Lucia

de Vernai

Read Lucia's bio and previous columns

March 25, 2009

Michelle, Must You Go Fashion Maven on Us?

“Go solve world hunger . . . stay out of my closet,” is an acceptable utterance from a woman barefoot and pregnant, forced to wear ethnic garb to enforce her isolation from the world of public affairs. When that woman is an American first lady in the 21^st Century, the I’m-just-one-of-the-girlfriends attempt at populism is distasteful. The American emphasis on individuality, standing out and following your own way has gone too far for Michelle Obama, whose penchant for plastic belts, tight dresses and ballet slippers any college freshman girl would envy have eclipsed other aspects of her personality.

Like the obsession with Sarah Palin’s “sexy librarian” look, the fascination with Michelle’s wardrobe is mostly media-fueled, although it is apparent that she is lapping up the attention with every Palm Beach-hued J.Crew sweater she dons. Pages of political magazines, not to mention blogs and ad-heavy fashion industry publications, report on such arbitrary and irrelevant details as what she wore to prom. (It was pink and shiny! Shocking!).

Sex and the City, along with $600 dollar shoes and the designer pedestal on which it placed them, has finally dropped off the pop culture radar, and the First Lady is not the appropriate replacement. Sure, prime time may love to compare the first black First Lady to bare her arms to the first Catholic First Lady who did so, but Michelle, must you play along?

The graceful confidence of a well-dressed woman dissolves the moment we learn that coordinating the bag and shoes took four girlfriends, and that what we wish to admire as style, which highlights your substance, is the substance. Shoes and dresses, purses and jewelry – no matter how far women get, our never-ending preoccupation with being decoration doesn’t seem to cease.

Obama’s example is prominent  but far from isolated. Interviewed by political journalist and daddy’s girl Meghan McCain, Louisiana’s First Lady Supriya Jindal disclosed that she never saw herself getting involved in politics . . . but now that she’s at it, her choice of conversation topic is outlet mall shoe shopping.

Women have finally permeated political spheres, and now we have the front page and news hour to tell the world what matters most to us – Prada, volumizing conditioner and toning our biceps. The first few times it’s cute. It lets us bond with the women in the spotlight. Then we need to hear about educational reform or solar panels or whatever the pressing political issue of the day is.

Michelle, like so many other women before her, laughs that her husband has no fashion sense, that she’s the family stylist. What more could you dream of?

Powerful men don’t know how to match their socks because they don’t care. Their minds are in Burma, not at Barney’s, controlling war and peace, sustainability and hunger, not the progress of their crow’s feet. As long as the next Macy’s sale is the primary interest of women across America (starting at the White House), we will always be isolated from world affairs, proverbially pregnant and barefoot. Even if we’re wearing $600 shoes.

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