Hillary Clinton as International Emissary and Scorned Wife

This chapter analyzes the coverage of Clinton's international excursions beginning in 1995 and ending with the media frenzy over the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal from 1998 through early 1999. As Clinton entered the international spaces of politics as a U.S. emissary, she was framed increasingly as the silent and more appropriately gendered first lady, visualized in the global spaces yet given minimal voice in primetime news coverage. At the first sign of discord, however, the surveillance and scrutiny would begin again, especially coinciding with her very public and outspoken actions during the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in China. The dissipation of controversy over most of Clinton's seventy-eight international trips as first lady suggested that the true spaces of contestation for vocal political women existed within the boundaries of the nation-state.