The Meaning of Michelle

by Veronica Chambers

  Another way that Michelle reaches people where they are is by plugging into popular culture. Michelle Obama has mastered the art of leveraging celebrities that we care about to make us care about the things she does. She enlisted music heavy hitters Missy Elliott, Kelly Rowland, Janelle Monae, Jada Grace and Kelly Clarkson to release a song “This Is for My Girls.” The hit single is the latest fuel for her Let Girls Learn/#62MillionGirls initiative, which promotes girls’ education globally. Michelle Obama’s flexibility usually serves the cause. “There are many people who can’t hear me precisely because I’m first lady of the United States,” she recently told an audience at the interactive media festival South by Southwest.9 She always has a message, but understands that she is not always the best person to deliver it.

  Like her discipline, Michelle Obama is passing along her flexibility to her daughters and to us. Her advice for her older daughter, Malia: “I just encourage her to breathe … to lower the perfection bar.” Her advice to other women: “Be open. Give yourself a break. Stop thinking that there is an answer to that question. Just live your life and figure out what’s in your heart. What you need will change every year. And you’ve got to be ok with that.”

  Finally, Michelle Obama is both traditional and disruptive. The self-proclaimed mom-in-chief embraces cultural norms about women’s reign at home. Being a mother is her first priority. And she advances societal stereotypes about men’s lackluster domestic performance, making public comments about Barack’s untidiness and unwillingness to chip in: “He can cook, but he doesn’t.” In many ways they are a typical couple. She tries to get him to quit smoking. He tries to get her to take bigger risks.

  Like many women, Michelle Obama’s early impressions about women’s roles were formed at home. Marian Robinson was one of the very few stay-at-home mothers in their South Side Chicago neighborhood, a privilege that allowed her to volunteer her time and imbed in her children a strong commitment to civic engagement. But she also learned traditional ideals from society at large. Like many young girls of her era, Michelle had an Easy Bake Oven and plenty of Barbie dolls. “Barbie seemed to be the standard for perfection,” she said later. “That was what the world told me to aspire to.”10 Michelle watched the same “choosy moms choose Jif” commercials that we all did, and she too was indoctrinated with the message that a woman’s most important job is caregiver.

  It was only later that Michelle Robinson came to believe her adult life would involve more than cooking for Ken in their dream house. For Michelle, to forgo pursuing a career would be to squander the education she and her parents worked so hard for her to attain. It also represented a huge financial risk, since her husband’s career as an activist and politician was hardly a guarantee of economic freedom. After her marriage in 1992 she refused to conform to the domestic model of stay-at-home mom or socialite, always having a career separate from her husband that was stable. But the demands of working full time outside the home and being the boss inside the home took its toll. Soon she would discover, like so many of us, that our favorite TV mom sold us a bill of goods. Claire Huxtable couldn’t possibly have cooked, cleaned, looked fabulous, had a delightful marriage, birthed and raised five perfectly well-behaved children … and made partner at a law firm. Eventually, the reality of doing it all began to create a rift in Michelle and Barack’s relationship.

  Early in their marriage it bothered Michelle that Barack’s career took priority over hers and tension between them mounted, but instead of stewing in resentment indefinitely she decided to be the change agent in her own life, the way she had been taught. She decided to shape what was in her control. Eventually she came to realize that “I needed support. I didn’t necessarily need it from Barack.”11 Michelle refused to be the working mommy martyr and began doing one of the most difficult things for working mothers: she prioritized herself. She started leaving the house at dawn to go workout, which forced her husband to take care of the girls in the morning. She built a village of friends, family and babysitters so that support would always be a text away. She learned to ask for help and no longer considered her success a solo endeavor. The combination of her traditional and disruptive personas represents a modern mantra: a good woman sacrifices, but not at her own expense.

  Michelle Obama takes her job as First Lady just as seriously as any other. She sees it as another important opportunity she doesn’t want to squander. “This is a rare platform and I have to use it to the best of my ability.”

  When you google the word “perfect” the first definition is “having all the required or desirable elements, qualities or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be.” The sample sentence? She strove to be the perfect wife.

