Oh my god that was a direct quote. I thought it was like a hyperbolic summary. Ha. Wow.

Did anyone else read Rebecca Traister's thing about Michelle Obama in Salon the other day? It was like the opposite of this piece (or at least Traister is the opposite of Mr. Semiotic Brands Analyst)--super smart and insightful in every paragraph. Plus it had that quality of talking about something that has seemed really important to me for awhile, but that no one seems to be talking about (the fact that MO is a super-accomplished lawyer and not actually Jackie O). I love things like that because they make me feel like someone else in the media is like living in the same world I am. Anyway, I really highly recommend it. It even made me cry a little at the end. http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/11/12/michelle_obama/index.html

I liked Traister's piece too.

Your marketer is being crass about it, but he's not wrong about how blackness has been figured in America. This is especially true of music. Frederick Douglass talks about how authentic black music is in the 1845 Narrative precisely because of black identification with suffering. Langston Hughes echoes this idea in "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" ("My soul has grown deep like the rivers"). I recommend Michael Rogin's study of white appropriation of black claims to authenticity, Blackface, White Noise.

As for the Traister piece: I'm not convinced that Michelle Obama is a symbol of the "failure of feminism." This strikes me as less crass but no less hyperbolic than Mr. Semiotics Brands Analyst. (Although I am still in awe of all the symbols that he piles together: normal, authentic, suffering, and Eleanor Roosevelt in a neat and booming faux syllogism. He's like the Simpsons brand lady. I don't think he's wrong about how blackness has been figured in America; I'm shocked by how he puts it. I mean, do people say that, that way, in public? Really?)

I would agree that the treatment of Michelle Obama by the media during this campaign definitely points to the failures of feminism, and Traister is most convincing when she points to the change in the tenor of conversation about Michelle Obama. And one can't help but point to certain things that seem true, that, for instance, her life has been shaped and altered in large part by her husband's choices.

But I find Traister's casual dismissal of Clinton's story as someone who was "taken on a wacky psychological ride" to be as disrespectful and belittling of her achievements as any of the media that she quotes as having 'mommified' Obama.

And as far as Obama goes, I think that it is going too far to say to characterize her actual life, her accomplishments thus far, and her family and her children, and then to call those things "failures of feminism" without a lot more evidence that is measured against the scale of Michelle Obama's own ambitions (and not those that others might want her to have.)

It is possible, for instance, that her advocacy for certain issues, public service or working mothers, may become something far grander and greater (and all while being quieter, perhaps) than what anyone imagines right now. Time will tell.

It's hard at this point in time to separate the hype and the celebrity buzz from the people and the actions, and I have no doubt that will continue to be the case.

Ok, I totally agree on the Clinton count. That weird aside definitely draws on bad narratives about Clinton that should not be perpetuated.

However, I think the paragraph below is absolutely about what feminism has not been able to accomplish:

Barack continues, "No matter how liberated I liked to see myself as -- no matter how much I told myself that Michelle and I were equal partners, and that her dreams and ambitions were as important as my own -- the fact was that when children showed up, it was Michelle and not I who was expected to make the necessary adjustments. Sure, I helped, but it was always on my terms, on my schedule. Meanwhile, she was the one who had to put her career on hold." Barack considers his dawning realization that in his wife, as in so many working women, there was a battle raging. "In her own mind, two visions of herself were at war with each other," he writes. "The desire to be the woman her mother had been, solid, dependable, making a home and always there for her kids, and the desire to excel in her profession, to make her mark on the world and realize all those plans she'd had on the very first day that we met."

Sorry that was long, but I couldn't pick a shorter section. Barack seems pretty confident that Michelle had to make a lot of trade-offs that, in a perfect feminist world, she would not have had to make. It's also clear from another Barack quote that I will restrain myself from including that Michelle was pissed off about the whole thing. I don't think anyone is projecting that anger onto her.

Michelle has been trading one version of herself for another for a long time, not just in this campaign--that's what really struck me about this piece. That she might actually be happy to be a first lady and a stylish mom doesn't change that at all.

Also, talking about all the changes she can make as first lady sounds to me way too much like an argument that it's okay to trade power for influence over a powerful guy.

It might well be that Michelle Obama ends up being good for women everywhere, but the story that Traister is telling about her in this piece is really common--the mom who has had to make a lot of revisions and trade-offs is probably way more common than the happy, fulfilled stay-at-home mom--so why doesn't it get told more often?

I did notice that quote! It made me want to read Audacity of Hope to see what happens next. Has anyone read it?

And I think we are on the same page. I completely agree with you that in her life, she experienced certain kinds of trade offs and decisions, and these kinds of trade offs and revisions to one's plans are considered normal for working women, but not for men, and this discrepancy and challenge is not talked about often enough.

I just don't see how that makes her life a symbol that stands for the failures of feminism--specifically because if one looks at Hillary Clinton, who after all, was a mom and also made some trade-offs, it's not like her career was thrown down the toilet because she was married to the President. ( I mean, who is "second fiddle" in that relationship now? And does the symbolism around these couples, the way we read them, what we see as "second fiddle" have, perhaps, more to do with the media and the nature of celebrity in these cases?)

Of course, Clinton took a very different approach to how she related to the media than Obama is doing now, and another interesting article would talk about why Obama has chosen to go the "mommy" route, one that doesn't dismiss Clinton's choices as crazy making.

As for changes as first lady....I think we are looking at different things. I don't think she is trading power for influence over a powerful guy.

Perhaps it is because I am in the process of applying to grad school, but think of how vast and powerful and large her network suddenly became! One can argue that this power "doesnt' count" because it is derived from her relations with the President, but, well, um, network matters and always has, be it through spouses, parents, fraternity brothers, etc. I do believe, perhaps naively, that somewhere in that Washingtonian mix of power plays, she will find allies who support her work for the sake of their faith in her integrity and passion for her ideas.

I think what Traister's article made me realize is that, no, for the next four years, Michelle Obama is not going to be allowed to have a paying job, and there's pretty much nothing that she could do to change that without being vilified by more than the usual suspects. Even if she gets to be an advocate for working mothers, she won't get to be a working mother. That's disheartening.