Michelle Obama might be among the most powerful women in the world, but even celebrities have their bad days. In her book, the former FLOTUS confessed that she struggled with the constant scrutiny she faced through her eight years in the White House, particularly for her fashion choices.
“This stuff got me down, but I tried to reframe it as an opportunity to learn, to use what power I could find inside a situation I’d never have chosen for myself,” she shared in “Becoming,” an excerpt of which was first published by ELLE magazine.
“I was lambasted”
Michelle Obama drew plenty of controversy for being an innovator, like her husband. But Barack Obama’s “tan suit” controversy was an everyday battle for Ms. Obama, as she tells it. While FLOTUS fashion has garnered media attention since at least Jackie Kennedy was in office, Ms. Obama found the constant press on her wardrobe to be bothersome, and distinctly sexist.
“It seemed that my clothes mattered more to people than anything I had to say,” she wrote. “In London, I’d stepped offstage after having been moved to tears while speaking to the girls at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School, only to learn that the first question directed to one of my staffers by a reporter had been ‘Who made her dress?'”
Her casual choices sometimes attracted criticism, like the time she wore a pair of much-discussed shorts in the summer of 2009: “Late in the summer of 2009, we went on a family trip in the Grand Canyon, and I was lambasted for an apparent lack of dignity when I was photographed getting off Air Force One (in 106-degree heat, I might add) dressed in a pair of shorts.”
Ms. Obama, who has spoken about backlash against her “masculine” persona, said she was particularly sensitive to how she would be perceived because of prejudice towards her. While many wondered what Barack meant by wearing a tan suit, Michelle said she similarly “tried to be somewhat unpredictable, to prevent anyone from ascribing any sort of message to what I wore.” So the former FLOTUS would mix and match high fashion pieces with retail clothing and a “diverse set of up-and-comers” in the fashion world, whom she preferred to well-known designers.
“As a black woman, too, I knew I’d be criticized if I was perceived as being showy and high-end, and I’d also be criticized if I was too casual,” she wrote. “So I mixed it up. I’d match a Michael Kors skirt with a T-shirt from Gap. I wore something from Target one day and Diane von Furstenberg the next.”
From lambasted to beloved
Ms. Obama has continued to attract attention over her fashion choices, most of it positive. Indeed, if Ms. Obama faced scrutiny back then, her successor has it much worse. There can’t be many first ladies who have been as consistently lambasted, analyzed, and mocked as Melania Trump.
Meanwhile, the Obamas have departed on a lucrative post-White House media career. Ms. Obama has a new speaking tour in the works after selling out stadiums around the world to promote her best-selling memoir, Becoming, which hit shelves last fall.
It helps to have the media on your side. With the assistance of an adoring press, the celebrity couple are virtually shielded from criticism by polite society. Barack Obama’s drone strikes have been well and truly forgotten, and the “tan suit” is now the former president’s biggest scandal to many of his admirers. Meanwhile, the couple have inked an Netflix deal and started a production company, as Michelle Obama rechristens herself as a self-help author in the vein of Oprah.
Indeed, Obama has fashioned herself into a kind of spokesperson for women, particularly black women. She wrote that she quickly learned a harsh lesson from her time as FLOTUS: that women in public life are often unfairly judged based on their image. But in practice, this message of empowerment seems to have taken a backseat to cashing checks. The couple is currently waging a legal battle to force the black female owner of a small business to give up her copyright so that their production company, Higher Ground, can have the title.
From “lambasted” to beloved, it looks like the Obamas are enjoying their White House retirement just fine.
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