The Momification of Michelle Obama

[kjpepper]

This is a thought provoking read about how Michelle's portrayal in the media has tended to ignore her numerous professional accomplishments and focus instead on her more traditional (and therefore less Hillaryesque threatening) roles as mother and fashion maven.

It's gonna be really interesting to see what she makes of being First Lady.

Comments

[nounsandverbs]

Well, by all reports, Michelle Obama -- while she never downplays her own professional accomplishments -- does very much put her daughters first. She's moving her mom to Washington to help out with the kids.

By contrast, while Hillary never downplayed her role as mom to Chelsea, she was always very concerned that we see her as a competent professional. Michelle doesn't seem to care. And Michelle has made it very clear that unlike Hillary, she wants no official voice in policy.

To a large extent, the media portrays public figures the way they want to be portrayed. (Unless they piss off the media, like Sarah Palin did.)

[11th-letter.livejournal.com]

"In all the worrying about how Sasha and Malia will adjust to having their lives turned upside down, in all the fretting about how Obama will move his Chicago-style shop to Washington, why is there so little curiosity about how Michelle will adjust to the loss of her own private, very successful, very high-profile and very independent identity? How will Michelle Obama feel as she becomes what she has long resisted -- an extension of her husband?"

Maybe simply because she is an adult, and those are her choices, and it's...gossipy and not really news to speculate that her feelings are other than what she says they are. (Not that I have anything against gossip. I'm a fiend for gossip, actually. But I don't write editorials in newspapers...which is probably a good thing for a lot of reasons.)
People fretting about Barack Obama's 'moving his Chicago-style shop to Washington' is understandable...we want to know if he's going to properly do the job we just hired him to do. Michelle doesn't work for us, unless she wants to, so examination of her motives and sacrifices and how willing or unwilling she was to make them is less of our business.