What would you do if you found out your husband was hiking the ol’ Appalachian trail with another woman in Argentina? South Carolina’s first lady Jenny Sanford quickly made it clear that she had no interest in helping Governor Mark Sanford play damage control when he was caught having an affair. She took the kids and moved out of the governor’s mansion. And in an interview with Vogue this fall, Mrs. Sanford came across as perhaps the strongest humiliated political wife of all time: "If you don’t forgive," she said," you become angry and bitter… All I can do is forgive. Reconciliation is something else, and that is going to be a harder road." While her husband’s political career seems all but over, Mrs. Sanford’s next act is just beginning: She filed for divorce on Friday and will publish Staying True, an inspirational memoir, in 2010. Many are encouraging her to run for office herself.
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"She’s gone ghetto!" Tiger Woods reportedly told a friend several hours before his wife, Elin Nordegren, took a golf club to the back window of his Cadillac SUV. Was Mrs. Woods on a rescue mission to free Tiger from a car crash or giving him a little payback after reports surfaced of an affair between her husband and nightclub promoter Rachel Uchitel? After his bizarre Thanksgiving episode, Woods emerged with damage to his face, his public image, and, of course, his driving accuracy.
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Kate Gosselin began 2009 as a shrewish mother of eight. As the year draws to close, she has changed public perception by behaving with strength and relative dignity in the face of the year’s most public breakup. Then again, when your husband leaves you for another woman, moves into a New York penthouse, cheats on the other woman with another woman, and likes to party with Michael Lohan, much of the hard work has already been done for you. What’s the lesson? Keep your famously coiffed head up high, and never wear Ed Hardy, and the public will come around to your side.
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Italy still does two things better than any country in the world: scandals and outrage. 2009 saw its fill of both, as Prime Minister and legendary womanizer Silvio Berlusconi was finally called to account on his huge appetites—which reportedly include orgies and call girls—thanks in a large part to two women even more irrepressible than Berlusconi himself: his wife, Veronica Lario, and his former mistress, Patrizia D’Addario. Lario, a former actress married to Berlusconi since 1990, publicly castigated her husband for crudely flirting with showgirl-politician Mara Carfagna and is now planning to file for divorce. D’Addario, a prostitute who claims to have slept with Berlusconi, published a book in November detailing the parties—claimed by Berlusconi to be political gatherings—she attended with dozens of other "young, beautiful women in skin-tight black dresses" and remarking on Berlusconi’s selfishness: "I gave him my body," she wrote, "but he [gave me] nothing."
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Whatever cred Hillary lost when she stood by her husband in the wake of the Lewinsky scandal, she gained back tenfold this year. Not only did she work her way into of the most powerful position in her political rival’s cabinet (only four heartbeats away from the presidency!), but she’s the woman who finally convinced Armenia and Turkey to establish diplomatic relations. And when a Congolese student mistakenly asked what "Mr. Clinton" thought of a policy decision, she quickly showed who wears the pantsuit: "You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?" she replied. "My husband is not secretary of State, I am. If you want my opinion I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband."
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A lot of women would just be happy to be married to a Mad man who looks as good in a suit as Don Draper (Jon Hamm). Not Betty (January Jones), who worked out her rage this season over her philandering husband by shooting rifles at birds and meeting men in bars. And faced with a lawyer who tells her she’ll never get a divorce in New York, Betty shrugs off his advice and jets to Reno with her lover—kids be damned. Will they still be together in 1964? Stay tuned.
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Neither public breakups nor Kanye West could stop the Taylor Swift juggernaut this year: The gifted 19-year-old singer—the biggest-selling artist in the U.S. in 2008—showed she could brush off boorish male behavior by getting the last laugh. Literally. In her Saturday Night Live monologue last month, Swift sang about her split with Joe Jonas ("You might think I'd bring up Joe, that guy who broke up with me on the phone/ Hey, Joe, I'm doing real well, tonight I'm hosting SNL") and her run-in with West at the MTV VMAs ("You might be expecting me to say/ Something bad about Kanye/ And how he ran up on the stage/ But there's nothing more to say/ 'Cause everything's OK/ I've got security lining the stage.") She’s also consoled herself in the supremely buff arms of Twilight’s werewolf himself—Taylor Lautner.
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While her baby daddy cavorted around Hollywood and New York with a bodyguard-manager-publicist, walking the red carpet with Kathy Griffin, and posing in Playgirl, 19-year-old Bristol Palin showed immense maturity: She took care of her child, refusing to let Levi Johnston’s antics get to her. She also got a job—as a paid pro-abstinence activist for Candie’s Foundation—and fought for sole custody of her son. A stand-up girl? You betcha.
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Inspired by the story of Silda Spitzer, the CBS drama The Good Wife chronicles the rebirth of a humiliated political spouse (Julianna Margulies) after her husband, an adulterous and corrupt state attorney, does prison time. Alicia Florrick returns to the workforce, tries to work her way up the legal ladder, and care for her children. Odds are pretty good she won’t be there when he gets out.
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Beyoncé’s "Single Ladies" has already racked up some big music awards in 2009, but more important it’s become the anthem of the year. As she taught all those men who didn’t put a ring on it: "You had your turn /And now you're gonna learn /What it really feels like to miss me." The R&B goddess also had a heroic moment at the VMAs when, after winning Video of the Year, she called Taylor Swift onstage "come out and have her moment" since Kanye West had upstaged her own win earlier.
Joel Ryan / AP Photo
