Top-left: Hillary Clinton has been portrayed as the United States's president in two television series. In actuality, she won the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election.
The idea of a female president of the United States has been explored in various media representations.[a] In film and television,[b] fictional characters such as Betty Boop and Lisa Simpson have been depicted as President of the United States. In music, singers such as Ariana Grande have envisioned women in charge of the American presidency. Similarly, novels written by various individuals, including Newt Gingrich, chronicle the tenure of a fictional female American president. Across these media representations, historical female figures, such as Elizabeth Warren, have also been the subject of hypothetical presidential administrations.
The 1924 silent science-fiction film The Last Man on Earth shows a woman as president of the United States; in the movie, all adult men die of disease.[4]
In the 1948 animated short Olive Oyl for President, a dream sequence shows Olive Oyl, voiced by Mae Questel, successfully running for president of the United States, after which she makes married men exempt from taxes in the hopes that Popeye will propose.[7]
In the 1964 comedy film Kisses for My President, Polly Bergen plays Leslie McCloud, the first female president of the United States.[8] Leslie eventually becomes pregnant and resigns the presidency.[9]
In the 1989 time-travel film Back to the Future Part II, there is a USA Today newspaper from 2015, in which one of the headlines is "PRESIDENT SAYS SHE'S TIRED of reporters asking same questions".[12]
The 1990 television movie Hitler's Daughter has a female American president who is the fictional daughter of Adolf Hitler.[13]
In the pilot to the 1992 television series X-Men: The Animated Series, a female president of the United States is briefly shown.[7]
In the 1993 episode "The Last Temptation of Homer" of the television series The Simpsons, Homer's guardian angel shows him how life would be if Homer was married to Mindy, which includes Marge being the president of the United States.[15]
In the 1995 episode "The Weaker Sex" of the TV series Sliders, Teresa Barnwell plays Hillary Clinton as the president of the United States in an alternative universe where women are in charge.[16]
In the 1996 television movie Special Report: Journey to Mars, Elizabeth Wilson plays President Elizabeth Richardson, whose support of a mission to Mars gets her re-elected. The mission is sabotaged, causing crisis.[13]
In the 1998 comedy film Mafia!, Christina Applegate plays United States President Diane Steen.[4] This character is a parody of Diane Keaton's character in the film series The Godfather, and she almost accomplishes world peace but is distracted by her boyfriend, a mobster.[11]
In the 2000 episode "Bart to the Future" of The Simpsons, Bart looks 30 years into the future, at which time Lisa Simpson, voiced by Yeardley Smith,[19] has become President of the United States after succeeding Donald Trump.[20][21][c] In the episode, Lisa states that she is "proud to be America's first straight female president", and it is implied that Chaz Bono, at the time still identifying as a lesbian, had previously been president.[7][22]
In the 2000 episode "The Election" of the television series Arthur, Muffy Crosswire, voiced by Melissa Altro, is shown to become president of the United States in the future.[7][23]
In the 2001 American-Argentinian science-fiction film Perfect Lover, set in 2030, the world is run by women and Sally Champlin plays the female president of the United States.[4][27] The film begins with her saying, "I did not have sexual relations with that young man", similar to an actual quote by President Bill Clinton.[28]
The 2005–2006 television series Commander in Chief[29] focused on the fictional administration and family of Mackenzie Allen, played by Geena Davis, who is the first female president of the United States.[30]
In the 2005–2009 television series Prison Break, Patricia Wettig plays Vice President Caroline Reynolds, who becomes President of the United States after she arranges the assassination of the former president.[11][31][32]
In the 2006 French miniseries L'État de Grace, Peggy Frankston plays Hillary Clinton, who is shown as the president of the United States in two episodes.[7]
In the 2008 miniseries XIII: The Conspiracy, Mimi Kuzyk played Sally Sheridan, the first female president of the United States, who is assassinated in a conspiracy.[33]
In ScandalBellamy Young is Melody "Mellie" Margaret Grant, who becomes the first female president after the assassination of President-elect Francisco Vargas on election night.[36][37]
In Veep, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is VP Selina Meyer, who becomes the 45th president of the United States after the incumbent resigns to look after his wife with mental health conditions.[11][39] Meyer's successor, Laura Montez (Andrea Savage) is also a woman and the running mate of opposition candidate Bill O'Brian.[40]
In Independence Day: Resurgence, Sela Ward is Elizabeth Lanford, the 45th and first female president of the US,[51] who is in her first term, succeeding Thomas J. Whitmore, William Grey, and Lucas Jacobs.[52][53] She is eventually killed by an alien queen.[4]
In Inside Amy Schumer, Schumer is President Schinton, who has her period on her first day as president and does poorly because of it.[54]
In The Purge: Election Year, Elizabeth Mitchell is Senator Charlie Roan, who is elected president on the platform of ending the Annual Purge, after barely surviving the night herself.[55]
In the second season of Modus, Kim Cattrall is President Helen Tyler, who disappears during a state visit to Sweden.[56]
In the episode "21C" of Travelers, the Traveler team are tasked with protecting Anna Hamilton, a child in 2017 who will later go on to become the 53rd President in the future after an extremely close election. Grant MacLaren remarks that he believed the 53rd president was "another old White guy" before being told that Hamilton's election is a side effect of the changed timeline.[57]
