- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
One day Salon (rightly) objects to the "mommification" of Michelle Obama, but a few days later it has no qualms about the objectification of the very same woman under its own banner. ?!
It is a simple matter of taste. And good sense. This is not about politics or race or anything else.
I was going to write an angry letter, but before doing that I read most of the letters already published. Rosenkavalier on pg 17 expressed my views perfectly, so I am just going to quote him verbatim.
@ Joan
The idea is not that having a black first lady will narrow the scope of what we talk about. I think the idea is that devoting an entire article to an intelligent, educated female public figure's ass is simply beyond the scope of discussion to begin with. I was much more offended by Gary Kamiya's piece, for example, which reduced Sarah Palin into a piece of meat (many, many letter writers were and I'm frankly surprised to see he's still writing after that one). Ok, Sarah Palin is hot, ok, lots of people like to comment about it. But if you're going to attack her, by all means do it on the issues, a place in which she is exceedingly weak in the first place.
Same with Michelle Obama. If you're going to venerate her (the way Kamiya villified Palin), don't do it based on something which sexualizes her and dehumanizes her as much as her ass. There are plenty of reasons to respect and admire Michelle Obama without stooping to the level of publicly analyzing her body. A ghetto booty may be a symbol of power among black women, but it's no more real a power than the power that pageant looks gives Sarah Palin: It just makes her an object for men's desires and fantasties, and subsequently, of women's jealousy or admiration over that power. Let's not fool ourselves into thinking that booty power is anything more glorious than that.
I'm a bit disappointed, Salon. Your article on lolcats was much more worthwhile and entertaining than this one.
