April 2010
1 post
Adam Gopnik Has An Eye For the Ladies
Adam Gopnik has a piece in this week’s New Yorker about the French “Le Fooding” movement. (Don’t ask.) While Michelle barely features in it—he refers to the White House garden—and we aren’t mentioned at all, but there is plenty of female objectification to be found! Here’s a rundown of all of the people Gopnik meets during the course of the article:...
July 2009
3 posts
Dear CNN: We'll Show You Our Slave Roots If You...
First, if you haven’t read the post from Renee at Womanist Musings (reposted here on Feministe) titled “The Obamas and the Door of No Return,” please do. It’s about the Obama’s visit to Cape Coast Castle, a memorial site for the African slave trade in Ghana.
As part of CNN’s coverage of the trip, “Anderson Cooper 360” sent reporters Joe Johns and...
Something To Love About Sarah Palin
While we aren’t big fans of the soon-to-be-former Governor of Alaska, we agree with her about Title IX. In the current issue of Runner’s World, she says:
I’ve been very fortunate to be a recipient of all the efforts people put into Title IX all those years ago where girls got equal opportunity to participate in sports and extracurricular activities because sports growing up...
About That Other News Story in South Carolina...
On June 13, a gorilla escaped from the Riverbanks Zoo near Columbia, South Carolina. Apparently this is bigtime news worthy of government attention, as an assistant to the state attorney general was posting updates on his Facebook account. On seeing the update, a local GOP activist named Rusty DePass (no words) posted “I’m sure it’s just one of Michelle’s...
June 2009
6 posts
Yes, Manohla, Women Do Go To Action Movies
We were really struck by Manohla Dargis’ review of the new Transformers movie in the Times this week. Of course, Manohla did not write it for us to read—the piece is intended only for men, because she assumes that only men will see the movie and that only men are supposed to see the movie. Here is her précis on the audience:
1. Young teenage boys who still play with Transformer toys...
Nothing Up Our Sleeve, And Nothing In Her Pants
Another female body in the news this week is that of Savana Redding, the nineteen-year-old woman who was strip-searched by Arizona school officials at age thirteen because of a rumor she had prescription-strength ibuprofen on her. The decision focused on the flimsy evidence officials had and the relatively low danger such drugs would present if found. This evidence, they said, did not warrant the...
The Magnificent Two
By now you’ve probably read the emails between Mark Sanford and his Argentinean lover. We were particularly struck by Sanford’s attention to physical details:
I love your tan lines or that I love the curves of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of night’s light.
Wouldn’t it be great if those “two magnificent parts”...
Oh, Onion
As you all know, we recently went to Paris and London with Michelle, Malia, Sasha, and the President. But internet funnypaper The Onion thinks we went to Sri Lanka!
5 tags
Gagging on Newsweek's "The Gaggle"
Katie Connolly of Newsweek, who wrote about Michelle and motherhood a while back, contributed to that magazine’s “The Gaggle” blog with a post about us last Thursday.
OK first: The Gaggle? That’s the best they could come up with? Sure, a “press gaggle” refers to an informal, yet on the record briefing to the White House press corps, and a “gaggle”...
Kirstie Alley's Fitspiration
Being in the public eye is weird. It’s weird for any body, and it’s definitely weird for Kirstie Alley. Once known as an actress, she is now a celebrity caught up in an endless loop of having her body discussed, discussing the fact that her body is being discussed, owning the fact that her body is being discussed, owning the discussion about her body, and bemoaning that her body is...
May 2009
4 posts
When Is a Mom not a Mom? When She's Michelle...
So Pew Research did a poll, as they do, and asked some questions about Michelle. We’ve mentioned these results before, but we thought we’d take a closer look today. It’s pretty much all good! Her overall approval rating is 76%, up from 68% in January, more than 10% higher than either Laura Bush or Hillary Clinton were during their first year. (Although when we think of all the...
Emily Miller, Closet Feminist
Emily Miller is breathing a sigh of relief that Michelle Obama had no “feminist agenda” when it came to the President’s selection of a Supreme Court justice to replace David Souter. As evidence, she quotes Barack Obama on C-SPAN saying “I can’t tell you the number of women, including Michelle, who say choose the person you think is going to be best.”
We hate...
WatchSarah Haskins comes to the arm party. A little late, but we’ll take it.
Mother's Day Massacre
Just three quick things. We aren’t pulling punches these days.
Hey! Sally Quinn! Your Mother’s Day loveletter to us was sweet! And creepy! Seriously, a thousand words about Michelle being “young, strong, vigorous, intelligent, accomplished, sexual, powerful, embracing, and most of all, loving,” was, um, a lot. Also, no one is allowed to use “right to bare arms”...
April 2009
5 posts
The First Guns Are Denied at Madame Tussaud's!
Read about it here.