  It took me a long time to adopt this mantra myself and to embrace my own imperfection. For the first eight years of my marriage I was not so much striving as I was on autopilot. During my childhood my mother was a homemaker and preacher’s wife. My security was her pep talks, peach cobbler, and the meticulousness with which she cornrowed my sister’s and my hair in the same direction. I wanted to be like her. And I was just as inspired by my mother-in-law, who left her village in Ghana as a girl to board a ship alone to London. Many years later she returned home with a nursing degree, husband, three children and an entrepreneurial spirit, eventually building the largest commercial fishing venture in the country. Her best advice to me: If things are getting easier, it’s probably because you’re headed downhill. Standing next to my husband on my wedding day, informed by their examples, I just assumed that my primary role as wife and mother would involve plenty of hard work, sacrifice and selflessness. Little did I know, standing under the arch, that too much of anything is peril. It took three years after having my first child for me to discover that we can achieve more by not caring which direction the clothes hangers are facing, by not apologizing with reckless abandon, by letting the mail pile up and by ordering take-out. I now know the same secret that Michelle does: in order to have it all we can’t do it all.

  Michelle Obama is the perfect First Lady because she is imperfect. Michelle doesn’t pretend to be the perfect anything. And she admonishes women to not give in to the pressure. “We have to get off the guinea pig wheel of trying to meet other people’s expectations,” she told me when I met her at the White House. But she does aspire to excellence. “I wouldn’t want to disappoint my parents. I wouldn’t want to disappoint the country.”12

  Her complexity is her dichotomy. That is why she resonates. American society has a knack for punishing complex women. We like them to fit one mold. But because Michelle lives in the middle, no matter who you are when you look at her you see yourself.

  She Slays: Michelle Obama & the Power of Dressing Like You Mean It

  TANISHA C. FORD

  She was a vision, bold in marigold, a marigold Narciso Rodriguez sheath dress, that is. The reality was that few had tuned into the State of the Union address to hear the words of a lame duck president. Most were in it to see First Lady Michelle Obama, “Lady O,” as she is affectionately called, who dazzled from the time the camera panned up to her seat where she sat perched on high in the House of Representatives’ chamber.

  And she did not disappoint. Michelle waved to onlookers as her signature fringe brushed her long eyelashes, effortlessly working her Black girl magic on the crowd. Later, we would learn that she had done it again. The FLOTUS broke the internet! Her vivid sartorial confection sold out on the Neiman Marcus website before Barack Obama could even finish his final speech.

  When Michelle dresses the world watches, which is why her decision to wear a designer’s garment can make him or her a household name overnight. She has helped to launch and/or elevate the careers of designers of color including Tracy Reese, Naeem Khan, Duro Olowu, and Maki Oh. And seemingly overnight, Michelle Obama has joined the pantheon of Black women actors, singers, models, and socialites who have set the world ablaze with their signature looks. What sets her apart is her participation in the tumultuous space of A
merican politics within which she must dress and present herself to the world.

  From her color palette and favorite silhouettes, to the flounce of her bangs, Mrs. Obama has become a fashion tour-de-force. Her style team ensures that every look is flawless, and she wears a variety of designers to keep her look fresh and timeless. She has covered nearly every magazine: from Vogue and Ebony to Time and Fitness. While many first ladies have been featured in magazines, the breadth and variety of Michelle’s covers speak to her wide appeal. Fashion critics and industry insiders in particular have embraced Michelle as the fashion maven-in-chief. But they were merely confirming something Black women already knew: Michelle Obama is a bawse! Clothes can only enhance what exists within the person. A true stylista has to bring something to her garments. There’s no doubt, Michelle serves fierceness.

  Her Black womanness matters to the millions of Black women and girls who admire her, feel protective of her, even though they’ve never met her. I am one of them, a Black woman professor who studies fashion in the academy—a place that does not always embrace style or Blackness.

