You bring up some interesting points on feminism. Our new First Lady is between Barack and a hard place (sorry, couldn't resist!).

But remember Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean (Howard Dean's wife)and how she didn't come out into the spotlight until hubby caused a controversy by being a little overzealous on the campaign trail? At the time I remember thinking, "Wow, good for her, having her own life." Who could blame her for not wanting to give up her life to get sliced and diced by the GOP?

Ms. Traister did a great article on this:

http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2004/01/23/judy/index.html

I wonder at the logistics of a First Lady having an outside job. If she's a doctor like Judy Steinberg Dean, does the Secret Service go into each patient room before she does to check things out?

Barack didn't get elected because of how Michelle looks or doesn't look. Thankfully, we have come at least that far. Hopefully one of these days we won't talk about womens' body parts at all in judgmental terms.

I'm white, living about 2 miles outside of Detroit, and I've never heard of any great Big Black Butt Fear that white people are supposed to have. :-) My white friends and I don't talk about big black butts. We do talk about our cool, new president who is smarter than our current president and how we were proud to vote for him. We talk about how having a black president might ease tensions between whites and blacks, so maybe one day in 40 more years we can get past it.

To the whites I know, people who don't speak coherent English (Sarah Palin! Snoop Dogg!) seem ghetto, and in both of those examples, it seems like an affectation. And butt size has nothing to do with that.