First Lady Obama: Giving a message that needs hearing

Michelle Obama teaches London girls that brains are beautiful

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-trice-06-apr06,0,426678.column

Dawn Turner Trice
April 6, 2009

During her visit to London for the G-20 summit last week, Michelle Obama drew comparisons in the mainstream media to Jacqueline Kennedy and France's First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy: Their style. Their elegance. Their beauty.

But when Obama addressed the girls at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Language School in London—after they had just performed on stage for the first lady—Obama's demeanor, for me, was more reminiscent of Princess Diana: their personality. Their comfort with regard to giving hugs.

"For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American first lady," an emotional Obama reportedly told the assembly hall of nearly 200 giddy girls, 11 to 17 years old. "I was not raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of. I was raised on the South Side of Chicago—that's the real part of Chicago."

Like Obama, the late princess of Wales exuded a warmth that was atypical of England's royalty and, truth be told, some of our own first ladies. (Perhaps it's the ease with which Obama engages in the touchy-feely that got her into a bit of trouble with some for touching the queen.)

After Obama told the girls to embrace education, she embraced as many of them as she could to the point that it made her Secret Service guys jittery.

What the girls, most of them from the inner city, saw in the first lady was a woman who was smart and put together, but not so prim and perfect that she seemed just-peeled from a glossy magazine. She was smudge-able and touchable and even three-dimensional.

Something else made Obama accessible at this school where nearly 90 percent of the girls are an ethnic minority. Obama probably looks more like them than most of Europe's female dignitaries who traipse across their school stage and television screens.

That means loads to young women wearing Muslim headscarves; or sporting olive or brown skin tones; or just facing the sometimes harsh realization that beauty remains all-too narrowly defined.

I grew up on the South Side of Chicago during the same time as Obama. The way many of us defined beauty in our homes often was at odds with the images we saw in the mainstream media. If you had a broader nose or thicker lips or coarser hair or browner skin, you stood outside the standard frame.

I admit that the definition for beauty has broadened a bit over the years. My 14-year-old daughter and her friends accept a much wider view. They also expect women to be more self-possessed, meaning they not only support Obama's right to bare her arms, but almost see it as her birthright.

And yet our forward steps are tempered by the past. During last year's presidential campaign some black women said that while they meant no disrespect to their light-skinned sisters, they were thrilled that Michelle Obama was brown and had facial features that they believed made her unmistakably black. They hoped that her high profile would help push the beauty boundaries even further.

In many ways, Obama indeed is redefining beauty—and not at all exclusively for women of color. Beauty is physically fit, but not a size 2. It's a mixture of warmth and intelligence and self-confidence; it's a combination of strength and elegance and attitude.

It's the old truism, "pretty is as pretty does." And that's a message we all can nurture and embrace, especially for our girls.