Born one minute before her fraternal twin sister Jenna, Barbara Pierce Bush — granddaughter
of 41st president George H.W. Bush and daughter of 43rd president George W. Bush — is a
force to be reckoned with.
In their joint memoir Sisters First: Stories from Our Wild and Wonderful Life, Barbara
and Jenna reveal their experiences growing up in the political spotlight, and what their
lives are like now.
But if you think Barbara's just another polite Southern belle — think again!
Name game
Having the same name as her grandmother — former First Lady, Barbara Bush — led to some awkward
moments for younger Barbara.
As she notes in Sisters First, her parents decided before she and Jenna were born that
the girls would be named after their grandmothers.
Barbara recounted the many times when she'd order pizza, Girl Scout cookies, or books
from the Scholastic catalog, only to have people not believe that Barbara Bush could
possibly be ordering a kid's book or large pizza.
She was, as she notes, a little girl with a big name.
An indecent proposal
In her book, Bush writes that when she was 24, she and her mother, Laura, who were visiting
Italy for the Olympics, went to lunch with the Italian prime minister at the time, Silvio
Berlusconi.
And things got pretty creepy from there.
New York Times reporter Frank Bruni recounted this as a stand-out anecdote in the book,
paraphrasing it as,
"Berlusconi complimented her on her blue eyes, told her she should mate with his son, and,
for good measure, announced: 'If I was younger, I'd have children with you.'"
Bush told Time that just after that, the translator graciously stopped translating.
She's an avid runner
Bush told SELF that she loves getting up early to go running, admitting that ever since she
fell in love with it, she hasn't stopped.
Her cat, Eleanor, usually wakes her up and gets her moving — and then she laces up
her kicks and hits the road.
She says,
"I usually start in Tribeca and go up along the water.
On weekends, I love running across the Williamsburg Bridge, running around in Brooklyn and then
back to Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge."
Former fashionista
Although her mom describes her as a math whiz, Bush was also drawn to the arts and humanities
from an early age.
According to Vogue, when Bush was 13, she asked for a sewing machine — and then went
on to design and sew her own eighth-grade graduation dress.
When it came time to apply for college, she knew she wanted to head East, to Yale.
During college, she spent the summer of 2003 working for fashion brand Proenza Schouler
— an internship that she landed, according to Elle, after she cold-emailed the firm's
founders claiming she could sew.
With that internship she began cutting her teeth on the New York design scene — but
this fashionista had bigger things in mind.
Passion for global health
During the summer of 2003, Bush traveled to Africa with her parents for the launch of
the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, also known as PEPFAR, an experience that would
change her life.
She told Elle,
"[Seeing] thousands of people lining the street waiting for drugs that they needed to live,
that we had in the United States, was something very hard for me to wrap my brain around."
She shared with The New York Times that she was particularly impacted by watching families
grieve loved ones who could have been saved by drugs that they simply had no access to.
She said,
"We have the tools to solve these problems.
We just need to use them more effectively."
After seeing the impact of global health initiatives like PEPFAR, she was inspired to take action.
In 2009, Barbara founded the Global Health Corps.
She fearlessly pushed forward, telling The New York Times,
"When I was thinking about starting Global Health, but I was afraid I wasn't ready, my
mom said: '...Are you going to be happy leaving this on your to-do list forever?'"
She put her plans into action, and the rest is history.
Advocating for same-sex marriage
While her sister Jenna is known as the more outgoing, gregarious sister, Barbara is an
outspoken advocate for the causes she believes in.
She told The Skimm,
"I have a very vivid memory of sitting down at our kitchen table with my dad over dinner
and talking about gay rights.
This was when I was 16."
In a 2011 PSA in support of gay marriage, she said,
"New York is about fairness and equality.
And everyone should have the right to marry the person that they love."
While she was shocked at the buzz the video garnered, many viewed it as a rebellious stance
against her conservative-leaning parents.
She told The New York Times,
"What surprised me were all the people who said: 'How brave!
Betraying your family like that.'
But my parents raised us to use our voices for issues we care about, and I feel strongly
about marriage equality."
Supporting women's health
Bush has spoken out in favor of Planned Parenthood, calling the group "an exceptional organization"
in a 2016 interview with The New York Times.
She even served as the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood of Greater
Texas in March 2017, during which she emphasized Planned Parenthood's vital role in women's
health, saying,
"To me, Planned Parenthood is a one-stop-shop for everything that has to do with women's
health and all social problems that don't have to do with women's health.
I hope you all realize the incredible investment that you're making for both women and also
their kids."
She's the favorite
Part of any healthy sibling rivalry is trying to figure out who your parents' favorites
are — which must be doubly true for twins.
