The XX Factor: What women really think.

O vs. O

Waiting for a bus near a newsstand this week, I became transfixed by the cover of the April issue of O magazine, in which, for the first time in the publication’s nine-year history, its namesake/publisher/doyenne shares cover space with someone else: Michelle Obama, the first pretender to Oprah’s title of America’s favorite black female celebrity. Dayo wrote about this cover when it first came out, but it took a good long session of bus-stop staring to drive home how weird an image it actually is. There’s always been something Napoleonic about the narcissism of Oprah’s inevitable presence on that cover, and she doesn’t cede her place without a fight: The space is almost exactly evenly divided between the two women. Michelle, who towers over Oprah by half a head, smiles and spreads out her hands in a laying-down-the-law kind of gesture. Oprah holds hers together in prayer position, like a supplicant, her face turned toward Michelle, her expression tense. (Or am I overreading?) Of the hundreds of photos that must have been taken during the shoot, it's amazing that Oprah (who, I assume, gets final cut) chose this one. It's a telling portrait of uneasily shared power, right down to the fact that Michelle’s broad shoulders are literally blocking Oprah’s name.

Another striking element of the picture is Michelle’s belt, a wide strip of transparent plastic with a big round buckle (emphasizing, inevitably, the comparative narrowness of her and Oprah’s waists.) No other first lady in history could have worn that belt. (The very material it’s made of didn’t exist until Mamie Eisenhower’s day.) It brings together a mod Space Age sensibility (Twiggy might have worn it in 1969) with a populist embrace of cheap materials—it’s an accessory you could imagine finding at H & M or Forever 21. This week, watching Michelle cut a style swath through London, I keep thinking that the woman who can unseat Oprah from the cover of her own magazine, and do it wearing a see-through belt, is a force to be reckoned with indeed.

 (Thanks to Mrs. O, the invaluable Michelle Obama fashion blog, for the images.)