In the 2018 film An Acceptable Loss, Jamie Lee Curtis plays Rachel Burke, who rises to the presidency after ordering a nuclear launch while vice president.[58]
In the episode "The Rad Awesome Terrific Ray" of the 2020 Hulu animated series Solar Opposites, former First Lady Michelle Obama is president in an alternate timeline.[63]
In Y: The Last Man, Diane Lane is Jennifer Brown, a congresswoman and chair of the House Intelligence Committee who was elevated to the presidency after the death of every mammal with a Y chromosome except for her son Yorick and his pet capuchin monkey Ampersand.[65]
In Red, White & Royal Blue, Uma Thurman is Ellen Claremont, the incumbent president running for re-election and mother of the protagonist, Alex Claremont-Diaz.[66][d]
In the 2017 music video for "Family Feud", a song by Jay-Z, Irene Bedard plays a future co-president of the United States.[69][70]
In 2017, a song called "First Woman President" about a fictional first female president of the United States was released by Jonathan Mann.[71][72] The song depicts the female president as having an all-female Cabinet and liberal policies (e.g. "paid family leave for both Mom and Dad"), and the singer says it is easy to be proud of his country under her presidency.[72]
In the 1932 book A New Day Dawns by Charles Eliot Blanchard, Jane B. Stanton, a fictional descendant of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, is elected president in 1962. She is a eugenicist, initiating a totalitarian and racist regime.[9]
In 1937, the play A Woman of Destiny was turned into a novel set in 1943. Constance Goodwin leaves the presidency to be a grandmother.[9]
The 1952 novel The Dark Mare, by Damsey Wilson, is about the presidency of Miriam Hall Bradley.[9]
Ellen Emerson White's 1984 novel The President's Daughter is about the first female president, from the perspective of her daughter;[77] the book was the start of a series by White about the same thing.[78]
In 2004, Mark Dunlea, assistant campaign manager for Sonia Johnson's presidential campaign in 1984, wrote a novel about a fictional female American president, Madame President: The Unauthorized Biography of the First Green Party President.[79][80]
The 2015 novel Duplicity, by Newt Gingrich and Pete Earley, features a woman who becomes America's first female president and chooses politics over national interest, resulting in a "Benghazi style attack".[84][9]
In the 2019 novel Red, White & Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston, Ellen Claremont is the first female president of the United States, and she is running for a second term as president in 2020.[85][e]
In the 2022 novel Presidential by Lola Keeley, the United States President is Constance "Connie" Calvin, who is openly bisexual and causes a scandal by beginning a relationship with her son's lesbian physician.[86]
The 1931 play A Woman of Destiny features a woman named Constance Goodwin who becomes president when a male president dies.[9][h]
There is a female president of the United States in the 1939 science-fiction short story Greater Than Gods, by C.L. Moore.[106][11]
A 1949 musical As the Girls Go, played on Broadway and set in 1953,[i] is a comedy about the "First Husband" of a female president.[9]
In the 1985 National Lampoon article "Rose, Rose, There She Goes...Into the Bushes to Take Off Her Clothes", written by Shary Flenniken, Rose Ambrose becomes the vice president of the United States because she is having an affair with the president. Ambrose later becomes president of the United States herself after the former president dies of a heart attack while having sex. Ambrose is eventually shot and killed by several people, including the former first lady.[107][11]
An ad campaign for Donna Karan in 1992 called "In Women We Trust" featured model Rosemary McGrotha as a female president of the United States.[108]
In a 1993 Slovenian clothing commercial, Melanija Knavs[109] plays the first female president of the United States on the day she is inaugurated.[j] The character is meant to be President of the United States, although the European Union flag is mistakenly used in place of the American flag.[110][111]
In the 2012 first-person shooter video game Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Marion Bosworth is the President of the United States.
In 2012, the first President Barbie was released.[117]
In 2016, an ad campaign for Elie Tahari called "Madam President" featured Shlomit Malka as a female president of the United States.[108][k]
In 2018, The New York Times published two stories written as if reporting on the 2020 presidential election results. In one of the stories, Elizabeth Warren wins against Donald Trump and becomes the first female president of the United States.[118][l]
In the 2023 video game DLC for Cyberpunk 2077 labeled Phantom Liberty, Kay Bess portrays President Rosalind Myers. She is the third president of the NUSA (New United States of America) and took office in 2065.
^Shall We Tell the President? initially featured president Ted Kennedy when published in 1977. However, following the success of The Prodigal Daughter and a previous book featuring Kane in an earlier life, Kane and Abel, the featured character was changed to President Kane in later editions.[citation needed]
^Tahari intended this campaign to be an endorsement of Hillary Clinton, saying, "We have a choice between a man and a woman, and the woman is smarter and more humble, and I wanted to say I support that."
^One of the two The New York Times stories was titled "How Trump Won Re-election in 2020", by Bret Stephens, and the other was titled "How Trump Lost Re-election in 2020", by David Leonhardt. In both stories, Elizabeth Warren was said to be Donald Trump's opponent in that election.
^McDevitt, Jack (April 1, 1998). "Moonfall by Jack McDevitt". Kirkus Reviews. Archived from the original on November 20, 2016. Retrieved November 19, 2016.
^"John Shirley". Project.cyberpunk.ru. February 10, 1953. Archived from the original on September 16, 2016. Retrieved November 19, 2016.
^Website designed and created by Rob Caswell Visual Design: www.robcaswell.net. "Bibliography". Allen Steele. Archived from the original on November 19, 2016. Retrieved November 19, 2016.