In 200 years will you want to be remembered as a chubby geriatric or in your prime of life?

George Washington has been reinvented several times already.

Perhaps first by Parson Weems who wrote an early biography of Washington and is probably the source for many of the myths surrounding his early life. You can read it here: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/gw/weems.html

"The Apotheosis of George Washington, Brumidi's Fresco and Beyond" by Laura Dove et al. is a very interesting series of articles that may shed some light for you on how his image is reexamined by each succeeding generation:

"Over the next two centuries, this hero worship of the Father of His Country would take on many forms. After his death, the moral educators of the early 19th century crowned Washington as the ultimate symbol of virtue: an honest mortal worthy of imitation. Once defined as the embodiment of virtue, Washington was able to be appropriated by groups of all stripes. He could be an icon of domestic perfection and almost-aristocratic refinement or the ultimate symbol of the selfless citizen soldier. Politically, socially--and of course, commercially--Washington's image has become an easily-recognized and powerful tool."
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CAP/gw/gwmain.html

Perhaps we might want to consider just leaving him in peace?

Lastiy here is an contemporary engraving of Martha Washington that seem to be very congruent with this new reconstruction: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Martha_Dandridge_Custis.jpg
From wikipedia: "Mezzotint of Martha Washington made by John Folwell, drawn by W. Oliver Stone after the original by John Wollaston, painted in 1757"
Source(s):
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/gw/weems.html
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CAP/gw/gwmain.html
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Martha_Dandridge_Custis....

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