Michelle, ma belle
March 8, 2009 § 1 Comment
I have no doubt many have said this before me, but I love Michelle Obama’s arms. My own arms tend more toward the languid and I’m fine with that, but when I was 13, my cousin Faxy could beat all the boys in the class arm-wrestling and I liked nothing better than watching her do it. Winning bets. Big guys. I don’t think we bet money; this was in the 60’s. It was just cool. Her mother was a radical lesbian novelist who wouldn’t let anyone of the male persuasion set foot on her territory (11 year old son excepted, I think) and that was kind of cool, but I liked men so I was conflicted. I had no conflicts at all about Fax muscling up and showing what a girl could do.
The First Lady’s fashion choices may be of minimal importance to our collapsing society. So is my recipe for banana bread and what my husband has decided to name his stray cat. They add texture though, don’t they? If you had the recipe and the name I mean, which you don’t, but it’s okay, you have Michelle. The children. The dog. We’re primates and grooming matters. Anyway, there’s no shortage of reporters giving us the grim, grimmer and grimmest news. After dutifully acquainting myself with our (by which I mean the world’s) increasingly bizarre circumstances, remembering that someday this will be ‘history’ and I’m living it so I should take notes when I’m not having panic attacks, all I really want to do is watch Jon Stewart and look at pictures of Michelle and her daughters.
If only Maureen Dowd and David Brooks had broken the story that Michelle is really Supergirl. That would be worthy of a column.* If only Maureen and David were in a sci-fi story where the taxi left-turned into another reality where there was nothing but Nothing outside the car, no space, no time, and they were condemned to forever ride in other’s company, gossiping until their tongues became as thin as paper, thinner, and they forgot who it was they spoke of and what laughter was, until—
OK, they could come back after a few months. They’re frequently amusing. But to say Michelle has made her point? Her point is this is who she is and what she looks like and fuck you if you don’t like it. Michelle is what little girls want to grow up to be, unless they’re like me and want to grow up with a Michelle as their best friend and cousin (secretly Supergirl). I may be turning her into an empowerment object, but too bad: I love looking at her arms. My mother said recently that when the President smiles, she wants to jump into his arms. I guess it runs in the family, the arm thing.
* re: Maureen Dowd’s column in the New York Times, March 7
Mostly in the Afternoon 
right on, sugar. didn’t read dowd’s column, but i still remember feeling with dowd it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t, mocking hillary’s mousy hair and Judy Dean’s teeth and down dressing, then mocking hill when she became a blond and started wearing designer clothes. I avoided a certain b word for most of my life; reading dowd, i question that. She knocks women off at the knees, but why? they’re not competing with her–unless she sees herself as competing with them on some level.
Like, ick.