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Siam's Smile. The first First Lady by tenure is Thailand's exquisite Queen Sirikit, 29, who has been on the throne since 1950 and once even ruled the country during her husband's retreat to a monastery. A dark-eyed, diminutive (5 ft. 3¾ in.) porcelain beauty with upswept blue black hair and lotus-petal skin, shapely (34½-23-36½) Sirikit was placed again in the world's best-dressed women list this year—after Jacqueline Kennedy and her sister, Princess Radziwill. She almost always wears traditional Thai gowns, has influenced most other fashionable Thai women to forgo their preference for Western clothes.
Sirikit, whose father was a prince and Thailand's Ambassador to Britain, was schooled in Europe, where she met King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the only reigning monarch in the world to have been born in the U.S. (at Harvard, where his father was studying medicine), and a great-grandson of the reformer-King Mongkut, who was Anna's King of Siam. The Queen, mother of four children, is given much of the credit for her husband's transformation from an insecure, taciturn youth into a serious, socially conscious monarch. Sirikit, by contrast, is supercharged with sanouk, as the happy-go-lucky Thais almost reverently call the joy of living. Once, when asked why he never smiled, Bhumibol waved to his Queen. Said he: "She is my smile."
Golden Gaucho. Most spirited First Lady is Brazil's Maria Tereza Goulart, 27, who boasts gaucho blood and, when baited, can spit defiance like the onças (panthers) that roam her native south. Golden-skinned, with sculptured features and huge, provocative brown eyes, petite (5 ft. 3 in., 101 lbs.), dark-haired Maria Tereza designs many of her size 10 dresses, prefers simple white or black gowns for formal occasions.
Daughter of a struggling rancher from the same home town as her husband, Maria Tereza is impatient of pomp, and complains that her job is nothing but a ''ceremonial prop." Though the Goularts have twelve houses, she can often be seen doing her own shopping or teaching her two children to swim at Copacabana beach. Unlike most other First Ladies who have headed Brazil's leading charity for the underprivileged, Maria Tereza keeps a close eye on its finances and diligently tours slum areas handing out food.
Daily, before President João ("Jango") Goulart leaves for his office, she approves his shirt, tie and socks with a careful eye for harmonious colors. Though she left her husband on one celebrated occasion, sharp-witted Maria was largely responsible for his taking office. When President Jánio Quadros quit office in a tantrum nine months ago, Vice President Goulart was fearful that civil war might erupt if he returned from Paris to claim his constitutional right to the presidency. "Don't listen to everybody," urged his wife. "Go and see who's right with your own eyes. I'm beside you no matter what happens."
Bubbling Bolivian. The antithesis of Brazil's First Lady is her namesake in neighboring Bolivia. Maria Teresa Paz Estenssoro, 28, is a brunette from Santa Cruz, an eastern city whose women are reputedly the most vivacious and beautiful in Bolivia. Athletic (5 ft. 5 in., 110 lbs.) and exuberantly unselfconscious, she climbs trees like a tomboy, can dance anyone off the floor.