The XX Factor: What women really think.

Whitney Houston: Is She Every Woman?

For those of us who missed yesterday's epic Whitney Houston-Oprah Winfrey interview, Jezebel has put together a priceless highlight reel. We learn lots of sordid things about Houston's drug habits—watch her educate Winfrey on the finer points of freebasing here—and there are plenty of sad, sad details about her complicated relationship with Bobby Brown. It's not quite the glorious comeback I and other singing-into-our-hairbrushes devotees of The Voice might have hoped for: Just hearing that ravaged rasp makes me want to cry a little and then go listen to "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." But I'm happy to root for a (formerly?) insanely talented woman who's clawing her way back to some kind of normalcy ... (Read more in DoubleX)

Women More Likely to Follow Men on Twitter

@Oprah

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.)

The Lipstick Level, Continued: Even Oprah Learns To Share Her Toys

With none other than Michelle Obama! After nine years of stubbornly holding off on appearances with well, anything that is not a saleable accessory (not even so much as a cabana boy), Oprah caves on the cover of her magazine, O. The dish:

Winfrey also has an interview with the new First Lady that addresses everything from the joys of White House pie to Obama's decorating philosophy, which seems to have a lot to do with sofas. "I want comfortable sofas," said Obama in the interview. "You've got to be able to make a fort with the sofa pillows! Everything must be fort-worthy."

As a child who constructed obstacle courses and secret islands from couch cushions, that's kind of an awesome sentiment (will the cushions, like the new White House playset, be engraved with former presidents' names?). More remarkable, however, is that Oprah may have actually realized that someone is more bankable than her. Barack Obama certainly holds his own as a magazine cover sales god, but Michelle is giving both her husband and the megastar who campaigned for him a run for their money--appearing on sellout covers from Vogue to People (the O photo boasts a rare sleeved Michael Kors look). Oprah acknowledged as much in the magazine: "people do judge a magazine by its cover, which is why it's important to me keep the cover of this one looking fresh," said Winfrey.

Snap! Lipstick Level: 95. Both Madame Os probably still buy their own gloss—but watching richer-than-sin Winfrey trying to hustle a little extra cash on the side is surely a sign of the apocalypse.

Earlier: Introducing the Lipstick Level: A Recessionometer

Fashion Faux Pas

Julia, I too found some of the renderings of Michelle Obama questionable and also troubling because of their subtle use of stereotypical imagery. Christian Lacroix's Michelle is a sneering, mean-looking lady, much like the "angry black woman" the Obama haters accused Michellle Obama of being. Why is she frowning in every sketch? Doesn't she have every reason to be happy? After all, her husband is the soon-to-be leader of the free world. You'd think the new first lady is smile-challenged. Same goes for Zak Posen's scowling, slouching Michelle, an obviously sullen black woman. They might as well have thrown in the controversial New Yorker cover sketch of Michelle as black militant for good measure. Betsy Johnson's sketch was a bit too graffiti-artisty for my taste. Maybe Johnson was going for whimsical, but it seemed to me that she was trying for an urban (read: black, or inner-city) look. Her Michelle looks out of sorts with the crazy big hair and all those distracting handwritten notes surrounding her; they might as well be graffiti tags spray-painted on a wall. While some of the designs were indeed gorgeous, some of the drawings of Michelle's facial feautures were so suspect that they drew attention away from the dresses.

And by the way, the other black female nonmodels to grace the cover of Vogue were Marion Jones (2001), Jennifer Hudson (2007), and Oprah Winfrey (2007).* Vogue Editor Anna Wintour only let Oprah appear on the cover after she agreed to lose weight first. I can't believe Oprah, media powerhouse Oprah, even agreed to such nonsense.

You're also right, Julia, about the fashion world being inhospitable to black women. That's why my radar always goes up when I see questionable pictures or drawings of black women. If Michelle does land on the cover of Vogue, I hope they won't try, and I bet she won't allow them, to depict her in the same way they did Jennifer Hudson: slightly bent over with her mouth open wide, hair flying, and ample cleavage on view. Think loud, fat, black woman. Annie Leibovitz and Vogue were rightly criticized for the photos.

I've seen this sort of thing too many times for it to be a concidience. Just take a look at any of those obnoxious bridal magazines and notice how the women of color—the few token black and Lationo models even in the mags—are photographed. They are often wearing the more revealing dresses, their mouths are usually open or pursed in suggestive fashion, their makeup is heavier, and their hair is sometimes styled to suggest wild-haired raven. The subtle suggestion is that they are looser, or whore-light, and the imagery is stark when compared with the prim and proper, virginal-looking white models photographed with their hair done up in sophisticated buns.        

You asked if it was hard to draw a woman with black skin, and I think the answer is no, at least not for those artists/designers who don't reflexively see, and thus imagine, black women in a stereotypical light.

Correction, Dec. 12, 2008: The original sentence included only Hudson and Winfrey.

Oprah and Linda

Oprah Winfrey declares victory for the cause: "Now look at this campaign: The two front-runners are a black man and a woman," she said at a California rally she headlined with Michelle Obama, Maria Shriver, and Caroline Kennedy. "What that says to me is we have won the struggle and we have the right to compete." The New York Times continues: "[I]nstead of seeing a painful choice, voters, Ms. Winfrey urged, should see a moment when they 'are free from the constraints of gender and race.' "

Meanwhile, in an essay loaded with great-looking data, Linda Hirshman points out that "if men are Republican enough, the Republicans need not care whether the women are less enthusiastic about them than men are." Which helps to explain the question I asked the other night. In discussing the effects of the question you were discussing, Dahlia and Rachael, about why women consume less political news, Hirshman points out that single women tend to be the least checked in—and so the most up for grabs.