Michelle Obama: A Life
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When she met the Queen of England for the first time in April 2009, the Queen put an arm around her. In a breech of royal protocol, Obama reciprocated the gesture. Rather than hurt her image, this only enhanced it - here was a woman of warmth and spontaneity.
Obama colored the White House fountains green for St. Patrick’s Day, planted the second ever White House vegetable garden (Eleanor Roosevelt had the first) with the help of local school children, installed beehives on the South Lawn, staged East Room celebrations of jazz, classical, and country-western music, and hosted the White House’s first-ever Passover Seder (her first cousin once removed is one of the nation’s leading African-American rabbis). She has turned America’s house into a dynamic, lively, even thrilling place. And she seems to do it effortlessly, filled with almost childlike awe at the possibilities. “I’m not supposed to be here,” she has said on many occasions, before asking, “What are the things that we can do differently, the things that have never been done, the people who’ve never seen or experienced this White House?”
Even before her husband was elected, Michelle Obama made Vanity Fair magazine’s international best-dressed list. In her years in the White House, she has become a style icon, although in light of the stubborn recession she has moved away from high fashion. When the occasion demands she can pull out all the stops and dazzle the world. She has plucked talented but little-known American designers like Jason Wu and Isabel Toledo from obscurity and turned them into fashion stars. As for her husband’s take on clothes, she told The New York Times. “He doesn’t understand fashion. He’s always asking, ‘Is that new? I haven’t seen that before.’ It’s like: ‘Why don’t you mind your own business? Solve world hunger. Get out of my closet.’”
Michelle Obama has settled on the two causes that are most important to her: fighting childhood obesity and supporting military families.
Fighting childhood obesity - which adds billions a year to the nation’s health care costs and will add even more if the children grow into obese adults - has become a crusade for Obama. In February 2010 she introduced her “Let’s Move” initiative, which encourages more exercise and better eating habits, and works to mandate healthier lunchroom fare and limit the sale of soft drinks and candy at schools. Before the roll-out she assembled an impressive coalition of allies: educators, public health officials, athletes, pediatricians, and businesses, including the three major suppliers of school lunches and the big soft drink companies. She has been careful not to cast the campaign as the food police or government intrusion. But with studies showing that nearly a third of American children are obese and suffering serious medical consequences as a result, hers is clearly a mission whose time has come.
No cause is as close to Obama’s heart as her fight for America’s military families. She feels that the young men and women who risk their lives across the world are often forgotten once they come home, especially if the conflict - like Iraq and Vietnam - is one the American people would rather not be reminded of. She understands the strain that war puts on marriages and families, the long separations, the post-traumatic stress, the injuries. From her earliest days in the White House she met quietly with these families, listening to their concerns and getting a sense of what their needs were. Just as she had with Let’s Move, she built an impressive coalition of businesses, non-profits, military leaders, educators, healthcare professionals, legislators, and religious organizations. Only when she felt she had a comprehensive grasp of the issues - and concrete ways to address them - did she go public.
In 2011, Michelle teamed up with Jill Biden to launch Joining Forces, a nationwide initiative that mobilizes all sectors of American society to give service members and their families the opportunities and support they’ve earned and to raise awareness of their unique employment, education, and healthcare needs. She is working with American companies to increase their hiring and training of veterans; her goal is to help 100,000 veterans and their spouses find jobs by 2013. Because military families move frequently, Joining Forces is working with schools across the country to ease the transition for transferring students. And because military families and veterans face job-specific medical issues including toxic exposure, high stress levels, and, of course, all grades of injuries, Joining Forces works to make sure medical providers understand and respond to these needs.
Michelle Obama has clearly found her footing. To an extent that has disarmed some of her early critics, she stays out of the limelight most of the time, appearing only when it highlights a cause she believes in or celebrates something she loves about her country. She is a fiercely protective and involved mother. And as surreal as White House life can be, it has given Obama a welcome sense of balance and stability. After all, the family lives above the store, has dinner together nightly, and can even surprise each other with pop-in visits (although these are discouraged during cabinet meetings). Around the dinner table they discuss “roses and thorns,” with everyone recounting the high- and lowlight of their day. The President has what he calls “Michelle time,” when he retreats to the residence during the workday.
A typical day for the First Lady starts at dawn with the treadmill (her longtime personal trainer followed her to Washington) and a dog walk. Meetings are verboten until after she sees her daughters off to school. She schedules “on” days in which she tries to concentrate all her public events, leaving her time for the girls’ school activities, writing, reading, and planning.
In her memoirs, Hillary Clinton wrote: “Over the years, the role of First Lady has been perceived as largely symbolic. She is expected to represent an ideal - and largely mythical - concept of American womanhood.” It’s no secret that Clinton had little patience with that part of the job. But Obama seems to relish it, and that may be at the core of her appeal and strength. She has captivated and impressed the American public - she is more popular than her husband and has even disarmed some of the right-wing attackers - at the same time as she is making her mark.
Another key component of Obama’s appeal is that she’s clearly enjoying herself. Yes, she’s got a lot of weight on her toned shoulders, but they seem capable of carrying it with grace and even a touch of insouciance. She’s always smiling, laughing, curious, undertaking new projects with infectious enthusiasm. She knows how to have fun - and having fun is a core American value.
Of course, her story is still being written. Polls show her to be the most popular and admired woman in America, but she faces a delicate balancing act. To date she has assidiously avoided partisan issues and has made very few explicitly political appearances. All that will change in the heat of the re-election campaign.
Looking beyond 2012 is another facinating exercise in conjecture. If Obama is relected, his wife will be 52 when she leaves the White House, a woman in the prime of her life. What then? It’s hard to imagine anything even close to retirement. It’s not hard to imagine great things on the national and international stage. After all, Michelle Obama has charmed the world and reaffirmed its belief in America as a land of tolerance, freedom, positive change, and boundless hope. At home, she has transcended the partisan rancor that has come to define our politics and has inspired Americans to come together for causes that everyone can believe in.
COPYRIGHT
Published by New Word City, Inc., 2011
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ISBN 978-1-61230-211-9
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Table of Contents
MICHELLE OBAMA, A LIFE
NEW WORD CITY
COPYRIGHT
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