In an age of television makeovers, it is perhaps inevitable that eventually Martha Washington’s turn would come.
A team of historians, curators and forensic anthropologists have concluded that the first first lady – imagined by Americans for more than 200 years to be a dowdy, double-chinned and dowager-capped matron – may have actually been hot.
A computerized age-regression portrait was commissioned to peel away the age and wrinkles and reveal the slim and lively brown-haired woman in her 20s who captivated a future revolutionary hero and president.
“He was clearly sexually excited by her,” Patricia Brady, the pioneer in the revisionist history of Martha told the Washington Post. “When Martha decided to marry George, she didn’t marry him just to be a kind stepfather to her two children. He was a hunk, and I think she decided to make herself happy. People are just starting to see her as a real person.”
Martha Washington destroyed much of the contemporaneous record about the life of the first first couple after her husband’s death as was the custom then, burning her husband’s letters.
Most Americans since know and care little of Martha, writing her off as the older wealthy widow George Washington married for her money. The dismissal was complete with the 1796 portrait of a crabby-looking woman in a white cap.
A mid-20th century re-evaluation of Martha Washington condemned her as short, fat and small-minded, interested in little beyond her needlework and reading the Bible.
But current historians describe a far more compelling figure.
Before her marriage to Washington – her second after being left a young widow with two young children – she was known as a capable business woman.
The future Mrs Washington oversaw five tobacco plantations, negotiating for the best available prices from merchants in London.
She also had her fair share of admirers. The Post cites a letter from a rival – much richer – suitor, Charles Carter, raving about Martha’s beauty. Carter wrote his brother that he hoped to “arouse a flame in her breast.”
Sadly for Carter , however, he lost out to George Washington.
Thanks DJ
Is there a computer powerful enough to strip away enough years to see what Bill saw in Hillary?
Also Scott,
This isn’t mine and borders on blaspheme, but when GHWBush was first elected, some pundit said it was nostalgic to have a George Washington look-alike in the White House—Babs! Heck, she looked kinda like Martha, too.
They say Hillary was a cigar soaker– I mean smoker. Besides, who’s ever got a good look at the back of her head?
DAYUM she was hot
Martha W. was hot.
Michelle Obama look like a transvestite. She remind me of RuPaul.
Maxim magazine put her on their Maxim hot 100 list. What a joke.
Scott – I don’t think seeing them when they were first together would help.
Thanks that picture makes my eyes hurt. Imagine if those two were the first President and first First Lady of this country.
Hey, I think I saw Slick and Shrillary at Woodstock. I always wondered who that ugly girl with the big chankles was.
C’mon Scott…she wouldn’t have caught your eye in the library?…
like i said….
back of head!
I’m sitting in the same room as my sister-in-law right now and I think she looks a lot like young Martha. Whew I guess it could have been worse.
Odd how a pretty decent article about what we never saw in someone became an assault on a woman whose only crime is being ugly. Oh wait, I remember now, that wasn’t her only crime. Nevermind.