  In many ways, I feel our journeys run parallel: Black girls from the Midwest—her from Chicago, me from Fort Wayne, Indiana. I started my professional career while the Obamas were in office, and I was navigating some similar race and gender issues as Michelle (on a much smaller scale, of course): in what spaces were Black women’s bodies allowed, how should our bodies be adorned, and what does our adornment say about our “professionalism” and our “qualifications”? Early in my career, I wore garments in vibrant prints and colors, stiletto heels, wigs, and other items that departed from the staid elbow-patched, blazer-and-bow-tie ensemble that one associates with professors. As I reached professional milestones, I celebrated the fact that I was able to do so, largely on my own terms. And of course, my professional life is unfolding as I see Michelle Obama changing the face of the American First Lady, delivering powerful speeches, and slaying photo ops. She became my First Lady in a way that no other First Lady had been.

  Even many non-Black Americans who were skeptical about Michelle in the beginning have been won over by her humorous, straightforward-yet-loving persona, regal beauty, and political intellect. A celebrity in her own right, she manages to occupy the roles of First Lady and fashionista while also maintaining her “sista girl realness.” She makes the voice of the White House one that is accessible and relatable. Black.

  But her designer clothing has not protected her from racist and sexist comments about her body or problematic conversations about her personality, rooted in centuries-long stereotypes about Black women. Even though she is experiencing luxuries that most Black folks will never know, she still is not safe from social violence or threats of physical violence. It is her experience, as a Black woman who knows the pleasures and pains of being stylish while Black, that connects us to her.

  Style has always mattered to Black Americans. We have been enslaved, been denied equal rights, and have been, and continue to be, the targets of state-sanctioned and vigilante violence. Clothing is a way we reclaim our humanity, express our creativity, celebrate our roots, and forge political solidarities. We style out as a mode of survival. So when and where Michelle Obama enters—dressed to the nines in Black designers such as Tracy Reese and Duro Olowu—Black women and girls enter with her. She is a symbol of many Black Americans’ hopes and dreams, a symbol of our collective hurt and pain. These histories are mapped onto her five-foot-ten-inch frame.

  Sure, sure, her style is reflective of the highly crafted choreography of the political world. All of her looks are planned by a team of buyers, stylists, and estheticians. This tight-lipped inner circle keeps Obama’s secrets close, only sharing White House–approved information about her garments.

  But I would like to believe she does indeed interject herself into the conversation. In my head, Malia and Sasha discuss fashion with their mom and help her pick out clothes as part of a mother-daughter ritual, similar to the one I had with my mother when I was growing up. For Black girls, bonding time with the women in their lives over hair and clothing are moments where they find safety and comfort, where family history is exchanged, and where they have playful conversations about what is and isn’t in style anymore. Getting dressed, then, for Michelle is about more than dazzling in a publication or at a State House dinner. It is about passing on knowledge and power to a younger generation. Thus, Michelle speaks to us, Black women and girls, when she dresses. She whispers to us as she strolls red carpets, attends White House galas, and ventures out on state-sponsored trips to places as far flung as South Africa and Taiwan: your body is beautiful, do not believe the lies they tell about you, you are Black and proud.

  Plus, Michelle showed us from early on that she was frank and outspoken, that she had her own opinions and was not invested in playing the political game. To me, that suggests that she would not allow someone to dress her in clothes she did not feel comfortable wearing. In fact, she told fashion industry legend Andre Leon Talley in 2009, “I love clothes … first and foremost, I wear what I love.”

  Moreover, the evolution of Michelle Obama’s style over the past eight years not only suggests to me that what she wears does matter to her but that she has become a student of fashion. She clearly has a keen eye for the colors and silhouettes that flatter her statuesque body and knowledge of the designers who make them.

  When I first saw Michelle Obama on Oprah, before Barack Obama even announced his candidacy, with her polite flipped bob, muted colors, mom flats, and conservative cuts, I did not think of her as a fashion plate. I definitely never believed she would become the style goddess that she is now. Even early on the campaign trail, she rocked dark turtlenecks and bell-sleeved jackets. Her style was a bit dated. She looked older than her years. It was clear that she cared about her appearance, probably having been schooled from a young age about the importance of leaving the house well groomed as a sign of her sense of self-dignity and promise. But as a busy high-powered professional and working wife and mother, it was clear that functionality and practicality trumped style.

