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Michelle Is Whatever Is Most Important To Us

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The Washington Post

Published: February 16, 2009

WASHINGTON - The space underneath the photo of Michelle Robinson Obama in the "First Ladies" exhibit at the National Museum of American History is blank. The only thing that fills it is imagination.

Obama's picture, at the end of a long line of first ladies' images and artifacts, is a natural place for visitors to linger and project. It's what Americans have been doing with Michelle Obama since she first strode across a campaign stage two years ago.

The attention has turned blinding since her husband, Barack Obama, was elected as the 44th president; since Barack, 47, Michelle, 45, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, the youngest first family in decades and the first black first family, moved to Washington; since Michelle Obama became a standard-bearer for the nation.

The excitement surrounding Michelle Obama is emblematic of a wider appeal, the carefully honed image connoting an all-American archetype. It's functional-family time.

The fact that they are black is icing or incidental, a shimmery piece of that urban cool, or at best a side calculation, in some reckonings. But others note the image of a black family is one you rarely find these days, even on the major television networks. Perhaps today is also the beginning of a new understanding: There are conversations we have yet to have.

Who you think Michelle Obama is depends on who you are; depends on race, depends on class, depends on the things your mother used to say when she felt frustrated with her own life. Or perhaps it is that the Obamas are like a national jigsaw puzzle. They only fit together this one way in this one unique time, but all of us feel like we recognize little pieces of them. "There are things that we look at in a first family and in a first lady that we don't see in a president," says first ladies historian Myra Gutin. They become "a window to learn a little about the character of the president."

With each administration there are new questions about the role and significance of the first lady and whether she reflects the role of women in the society.

Since the election, feminist writers have fretted over the "Mommification of Michelle," concerned about the focus on the new first lady, a former vice president with the University of Chicago Hospitals, as "mom in chief." Others are still marveling that there's a first lady on the front of Ebony and Vogue. It's become something of a cultural fault line.

Ultimately Obama's appeal has everything to do with our own hunger. Some want to see a family. Some want to see the engaged career woman making a difference. Some want to see an egalitarian marriage. Some just love seeing black love.
Michelle Obama represents a convergence point in our national journey. It is, in some ways, unrealistic to have such unbounded expectations for one person and one family. But that's what hope is.

We can't know what her artifacts will be at the end of four years, or eight, just as we couldn't have known this daughter of black, working-class Chicago could even have claimed a space on the wall.

We can only imagine.

THE MICHELLE OBAMA FILE

BORN: Jan. 17, 1964, in Chicago

EDUCATION: Princeton University, bachelor's degree, sociology, 1985; Harvard University, law degree, 1988.

EXPERIENCE: Executive vice president for community and external affairs, University of Chicago Hospitals, 2005-2008; executive director for community affairs, University of Chicago Hospitals, 2002-2005; associate dean of student services, University of Chicago, 1996-2002; founding executive director, Public Allies Chicago, 1993-1996; assistant commissioner of planning and development, city of Chicago, 1992-1993; assistant to the mayor, city of Chicago, 1991-1992; associate attorney, Sidley & Austin, 1988-1991.

FAMILY: Husband, President Barack Obama; daughters Malia and Sasha.

Source: The Associated Press

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