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Posted
Monday, February 23, 2009 3:37 PM
| By
Dayo Olopade
Riffing slightly on the gasping that accompanied Michelle
Obama’s pulled back “executive” ‘do, Dana Goldstein makes an interesting point
about Obama’s hybrid feminism (third-wave, to some). Though Obama has dubbed herself the “mom in chief” countless times, pledging to work with military families,
dishing on work-life balance with women at Howard University, and presiding over a
feel-good children’s concert at the White House last Wednesday, Goldstein
notes:
… in unscripted moments and with
small gestures, you can see the old
Michelle Obama emerging from behind the Jackie O facade.
Most obviously, there is Michelle's tour of federal agencies, where she's been
pitching her husband's stimulus package and thanking tens of thousands of bureaucrats
for their service. A friend pointed out to me that these events are making
Michelle more visible than Joe Biden. That's true. Don't look
too closely, or you might see the Obamas' marriage for what it really is:
something quite like the infamous "two for the price of one" that so
terrified conservatives when it came to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
In the days before the Recovery Act passed, I, too, watched
as the listening tour took on a tone of subtle flackery. And yes, Obama is a
former hospital executive who shares a pillow with the man crafting national
health care policy. Yet I believe Michelle is really far more of a
traditionalist than anyone gets. More than I am, certainly.
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ bang-up profile of Obama
does the best job I’ve seen of fleshing out the first lady’s nostalgic, early ‘60s
view of America.
A child of Chicago’s
South Side and of a household with small-town values and traditional gender
roles, Obama is fiercely enamored of the “good old days,” of stoop hopscotch
and such, and it is the nation—blinded, somehow, by her blackness—that has
lagged behind in recognizing that. Despite the president’s lighter skin and Kansan roots, in
many ways, Coates argues, Michelle is the more American of the first couple.
The
superficial references to Camelot (and her “Mad Men” outfits—on the day she
hosted middle-schoolers in the East Room, she wore a mint green cardigan and conservative
pink tweed skirt, topped with the classic Jackie flip) contribute to the
impression that she is not interested in “two for the price of one.” She may be
or she may not. But the point is that, unlike her predecessors, she will do
both or neither if she damn well pleases. Though “Hillary Kissinger” empowered Obama to
eschew cookie-baking, the lack of scones at 1600 Penn is more likely to be because Obama's bad at it than because she feels social pressure to be a full-frontal working girl. That choice, I
guess—and the pretty clothes—makes her a lucky lady.
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