Object #8: Michelle Obama: Feminist Nightmare?

                Roxanne Gay’s article in online magazine, Salon, discusses the idea that has become popular that First Lady Michelle Obama is doing nothing to further the cause of feminism. Obama has been criticized because she has taken on social policy issues that are often gendered female, such as childhood obesity and education, and embraces her role as mother. Gay argues that this critique “is not so much a feminist reaction to Michelle Obama’s tenure as first lady as it is a very specific white feminist reaction. It is a reaction that suggests that a feminist’s true concerns should be political and actionable through policy initiatives that further a white feminist agenda. It is a reaction that willfully ignores how feminist and groundbreaking and necessary it is to see a black woman raising her own children and moving through the world the way Michelle Obama does.” And so Obama is now given the task of being the poster child for the Mommy Wars that are fought on playgrounds in middle class neighborhoods all over the nation.

                Even someone as powerful as Michelle Obama has a role, has to be a certain kind of feminist – an object that will please the left (because goodness knows she will never be able to please the right), she has to fight to claim her subjectivity. It leaves the rest of us with little hope that we can escape those powerful boxes and limiting roles in which we find ourselves. If feminists can criticize a powerful, empowered woman who is pursuing her own interests for the greater good of society as not feminist enough, can they themselves really be considered feminists in the broader, ethical sense of allowing for diversity and equality?