I too am happy that we have a First Lady with curves, but do we really have to put it into an article??????

In your heart of hearts, how can you actually defend this article? I think you're just being defensive in reaction to the overwhelming backlash. I've always admired you. Get a grip!

I agree with you. It's about acceptable images of women (and First Ladies in particular) being busted and so wonderfully so.

The drawback is it is done with so little...class. We like our First Ladies to be classy, which Michelle Obama undoubtably is, and to be treated as such.

That being said, what a refreshing change from the sleepy sleepy public image of Laura Bush. Like a burst of life.

Really.

Every time I get close to re-subscribing, you do something like this meandering, lowbrow article. This isn't supposed to be National Lampoon or MAD Magazine, is it?

We're talking about the First Lady here. A little class would be welcome.

Dear Everyone,

Having just read through these letters (and having also read the essay for a third time), it occurs to me (with undeniable force and clarity) that many of those who have criticized this article and/or Ms Kaplan have failed to understand that an understanding of virtually any aspect of Modern Western Culture must be, not merely incomplete, but irrevocably DAMAGED in its central substance to the degree that it does not incoporate a critical, historeo(sic)-racial analysis of Michelle Obama's booty; and it assumes that the appropriate place for that critical analysis to begin is from the relatively decentered perspective of Kaplan's act of writing (at precisely the nexus of our modern socio/racio discursive axis/s), whereby she refutes the binary division so often made by salon-readers between what "one" says and what "one" does not, so that, perforce, there is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the Kaplanesque strategies that underlie and permeate the discourse of "First Lady Got Back".

More clearly? Kaplan has siezed for herself and/or the reader, a propriodescriptive authority, whereby she has challenged the axis along which certain categorizations work, what enactments they are performing, and what relations they are creating, rather than what they essentially MEAN.

This is Kaplan's strategy,...but I'm just guessing.

OR.... (and as my woefully ignernt East Tennessee grandmother would have said) "That article was more full of shit than a Christmas goose."

Relievedly yours,

David Terry

www.davidterryart.com

(click on the "Where did you learn to talk like that?" icon to find out where I learned to talk like the-above)

Great article. Thanks for saying what many of us have been thinking. Liberate the female form! And I agree, I'm waiting for Michelle to own her curls. Maybe that won't happen till Barack's second term. Hair's a biggie, but Michelle is so beautiful, she'll carry it off with aplomb just like she does everything else.

I hope Ms. Kaplan was writing tongue-in-cheek, because the last thing the Obama's need is more stereotyping.

I am white and I also looked at Michelle Obama's body with interest (as all females look at other females) -- but I have been somewhat interested in her because I have a remarkably similar physical type --- INCLUDING -- that "back." The big butt. The boo-tay! So just because I am white -- does that make me unattractive -- while Michelle is a goddess? NO. I really delved into your article with interest -- but it was just so racial and stereotypical, I stopped. My male friends and ex-husband have always loved my beautiful round BIG butt. I am sorry but black people do not corner the market on that. I do not deny that racism has vanished because President-Elect Obama won. But this type of writing, under the guise of humor(?) IS RACIST and divisive, and nonsense and the exact type of thing that Obama was talking about at Grant Park, and had been talking about all election. If you have a big butt you can only be beautiful if you are black? Later on you trash Jackie-O? Why? What is your point? More divisiveness. Better question -- why the hell is Salon publishing this shit - as the headline, no less -- when there are a lot more urgent and compelling issues in this world?

In fact, no less a personage than the Governor of California has already commented on Barack Obama's physique -- but in a mocking way, in a major speech at a McCain rally.

But this article on Michelle Obama was socially astute, funny, and yes, joyful.

I appreciate Michelle Obama for her intelligence, her strength, professionally accomplishments, political integrity, humor, honesty, and her commitment to her family. Her beauty and fashion sense, and her obvious comfort in her own skin, booty and all, is icing on the cake. She's an all-around kickass babe, and a fabulous role model.

This article has a point in that Michele Obama has more of an everywoman shape than first ladies in recent years. Those of us (of any color) who have felt uncomfortable and marginalized because of our shape, feel inspired by seeing Michele carry her shape with style and confidence.

But the article fails because it makes it be all/only about race and a particular part of the anatomy in particular, and it does so in a crude wince-inducing way.

to me was the author basically saying how glad she is that the first black man to be elected president does not have a wife who has a size 2 Jackie-O type of body or is actually a white woman (with a Jackie-O type of body).

Mrs. Obama is a fine looking mother of 2 kids & the author is very, very happy about that.

I personally think this is a very minor aspect of the coming Obama Administration that can certainly be commented on in Salon.

Can we has dignutee, plz?

kthxby

Thank you Salon -

I've always thought of Michelle Obama as an articulate, high-achieving woman with brains, grace and intellectual perspective that would bring fresh ideas to overcome the challenges that face our nation. Now, all I can think about is humping her big black booty. Thank you, Erin, for helping us sexually objectify the First Lady. Do you realize that there are many African women without big booties; and there are many white women with round butts. You're cheap.