Daily Inspiration Quote by Imelda Marcos

A lot of power hides inside the word "role", and Imelda Marcos knows it. In one breath she frames the First Lady not as a spouse but as a job with impossible KPIs: define the aesthetic, model the behavior, absorb the scrutiny. "You have to set the standard" is managerial language dressed up as destiny, implying that the public woman is responsible for disciplining other women into a norm. It flatters and indicts at once: you are elevated, therefore you are obligated.

Then comes the clincher: "both star and slave". It is melodramatic on purpose, the kind of phrase that lands because it captures a real contradiction of political glamour. A First Lady is expected to perform celebrity - charm, fashion, philanthropy, photo-ready empathy - while also being an instrument of her husband's legitimacy, always on call, always smiling, never fully autonomous. Marcos turns that structural bind into a personal martyr narrative, a move that both humanizes her and preemptively launders critique. If she's a "slave", any extravagance can be recast as the uniform of service, not the spoils of power.

The context makes the line sharper. Marcos wasn't merely a decorative consort; she was a political actor during a regime synonymous with corruption and spectacle. The "star" half reads like confession, the "slave" half like alibi. It's a quote designed to control the frame: don't ask what I took; ask what I had to carry.