persuaded Darden Restaurants, the parent company behind chains like Olive
Garden and Red Lobster, to make changes to the kinds of food it offered and
how it was prepared. They pledged to revamp their menus, cutting calories,
reducing sodium, and offering healthier options for kids’ meals. We’d appealed to
the company’s executives—to their conscience as well as their bottom line—
convincing them that the culture of eating in America was shifting and it made
good business sense to get out ahead of the curve. Darden served 400 million
meals to Americans each year. At that scale, even a small shift—like removing
tantalizing photos of cool, icy glasses of soda from the kids’ menus—could have a
real impact.
A First Lady’s power is a curious thing—as soft and undefined as the role
itself. And yet I was learning to harness it. I had no executive authority. I didn’t
command troops or engage in formal diplomacy. Tradition called for me to
provide a kind of gentle light, flattering the president with my devotion, flattering
the nation primarily by not challenging it. I was beginning to see, though, that
wielded carefully the light was more powerful than that. I had influence in the
form of being something of a curiosity—a black First Lady, a professional woman,
a mother of young kids. People seemed to want to dial into my clothes, my
shoes, and my hairstyles, but they also had to see me in the context of where I
was and why. I was learning how to connect my message to my image, and in
this way I could direct the American gaze. I could put on an interesting outfit,
crack a joke, and talk about sodium content in kids’ meals without being totally
boring. I could publicly applaud a company that was actively hiring members of
the military community, or drop to the floor for an on-air push-up contest with
Ellen DeGeneres (and win it, earning gloating rights forever) in the name of Let’s
Move!
I was a child of the mainstream, and this was an asset. Barack sometimes
referred to me as “Joe Public,” asking me to weigh in on campaign slogans and
strategies, knowing that I kept myself happily steeped in popular culture. Though
I’d moved through rarefied places like Princeton and Sidley & Austin, and
though I now occasionally found myself wearing diamonds and a ball gown, I’d
never stopped reading People magazine or let go of my love of a good sitcom. I
watched Oprah and Ellen far more often than I’d ever tuned in to Meet the Press
or Face the Nation, and to this day nothing pleases me more than the tidy triumph
delivered by a home-makeover show.
All of this is to say that I saw ways to connect with Americans that Barack
and his West Wing advisers didn’t fully recognize, at least initially. Rather than