What is it about Michelle Obama that makes us want to stare?

Last update: November 4, 2009 - 12:09 PM

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SUBSTANCE

AND STYLE

What is it about Michelle Obama that makes us want to stare? Is it those long legs, that strong jaw, that electric smile? Those peaked eyebrows? Those sculpted cheekbones? Yeah, it's all those things, but it's also, you know, the clothes. The skinny little cardigans, the unexpected sparkles, the unflattering yet somehow oddly attractive dirndl skirts.

Nobody would ever mistake me for a fashionista in my winter uniform of corduroy trousers and baggy sweaters. But I found myself poring over "Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs" (Norton, $27), by Deborah Willis and Emily Bernard, and it wasn't because of Obama's smarts and law degree. I'll admit it -- I was looking for fashion tips. This nice book is nothing but color photographs and a few well-chosen words, and that was the smart way to do it; page after page of green shoes and flame-red dresses and that weird half-argyle, half-not-argyle sweater that she wore in London (and which produced, the book says, nearly 2,000 news stories all by itself).

I closed the book feeling frumpy and, well, short. I guess I could buy those J. Crew sweaters as easily as anybody else, but that strength? That power? That I-can-kick-your-butt-no-problem dynamism? Sadly, only for looking; not for sale.

LAURIE HERTZEL

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