This is so disrespectful and plays into the stereotypes white people have about black women (I am a black woman, by the way). The white media already talk disrespectfully about the black body, why does this black woman feel the need to pile on? When black people, like this author, start talking about Mrs. Obama's "booty" white people see it as an invitation to follow suit. Black people already have to get into beefs with white people who hear rappers say "nigga" and think they are not using a slur because rappers have make the spurious distinction between "nigger" and "nigga." I cannot wait to hear Rush Limbaugh's spin on this. Mrs. Obama is a mother and a wife so it is inappropriate to objectify her sexually because that is not how she presents herself. She is not Lil' Kim, Beyonce, Cassie, or Ciara. She wants to be the "Mom in Chief" not the "hoochie in chief." How dare the author reduce her to her "booty?" What's next? Will we hear about how Obama must be some black buck who will shake the walls of the east wing when he taps and slaps Michelle's "booty?"

I wish black people wouldn't descend to this level. It is bad enough that the media portray us as people whose only contribution to society is what we can do with our bodies. I never bought into the prevailing wisdom that Obama's triumph would erase all of the stereotypes about black people. It is pathetic that my cynicism has been vindicated so quickly.

The editors of Salon are racist for publishing this. I hope they have the decency to pull it right away. I cannot imagine Salon publishing a piece on Laura Bush's "rack" or George Bush's "package." I urge Joan Walsh to remove this immediately.

So this is what Salon has come to.

Erin Aubry Kaplan talents would be better utilized writing for "Black Butt" magazine.

mortification that goes into controlling it. The film was also a blessing to the garment industry as it provoked a demand for "big knickers" or control pants which seem to be the Western equivalent of the foot-binding that Japanese women once suffered to attain the aesthetic ideal of that society. I was glancing through a newspaper yesterday while the argument on Michelle Obama's bottom was raging on Salon and there was a whole page on "knickers that promise to give you a smoother silhoutte" and there are manufacturers with names such as Figleaves and Peacocks, which should really be Pea-hens but, sad to say, the pea-hen is a dull bird. Expressions such as "big knickers" and "Bridget Jones knickers" (the word more commonly used than panties) have become part of retail vernacular but, in reality, they seem to be more like instruments of torture. The female backside may have been an object of glorification many years ago as that seems to be the reason for the daft fashion for "the bustle", although it must have been awfully difficult to sit down when wearing such a logic-defying garment.

Michelle Obama's bum should be off-limits for any woman writer, whether black, brown, pink, white or whatever, and Erin Aubry Kaplan could have written an interesting article on the various forms of self-mortification that women from all cultures have endured through the ages to make themselves attractive to others but what she really wanted to write about was herself. At a time when the general population knew nothing about harmful chemicals and poisons, ladies of fashion put belladonna in their eyes to enlarge their pupils, there was a trend in parts of Europe to take miniscule amounts of arsenic for an alabaster skin-tone although Coco Chanel made tanning fashionable and now some deluded women are buying something called Melanotan off the internet, a drug which has to be injected and which is unlicensed although trials in the United States were halted because of concerns that the drug was causing dangerous increases in blood pressure. I'm not writing from a "no make-up", strictly natural perspective and I've done some very stupid things too such as using black shoe polish on my eyelashes when I ran out of mascara because, although my lashes are thick they're quite light in colour.

The "red-top" newspapers in Britain are notorious for publishing unflattering pictures of well-known women such as Madonna whose knotty hands and sinewy arms have been the subject of cruel comment. She's drawn a lot of this on herself

but The Daily Mail, in particular and a favourite of the Drudge Report, seems to have a Wrinkle-and-Wobbly Hunter General on its staff who has a morbid obsession and who is almost certainly some ugly little man. So far, Michelle Obama hasn't aroused any real interest in the European media and all the attention is directed at Barack, which is how it should be as its his policies that will affect America and the wider world.

Ms. Kaplan alluded very briefly to African-American hair and what I've read about the treatments and chemicals to make it "acceptable" seem time-consuming and very bad for the hair and we know that hair-extensions can produce bald patches on the scalp. There's a craze over here for bleaching hair to "Baywatch" standards and that bleached-blonde look is now so boring that the ordinary light-brown, or "mousey" as it used to be called, would be positively gorgeous in contrast and I wonder how all those chemicals are affecting the fish in our rivers and lakes. Environmental issues be damned, apparently, if you fancy yourself as a Pamela Anderson or some tawdry imitation. My school friend used to be "mousey", although she called it light brown, but when I mentioned her coloured hair as she was criticising her older sister, she told me that she doesn't dye it but just gets "highlights". Maybe I'm a horrible person but I laughed at this equivocation.

I thought Cindy McCain's hair was awful any time I saw her on tee-vee but I also think that Michelle Obama should renounce that stiff helmet she has on her skull and follow her husband's example by showing pride in her true heritage. I saw a brief excerpt from their "60 Minutes" interview and he is showing some grey (gray) on top but that could look great if he isn't persuaded into dyeing it. Bill Clinton didn't bother but Hillary is afraid to flaunt the silver, just like Ronald Reagan who had that improbable chestnut-brown thatch on top of his ageing face. Jackie Kennedy-Onassis clung on to her dark hair until the end but medical advice is that dark dyes can be absorbed through the skin and enter the bloodstream, at the risk of causing lymphoma.

I didn't intend to write at such length but, with the holiday season only five weeks away, I was mulling over the financial possibility of getting Cinderella lips, rejuvenation with laser light for patchy pigmentation, a tear-trough filler and a Botox browlift. It would all cost a pretty penny but, as Jane Fonda the arch-feminist wheedles "I'm worth it". The buttock implants would involve some serious slicing and I'd probably never be able to sit or lie down again but I could exhort myself to be brave like all those women who blinded themselves with belladonna (trans.beautiful lady) in the hope of getting lustrous eyes. The banks are stingy about credit just now so that will certainly solve my problem of "Mirror, mirror on the wall..."