Introducing: The Gun Project
We are so inspired by all of the comments and notes we have been getting from all of you strong people. So, in order to honor you, we are launching The Gun Project. Basically it means: We want to see your guns!
Show off your guns by submitting a photo to the First Guns flickr group. Please include some information about them. What do you do with your guns? Play piano, write protest songs,...
On Meeting the Queen: Yeah, We Touched Her There
We’re back from Europe! You may have read about our trip, a few people wrote about it. Michelle wore Thakoon, J.Crew, Junya Watanabe, Jason Wu, Alaia, Michael Kors, and Isabel Toledo. Oscar de la Renta whined not being included. Busy Bee Cathy Horyn wrote a story about each outfit in the New York Times, which also provided a painstakingly detailed slide show. Is Horyn hoping to move to DC,...
7 tags
We're Taking Our "Attitude" on the Road
Greetings from London! It’s been a busy and exciting trip—we met the Queen and gave her an ipod, which was pretty cool. She’ll probably use it on the elliptical. And Michelle is on a high—according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News survey, her favorability ratings are up to 76%, and she has made great gains with Republican in particular. We love that—biceps are all for bipartisanship. But...
March 2009
10 posts
8 tags
The LA Times Believes in Strong but not Equal
Twice in two days, the Los Angeles Times has revealed an odd perspective about relationships—apparently they cannot exist between equals. If one partner is strong, the other is weak. If one succeeds, the other has fallen behind. If one has the spotlight, the other is in darkness.
First Andrew Malcolm posted this weird piece titled “Michelle’s Obama’s got buff arms, but can...
5 tags
Don't Feel Bad About Your Arms, Nora Ephron
Apparently Nora Ephron had some things to say about us when she was interviewed by Barbara Walters over the weekend. The Daily News reports it thusly:
“Julie & Julia” director Nora Ephron is “upset” about Michelle Obama’s sleeveless look - but not because she thinks first ladies shouldn’t show their arms. The truth is, she’s envious. “I had...
8 tags
Thinking Big with Caitlin Flanagan
At nearly 5’ 11”, Michelle Obama is a little taller than most runway models and a little shorter than most WNBA players. She’s not a small woman. So why does it seem like such a dis when Caitlin Flanagan refers to her as wearing “big-n-tall ready-to-wear?” The description comes in the midst of a piece which is itself in the midst of a special issue of New York...
7 tags
Down the Rabbit Hole in the White House Garden ...
Little did we know when we touched on Maureen Dowd yesterday that she’d be back in our embrace so soon. Not content with ratting out David Brooks’s obsession with us, the New York Times columnist recently revealed her own preoccupation in a very interesting way.
In Dowd’s March 21, 2009 piece, “Toxic R Us,” she wrote about the White House vegetable garden that...
10 tags
Taxicab Confessions: David Brooks Wants to Put Us...
Don’t ever share a cab with Maureen Dowd. The catty columnist pulled a taxi-and-tell on fellow Op-Ed writer David Brooks, chatting him up in the back seat about us, then sharing his thoughts with the world in the New York Times.
First Maureen wrote that we are the only symbol of American strength around. Mmkay. Then she brought David in, quoting him saying that Michelle has “made her...
8 tags
The Arms in Winter
Apparently, some people think we should only come out to play in spring and summer. ABC News, ably stepping up to cover this important story, has a piece on us titled “Obama’s Choice to Bare Arms Causes Uproar.” Uproar! The subtitle of the story reads “First Lady’s Sleeveless Fashion Choices Draw Criticism.”
What is the basis of the criticism? ABC quotes...
10 tags
Are We "Post-Title IX"?
Robin Givhan, in the Washington Post, referred to us as “muscular post-Title IX arms.” She then went on to say that when Michelle went on “The View” in a sleeveless dress, “the definition of a strong woman changed.” While we hate to argue with Ms. Givhan (she has a Pulitzer!), we’d like to use our muscle to raise a little quibble with this
Frankly, the...
7 tags
First Guns in the Ivy League!
Thinky blog The Kitchen Table, which is two feminist professors from Princeton professing, has a piece on us. They connect the media’s preoccupation with us to a historical tendency to objectify and theatricalize black women’s bodies:
In the public dissection of Michelle Obama into body parts: earlier her butt and now her arms, there is an sickening reminder of the treatment of ...
6 tags
A Word on Sleeves
A lot of people like to write about how great we look when Michelle wears sleeveless dresses or tops. We’d just like to point out we are stunning with a sleeve as well.
Note that they cut right across the bicep and how this photo shows that we are tight both flexed (Thunder, on the left), and stretched (Lightning, on the right).
4 tags
First Guns in the New York Times
Liz Robbins discusses our mystique—and throws in some service!
The arms have taken on a life of their own. They have provoked controversy, envy, a bit of backlash, even bad puns about the right to bare them. But enough debate and deconstruction. Now women are talking about construction.
Nice piece—and we’re glad she explains that it takes hard work and genetics to look like...