightest spotlights the world can provide.
And there’s more: Roosevelt worked with women’s labor unions to help promote the cause of equal pay for equal work and the end of child labor; her leadership role in the Democratic party at the state and eventually national level; her two terms as Ambassador to the United Nations; her outspoken support of civil rights for blacks including her involvement supporting Marian Anderson when that prominent black singer was barred from performing at a Washington DC venue (her performance was eventually held at the Lincoln Memorial, thanks in large part to the intervention of Roosevelt). She held 342 press conferences during FDR’s presidency…none of which allowed male reporters, as a demonstration against the almost exclusively male Washington press corps of the time. She was a leader in every imaginable sense, not the least being her innovative leveraging of mass media to promote positive social change. She was the first chairperson of the UN Commission on Human Rights. She was one of the few voices to lobby against her husband’s executive order establishing interment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II.
But was she hot? I’ll let her answer that in her own words, written at age fourteen:
“No matter how plain a woman may be if truth and loyalty are stamped upon her face all will be attracted to her.”
She was right. Today, we wish a happy 128th birthday to one of America’s original “Hot Liberals,” first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
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