When Michelle Springs Herself from the White House

I dunno, Dahlia, why wouldn't American women want Michelle Obama's life? Sure, it's more superego than ego at the moment, and yes she has subordinated her professional ambitions to her husband's. But she has plenty of power, she gets to talk policy as well as fluff, and she can dine out on these White House moments for all the rest of her life. I mean, how much do you really chafe at being in the helpmeet role when your husband is the president, and you helped make him (see soaring Michelle approval ratings)? It's like complaining about being co-pilot on the spaceship to Mars. This is a once-in-a-lifetime team journey if ever there was one.

And when the Obamas are sprung from the cage of the White House—because over the next four years or eight, it will surely come to feel like the bars are tightening around both of them—Michelle Obama seems bound to chart her own professional course again. She'll have another chance to model for the rest of us, by showing us how to move purposefully from one phase of life to the next and make different choices, with different emphases on self v. family, at different times. (In contrast to my own motto: Try to do too much. None of it well.) What I admire about Michelle's marriage, Jess, is that I really think her husband will want her to take the lead next, and will be ready to move to a new city for her as she has moved to D.C. for him. The Clintons come to mind here, but they're like the too-large-for-life version of what I'm thinking of: The wife runs for president to satisfy her own ambition; the former president husband joins her campaign—and sabotages her. The post White House Obamas promise to be more low-key. More chill. No movie stars, but I'll take that fantasy.

Photograph of Michelle and Barack Obama by Stephane De Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images.

Tags: Amanda Fortini; Barack Obama; Michelle Obama; Obama marriage, Michelle Obama

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Emily Bazelon is a founding editor of Double X, and a writer and editor at Slate.

Comments

I realize this article is

By: patric548 | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 05:06

I realize this article is largely a case of hyperbole (or at least I hope it is), but it seems to me that this "Mozart in the womb/ everything organic" style of mothering isn't a "problem" faced by the majority of women. Most mothers I know are more likely to be clipping coupons and going to Grocery Outlet so they can feed their kids than they are concerned about whether soy milk or rice milk will better aid in said children's mental development.
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I implore others as moms to

By: patric548 | Wed, 07/29/2009 - 05:05

I implore others as moms to look within to become the best mom for our children than to present a false image of fake happiness of our mostly boring and tedious lives soley to impress those hyperventilating uberfemales who want merit badges and or global accolades for their seemingly endless frustrations in their seemingly endless stress filled quest in perfecting their PTA "game face" to outdo and impress the other uberfemales who thrive on such pettiness.
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Why wait?

By: Meredith Simons | Wed, 06/10/2009 - 14:29

I agree that there are probably some great things waiting for both of the Obamas after they leave the White House. But does Michelle really have to wait until she escapes DC to do what she wants to do? She has the education and professional background to do far more in the policy realm than she seems to have done so far. She was strategically seated next to Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has some serious health care power in his hands, at a recent WH dinner. But according to the NY Times magazine, he and the first lady - a former hospital administrator - talked about the school their kids attend. Not health care? Now, maybe neither of them wanted to talk health care. Maybe you don't talk policy at White House dinners. I don't know; I've never been invited. And maybe Michelle truly wants to focus on her family while her husband focuses on, you know, running the country. But I hope that if there are big-picture things she wants to do during the next four years, she does them, and doesn't let tradition or her husband's handlers or her many critics trap her in the White House, waiting for an escape.
—Meredith Simons/Double X intern