michele obama is a whole person. That's why it so haed to describe her in bits and bits., she fits together as couple whith her husband and yet keeps her womanly flavor strong and neat The most powerful part isn't a part but a whole. on the whole she is very ipressive..

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In eight years she could run for president.

@jcjcjcjc

Good points! I agree that MO is a bitter, black woman. And one has to wonder why! What more could she want?

It's time we stopped being cowards, as the new attorney general calls us. It's time to stop using euphemisms and political correctness when we talk about race concerns.

which is worse, your coverage of Sarah Palin or Michelle Obama. One ran on the family values ticket, the other exhibits good, wholesome family values. One is nothing more than a beauty queen, yet Salon reports on her every move like she's a woman of substance. The other is a woman of substance, and yet Salon reports on her looks instead of her activities.

Mrs. Obama is a strong, smart, professional woman balancing a career and family life with kids she obviously chooses to make a priority. She seems a good role model and I want to know what she thinks and what she's accomplishing in her role as First Lady, not what she's wearing and where I can buy the outfit.

Note to Republicans: Next election, consider picking candidates who are the best qualified, regardless of gender (a true feminist perspective). In case you missed the message in November, and it appears you have, there are some intelligent Republican women out there and we voters aren't settling for anything less just because it looks good in a dress.

Okay, the height of stupidity is saying that Michelle Obama's ARMS are sexy. Sure they are. And so is her strong, handsome face, and her well coifed hair and her butt and her long legs and her smart, savvy, opinionated BRAIN. What's sexy is how she and Barack obviously still got it goin on. And yeah, I love to see what she's wearing next. I love it because strong and smart shouldn't have to mean lack of fashion sense. Hollywood would like you to think that all ambitious, determined competent women wear comfortable shoes and couldn't dress themselves if their lives depended on it.

Michelle was the successful executive back when Barack was an underpaid university professor. She's got a good head on her shoulders--enough of a good head that I hope that she can see that SHE shouldn't pay any attention to the fashion coverage. She should just keep being who she is.

She has clearly had over ten years of weight training from lifting up her kids -- hence the muscular arms. By the time my partner's son was seven she could punch out a rhino. So what's the big deal?

I find the obsession with the First Lady just completely bizarro. I'm Canadian, and there is no such brouhaha over the Prime Minister's family -- I couldn't even tell you what his wife and children look like or even what their names are. I *think* the wife is blond, and the kids are still in elementary school. They are just not at all in the public eye, and nobody really cares to know much about them.

...of Broadsheet's blinkered sexism.

The efforts here to be self-aware are so ... unsuccessful.

I too object viscerally to the WE and US and arch assumptions about readers, Americans, women, and the nation. Please quit projecting your own dis-ease and discomfort and internalized craziness about your female bodies onto her.

I am aware of Michelle Obama's wholeness. ONE CAN DO THAT FOR A PERSON BY A SIMPLE DECISION. I do not think of her as a projection screen for Western culture's fucked-up, contorted relationship with the female.

And I damn well wish Broadsheet would stop hauling at her ankles. She's in a deep ocean, alone, making a crossing I respect and admire. I wish Broadsheet would model respect, acceptance, and courtesy toward her.

Even toward itself.

With Broadsheet writers taking little slivers out of Michelle at every mindless opportunity, she will need it.

Oh yes you did!! Want me to dig up the link for you? Ok.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/11/18/michelles_booty/

I wish I hadn't wasted 5 minutes on it.

The response is overwhelming: no one really cares that much about Michelle Obama. You know why? Because she HASNT DONE ANYTHING! We've only really heard of her because she's MARRIED to an important man.

She is no more significant, and no more of a role model or figure in her own right, than Laura Bush was. Wait til she pulls a Hillary, and achieves on her own, then call her an icon. Right now, she's just a wife.

It _has_ been fun to watch The Fashion Leadership suffer major cognitive dissonance because Michelle is not the kind of "style icon First Lady" they are used to molding and shaping. She does not suit their idea of what a FL should look like, or what a "fashionable" woman looks like. Nor is she willing to take her cues from them and let them mold her. They don't know what to make of her, and it's wonderful to watch them twist in the wind. Proof once again, (if anyone needed it) that the fashion industry cares more about enforcing their idea of beauty on everyone else, not trying to make everyone look good.

... I can say with absolute certainty that I do not care a fig about Michelle Obama's clothes, butt, hair, arms, legs, personal hygiene, shiny trinkets, teeth, or anything else.

It is interesting that the women who profess most of all to be advocates of feminism are the ones who are most of all obsessed with these subjects.

Proof, if any were needed, that biology is destiny.

to be so obsessed with a woman (and mostly with her physical and stylistic attributes at that) whose only claim to fame is that she is the President's wife?