Keeping Up Appearances

Soviet journalists ignored the tea functions as insufficiently newsworthy. But their reports of Raisa Gorbachev's other appearances in Geneva found a receptive audience back home. She was featured in action at the Red Cross ceremony, and her name was mentioned for the first time on Soviet television. In Moscow citizens took obvious pride in her stylishness. Said a Soviet artist: "You Westerners must have thought all our women were barrel-shaped grannies like Brezhnev's wife." Some observers thought that the First Lady's performance might lead to a more formal role, heretofore unheard of, in Soviet public life.

Though the First Ladies managed to keep the summit's distaff side free of controversy, White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan did not fare so well. On the eve of the meeting, Regan advised the Washington Post, in an interview about the wives' press role, that many of the paper's female readers would not understand "throw-weights or what is happening in Afghanistan or what is happening in human rights. Most women . . . would rather read the human-interest stuff of what happened." The remarks predictably infuriated feminists and provided news-starved journalists with a few stories. When reporters asked Nancy Reagan if women understood substantive issues, she coolly replied, "I'm sure they do." Even Mikhail Gorbachev leaped in with a politic comment: "Men and women . . . all over the world are interested in having peace and being sure that peace would be kept stable and lasting." In an ironic twist, the President found himself trying to explain away a gaffe by his top aide. Regan, he said, merely meant that wives "also had an interest in children and a human touch"--a comment not likely to dispel the controversy. --By David Beckwith. Reported by Barrett Seaman and Adam Zagorin/Geneva