Book Excerpt: On Michelle Obama, Body Language, And Love’s Revolution

First Lady Michelle Obama. Via thedailybeast.com

When Michelle Obama revealed the “secret” to her workout for perfectly toned arms, it became national news. This revelation, however, did not quell the debate and fascination over the gender politics surrounding this particular body part, as CNN and Fitness magazine are two of the many outlets that use Michelle’s arms as the ideal goal of suggested workout plans. Michelle has gracefully weathered the storm of public attention about her workout regimen by turning health and fitness into one of her defining public issues, with the “Let’s Move!” campaign. But the story about Michelle’s arms is not an innocent case of celebrity flattery or fitness gossip; it is part and parcel of the American public’s obsessive concern with the public presentation of Ms. Obama’s body.

Ms. Obama’s body is under absurd scrutiny, and in many cases the connections to intersectional race/gender stereotypes are painfully clear. While noting that the media is responsible for her status as a symbol representing all black women, she simultaneously validates the notion that black women do look to her as a reflection of themselves. “When Black women see me,” Michelle says, “they recognize themselves in me. Whether it’s my shape, my dress, the way I walk.” If there is one body image issue about Michelle that trumps the ongoing arms story, it is her choice of clothing. Jackie O’s ghost appears once again, as commentators frequently invoke Onassis with reference to Michelle’s fashion sense; “Mrs.-O,” a highly trafficked blog “dedicated to following the fashion of Mrs. Obama,” has been featured by seemingly every major newspaper and publication in the country, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. For a glamorous celebrity, Ms. Obama has crafted a decidedly down-to-earth public image that is a weapon against the uppity black superwoman stereotype. This image is reflected in Ms. Obama’s frequently “off the rack” clothing choices, as her fashion sense is heralded for being just as refined as Jackie’s but more sensible—proof that she is not the bourgeois elite that her education, occupation, and income would suggest. In Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style (2011), Kate Betts makes the case that Michelle’s embrace of her role as a fashion trailblazer breaks down the dichotomy between style and substance, and challenges the notion that for women, playing it safe with one’s wardrobe is a prerequisite for being taken seriously as an intellectual. As bell hooks points out, “Rigid feminist dismissal of female longings for beauty has undermined feminist politics.” Celebrating a woman’s effort to actively construct herself as beautiful and, for that matter, sexual is not capitulation to patriarchy and sexism. When beauty and sexuality are rooted in infantilization and objectification, and physical appearance chokes out women’s intellectual expression, we have a problem.

Betts points out that when Barack Obama clinched the Democratic Party’s nomination in June 2008, Michelle’s approval rating stalled at 43 percent. From that point on, Michelle ditched the “corporate armor of sleek jackets and pantsuits” in favor of a more comfortable, colorful, and traditionally feminine aesthetic. After crossing the 50 percent approval threshold, she has never dipped below the halfway mark again. A cynic might argue that Michelle Obama has shrewdly accommodated the norms of respectable middle-class womanhood and that she does not deserve to be called a trailblazer simply because she follows the fashion advice of the Obamas’ public relations team. But even if we dismiss the political import of her clothing choices, we are confronted with another set of bodily acts that imbue the first lady with revolutionary political significance: the way Michelle and Barack express their love for each other in public displays of affection.

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