The Many Arms of America's First Lady

Is Michelle Obama the Rosie the Riveter of the Bernie Madoff era? Maureen Dowd seems to think so. “Let’s face it,” she writes in the New York Times, “The only bracing symbol of American strength right now is the image of Michelle Obama’s sculpted biceps.”

In recent weeks the First Lady’s skin-bearing sartorial habits have become something of a controversy. Co-columnist David Brooks has even gone so far as to assert that Obama, so as not to be known for her “physical presence, for one body part,” should cover up her arms. This is nothing new. Women in the public eye have always faced reduction to a single symbolic body part, especially when they make an effort to appear both strong and feminine.

Beyoncé—she of the reflective fabrics, hair extensions, and mis-accented given name and, of course, The Booty—knows a thing or two about navigating the waters between independence and the expected level of feminine passivity.

For Beyoncé (at least publicly) being a woman is a complicated charge, so difficult to navigate that it is often easier to section parts of herself off from the whole rather than try to keep all of the pieces together. She is both resolute and self-sustaining; unabashedly sexual, though her principles of sexuality are often divorced from their praxis. One day she’s an Independent Woman, and the next she wants to take the backseat and Upgrade U.

On the track “Upgrade U,” Mrs. Jay-Z suggests that in spite of her independence, she is partial to relationships that are secure and run, “by the man, but the women keep the tempo.” “It’s very seldom that you’re blessed to find your equal,” she sings on, only to declare, “Still play my part and let you take the lead role.”

Beyoncé has become the most bootylicious disciple of a school of thought that glamorizes the dichotomy of declaring your independence while aspiring to find a man to lead and provide for you.

Up until recently, this practice of compartmentalizing emotions and egos has seemed relatively natural. Many artists oscillate between moods and styles successfully, though with her most recent album, “I Am… Sasha Fierce,” Beyoncé offers a much more concrete and arbitrary delineation between aspects of her personality. No longer does she simply fluctuate between being naughty, sensual or pensive; alternative emotions are now the domain of someone else, another woman. Her alter ego: Sasha Fierce.

Michelle Obama does not, debatably, have the option of creating an alter ego.

Her distinctive physical appearance, especially in Washington, has the dangerous potential to overshadow her opinions and policies. And were Michelle Obama to have any problems with people thinking her dim-witted or incompetent, I might even agree with David Brooks. She does not, however, face such issues.

It seems as though Brooks and those in his camp are perturbed, perhaps, by something they find more fundamentally unsettling: the First Lady’s overwhelming capacity for duality. She is strong and motherly, sensual, while still serious and successful. Particularly, it seems that many are concerned with how the coexistence of these traits might come across as threatening when exhibited by one woman. In this light, “cover them up” can be viewed as a veiled call for self-segmentation.

Michelle Obama seems to have harmonized what all feminists—first wave, second wave, lipstick, or stiletto—ostensibly aspire to: that women can live as their true selves, unconstrained by inequitable societal demands. As First Lady, it appears as though Mrs. Obama will exhibit all of the aforementioned dualities, at once. She need not seesaw between being a stateswoman and a mother, habitué of the haute monde and a J. Crewian everywoman. She is not all of those women, she is simply one woman, with many facets.

In a 2004 speech, then-Senator Obama declared that we must, “eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.” Similarly, we must stamp out the belief that a woman who is layered, and can react to her environment without fundamentally changing herself, is somehow abnormal or unacceptable. Hip-hop, perhaps even more than other styles of music, is certainly not immune to this particular kind of slander.

Ms. Knowles a leader in a musical genre that either by effect or cause has traded many of its original political and social intentions for success and acceptance. How many mainstream hip-hop acts, let alone female hip-hop acts, have emerged over the last decade that have remained committed to bringing about positive social change?

It’s a strange way to come about a point, I know, but Michelle Obama has made clear that women—arms and all—can be complex, capable, and still whole. This is a sentiment missing from current mainstream hip-hop, and one that could easily be echoed by its female artists. Blessed be the day when Beyoncé and Sasha Fierce are one and the same.

—Columnist Ruben L. Davis can be reached at rldavis@fas.harvard.edu.