  Once Barack Obama became the Democratic nominee, and certainly after the Obamas won the White House, Michelle underwent a style makeover. The rationale behind the switch from her high-power professional woman ensembles to what would become her signature glammed-up mom look for the first term of Obama’s presidency is a closely guarded secret. But we can look at the changes and draw conclusions about what her team was attempting to do.

  Michelle’s early public image ratings were low. The American public and political insiders and members of the media elite deemed her a ball buster who would not play the game, who belittled her husband and told embarrassing stories that made him look bad in public. They were speculating about whether the high-powered career woman would be another Hillary-type of First Lady who conspicuously wore her political ambitions like a well-tailored suit. Even Black folks debated what kind of First Lady Michelle would be because it was clear to us that the Princeton- and Harvard-educated Obama was capable of doing it all, if she so chose. Her team clearly decided to mold her into a twenty-first-century version of a Jackie Kennedy type of First Lady, who was impeccably dressed as she attended to hearth and home.

  Like the Kennedys, the Obamas would be packaged as the young, good-looking, charismatic couple who could cut a striking pose in designer digs while effortlessly telling jokes and holding court at their White House barbeques with their new celebrity friends. They were the couple you wanted to know. You wanted to socialize with them, be in their inner circle. Like Jackie Kennedy, Michelle would not project her own political ambitions. She would be the mom-in-chief, whose primary responsibilities were to her children and the home. She would be approachable and warm. Though she was stylish, her early style was not nearly as glamorous as Jackie Kennedy’s, but she started to build a name for herself in the fashion world because she wore many U.S.-based designers—ranging from Jason Wu to J. Crew.

  Initially
, Michelle did not have an official stylist. She was still purchasing her clothing from Chicago-based boutiques such as Ikram Goldman. It was Goldman who helped coordinate her election looks and her early First Lady style, which could be described as “soccer mom chic,” the PTA mom with a makeover. In line with her mom-in-chief branding, she wore J. Crew sheath dresses, often in floral prints, satin capri pants, and kitten heel mules. Mrs. Obama mixed high with low fashions (Talbots, Zara, Thakoon), again, in an attempt to stay relevant to middle-class moms.

  Her clothes early in that first term seemed to constantly try to communicate, “I am not the big bad scary Black woman; I am more like you than you think.” And the clothing choices were reinforced by the narrative the White House created through television appearances and in print media. We were to believe that she had the same friends as before she became FLOTUS, that they still met and shared strategies for transporting the kids to and from soccer practice while figuring out if they should get a nanny. Team Obama even circulated pictures of Michelle shopping at Target and revealed that she secretly frequented the store, dressed down, shopping inconspicuously. She was also known to wear items more than once—a shocker!—such as her oft-recycled magenta silk chine Michael Kors dress, which she wore on election night. The March 2009 cover of Vogue featured Michelle delicately draped over a cream couch wearing a fuchsia sheath dress. The Annie Leibovitz–photographed spread placed Michelle in submissive poses, wearing feminine colors.

  But as fashion critic Robin Givhan has noted, the genteel femininity through which we read Jackie Kennedy was not available to Michelle Obama as a Black woman. A perfect example of this is the media controversy around Obama’s choice to wear garments that exposed her upper arms. Though Jackie Kennedy also wore sleeveless frocks, her milky arms were read as lithe and petite, nonthreatening. Michelle, conversely, received a far more scathing response. The conservative media went crazy, writing stories about the First Lady’s arms. For them her arms were too muscular, too masculine. They were appalled by seeing the health-conscious Obama doing pushups in public to promote her anti-childhood obesity campaign Let’s Move! Obama was somehow stronger and larger than life, threatening even. This fixation on her arms allowed conservative political pundits to have a conversation about the whole of her body and the ways in which it was out of place in the White House.