to an anthropology student volunteering for the campaign in Iowa or from the
quiet corner of a Burger King in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Several months
after Barack’s announcement in Springfield and with the support of my
colleagues, I’d decided to scale back to part-time hours, knowing it was the only
sustainable way to keep going. On the road two or three days a week together,
Melissa, Katie, and I had become an efficient family, meeting up at the airport in
the mornings and hustling through security, where the guards all knew my name.
I was recognized more often now, mostly by African American women who’d
call out “Michelle! Michelle!” as I walked past them to the gate.
Something was changing, so gradually that at first it was hard to register. I
sometimes felt as if I were floating through a strange universe, waving at strangers
who acted as if they knew me, boarding planes that lifted me out of my normal
world. I was becoming known. And I was becoming known for being someone’s
wife and as someone involved with politics, which made it doubly and triply
weird.
Working a rope line during campaign events had become like trying to stay
upright inside a hurricane, I’d found, with well-meaning, deeply enthusiastic
strangers reaching for my hands and touching my hair, people trying to thrust
pens, cameras, and babies at me without warning. I’d smile, shake hands, and hear
stories, all the while trying to move forward down the line. Ultimately, I’d
emerge, with other people’s lipstick on my cheeks and handprints on my blouse,
looking as if I’d just stepped out of a wind tunnel.
I had little time to think much about it, but quietly I worried that as my
visibility as Barack Obama’s wife rose, the other parts of me were dissolving from
view. When I spoke to reporters, they rarely asked about my work. They inserted
“Harvard-educated” in their description of me, but generally left it at that. A
couple of news outlets had published stories speculating that I’d been promoted at
the hospital not due to my own hard work and merit but because of my
husband’s growing political stature, which was painful to read. In April, Melissa
called me one day at home to let me know about a snarky column written by
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. In it, she referred to me as a “princess of
South Chicago,” suggesting that I was emasculating Barack when I spoke publicly
about how he didn’t pick up his socks or put the butter back in the fridge. For
me, it had always been important that people see Barack as human and not as
some otherworldly savior. Maureen Dowd would have preferred, apparently, that
I adopt the painted-on smile and the adoring gaze. I found it odd and sad that
such a harsh critique would come from another professional woman, someone