But if you hear Barbara and Jenna tell it, there's really no contest.
Asked point blank by Chelsea Handler, Jenna gave up the truth:
"And who was the favorite?"
"Barbara.
Barbara's the favorite, she still is."
And Bush's own revelations about her relationship with their dad didn't exactly contradict Jenna's
claim.
Bush says she wakes up to a text from her dad every single day.
"It usually says, 'Love you, baby,'...and then we read the same meditation book, and
he sends me an abbreviated meditation illustrated by emojis."
Barbara confessed that their dad had appointed her as his art collection curator and even
recently painted her portrait.
Political identity
Given their family's long-reaching past with the Republican party, the presumption that
the twins would follow in those conservative footsteps has always been assumed.
However, these women aren't afraid to set the record straight: they're not choosing
sides.
Barbara told Vanity Fair,
"I think it's surprising for people….
Maybe it's the current climate, but our parents raised us to have our own opinions and emotions
and be curious independent thinkers.
As long as we are living a life well-lived and have formed our own opinions, they're
proud of us."
However, Bush has also been open about her support for 2016 Democratic presidential candidate,
Hillary Clinton, and the platforms Clinton champions.
Shortly before the election, a photo of Bush alongside Clinton aide Huma Abedin began circulating
on social media.
The snap was previously captioned with the hashtag "we're with her."
Royal set up
It's practically a law of the universe that siblings exist for the primary purpose of
embarrassing each other.
Sure, if you're the "single" sibling, you're likely no stranger to being set up, but at
least your sibling doesn't meddle in your love life on live television — with the
royal family.
The moment, which sister Jenna later admitted to Fox News did not go over well with her
twin, happened on a Today segment in 2016, when Jenna interviewed Prince Harry.
When asked about the public's fascination with his future marriage and offspring, Harry
admitted he was bewildered by it — especially given his then-single status.
Jenna seized the opportunity.
"But you know what?
I have a single sister and she feels the same way...Listen, she's available."
Of course, Jenna immediately realized her sister wouldn't be keen to being offered up
on a silver platter, royal though it may be.
"She's gonna kill me…"
"We can talk maybe off air."
"Okay.
I'll give you her number."
Flipping the bird
Bush has nearly always been seen as the studious or soft-spoken twin while her sister Jenna
has often been referred to as the wild one.
"Oh God, Barbara I got the spins.
Jenna I told you not to drink straight tequila.
I didn't.
I mixed it with Captain Morgan."
But as it turns out, Barbara did a little hell-raising of her own.
In a surprising reveal on Chelsea Handler's Netflix show, Bush confessed that she once
found herself in serious hot water after flipping off the school photographer during class pictures.
To set the scene, Bush was in eighth grade at an episcopal school and had hatched a plot
with four other girls to give the camera the proverbial bird.
"So we took the photo, and I did it.
And then the school printed it.
It was so little that you couldn't see it in, like, the composite of the photo"
When the photo was printed full-size, and it showed that no one other than bad gal Bush
had flipped the bird, she had to cop to it.
"My middle finger's floating in it so I had to admit it.
They had to get an air-brusher to airbrush my middle finger out of every photo, 'cause
they'd already printed it."
Her punishment?
Scraping gum off the sidewalks after school.
Not a domestic goddess
Being Southern comes with many preconceived notions attached, one of the more positive
being the idea that Southern women can whip up just about anything in the kitchen.
But during a quick round of "Me or My Sister" with Southern Living, Bush and her sister
Jenna comically dispelled that theory.
When asked who was the better cook, neither had to think long before bestowing the title
upon Jenna, who said,
"Probably me, because I cook.
yeah
If you cooked, you might be good…."
"Maybe we would know but we don't know"
"We don't know, because she's never cooked."
On the plus side, the sisters did agree that Barbara isn't totally without talent in the
kitchen.
Jenna admitted of her sister,
"I would say you're more of a set designer for food.
You can put food out nicely."
Ultimately, they agreed the cooking is best left to Jenna, while Barbara's more about
the buying and the plating.
Nice compromise, ladies.
Finding her independence
It's clear that the Bush twins are practically inseparable.
So it may come as a particular shock that not only did they branch away from each other
during their formative years, but it was Barbara's idea.
She told Chelsea Handler,
"When you're twins, everyone compares you, because you must be the opposite of each other,
which we're not."
Barbara packed up and went to school in Rome, to establish herself as an individual, not
just part of a couple.
But of course she missed her sister.
"I missed her but I created my own identity.
And then she would come and visit and everything became more real, because she was there and
got to see it too."
Sisters really are the best friends, especially when they consist of two empowered women like
the Bush twins who support each other in everything they do.
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