Obama shares a laugh with daughter Malia.
The obsession with her wardrobe reflected the supersized scrutiny attached to everything about her. No wonder she’s a big fan of the presidential retreat at Camp David, far removed from any cameras. The swan Hours before the Obamas’ first state dinner, the first lady stood before young women participating in the White House mentoring program and made a confession of sorts. “It’s sort of like a swan, where we’re kind of calm and serene above water — but we’re paddling like mad, going crazy underneath, trying to look smooth,” she said. Everything did seem perfectly in order that afternoon. The first lady’s strapless, cream-colored evening gown was sure to be a knockout. A celebrity chef was trolling the garden for just the right herbs to garnish the evening’s feast. A chandeliered tent on the South Lawn stood ready to receive 340 A-list guests. Enter the party-crashing Salahis. Somehow, without an invitation, the fame-seekers insinuated themselves into the scene and eventually overshadowed it. The whole episode was emblematic of the outside forces that can upend things for a first lady who works from a carefully crafted script. The good wife It’s where she started as first lady and where it all will end: Michelle Obama is a wife and mother.
February 2010 • she magazine
She has spent the past year figuring out how to be a very public role model, policy advocate and mentor without losing hold of that. She’s tried to be the perfect example without suggesting she’s perfect. When she sat for an Oval Office interview about marriage with her husband last fall — something of a novelty in itself — she insisted that bumps are inevitable, even continuous, in any relationship. “The last thing we want to project,” she said then, is the image of a perfect marriage. Ask her what she’s most proud of in the past year, and she doesn’t hesitate: “That my kids are sane,” she says. And sanity can be a precious commodity when one’s life gets this level of scrutiny. Last fall, a high school student in Denver asked what was the hardest thing about being first lady. She gestured toward the ever-present bank of news cameras and said it was “making sure my girls don’t get lost in all this.” “I want to make sure they come out of this as whole as possible,” she said. She was talking about Sasha and Malia. She could have been talking about herself.
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