Michelle Obama: A first among firsts

Michelle Obama isn't the only First Lady to have inspired an action figure. But she's the first for which you can imagine the doll coming with a Wonder Woman cape (made by J. Crew, of course). Nearly a year into her husband's presidency, Michelle Obama continues to intrigue, and -- so far -- has escaped any fall from grace, real or devised.

How many ways can we say that Obama is like no other First Lady? Race is only one aspect of the Michelle Factor. Sparking comparisons to Jackie Kennedy for her glamour and Princess Diana for her popularity, Mrs. Obama has retained her woman-of-the-people attitude and elegantly practical style. She has also stepped into the traditional auxiliary role of First Lady in a different way, not only reading to schoolkids, but equally at home ladling soup at homeless shelters and wowing European leaders.

"Transcendent" is often used to describe her, and she does transcend class, race, social status and generations.

"On television, we rarely see a black public figure outside of entertainment or sports," said Deborah Willis, chair of the photography department at New York University and a MacArthur Fellow who co-authored the book "Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs" (Norton, $26.95). "What she transcends is what other people think they know about black people. She's got two Ivy League degrees, and she is a homebody. She doesn't seem to be performing for the camera. She is helping the world to see black people in a humanistic way."

Obama realized early in her husband's campaign that no matter what her other attributes might be, her appearance would be nitpicked down to the thread count, and rather than chafe at this reality as a demeaning gender inequity, she embraced it with confidence.

"She understands what it means to be a tall woman, to be seen," Willis said. "You see it in her posture and the colors she wears. When President and Mrs. Bush met with the Obamas at the White House, she wore a red dress. To see a professional woman in a red dress in the daytime -- it was a knockout physical presence, not arrogant, but a sense of broadcasting a new tradition for the First Lady."

In the long run, the First Lady's most important national contribution could be one of social evolution. Few, if any, slices of the nation's demographic pie are subject to more stereotyping and preconceptions than African-American women. Two women from the Twin Cities who can relate to Obama without inviting comparison had some thoughts on what her prominence and popularity mean.

"She doesn't fit any molds. She can jump in and out of African-American culture, and others, as well. She is comfortable in all settings, all communities. What you see is what you get. She hasn't played the pretty wife or the baking mother; she's just stayed who she always said she was. No matter who she's with, she's uniquely herself -- she doesn't change her persona."

Over the past year, Law has found herself second-guessing her own wardrobe choices based on the First Lady's fashion influence: "I'll want to buy a belted cardigan I see on a mannequin, and think, no, can't do it, people will think I'm pulling a Michelle. I joked that I could go as Inaugural Michelle for Halloween this year, put on a sparkly jacket and leather gloves, blow my hair out and I'm set. "

Not that there's anything wrong with that, she says, "but there's this implication that she's a rarity, and that I should consider it a compliment even though we're nothing alike. There's no malice intended. It's one of those things it's OK to say because everyone likes her."

But it's not as if she were the first black woman in the country to juggle a professional career, family and public life, and do it all with a pair of strong, pretty arms.

"For a lot of people, she is," said Faye Price, 53, artistic director of Pillsbury House Theater in Minneapolis. "They've never seen an African-American woman like her.

Price, also from the South Side of Chicago, doesn't know the First Family, but identifies with them through some background connections: She lived part of her life in the Hyde Park neighborhood, attended grade school with Obama senior adviser and mentor Valerie Jarrett, then went on to a highly respected college (Macalester) and a distinguished theater career.

"It's not uncommon for me to start talking and someone will say, 'Where are you from?' That's the Minnesota way to ask, 'How did you learn how to talk like that?'" A friend told Price that she didn't want to go see the movie "Precious" because she was tired of people thinking all black women are poor and fat. Michelle Obama, and other women she and the president surround themselves with, offset that, Price said.

Law laughed while recalling recent phone comments with an old school friend that "these will be our Michelle years. There were the Pointer Sisters years, the Janet Jackson years. It's nice to be compared with someone successful who's also a little more solidly based in reality."

At conferences that Law attends nationwide, she has noticed many young women of different ethnicities who seem to be attempting variations on the Michelle look.

"Obama's style has been so wildly and thoroughly accepted that it's safe for young women to emulate her and know they're going to get praise and recognition they may not have before," she said. "What's behind her confident carriage is a message of consistency, every single time. No ambiguity."

Willis' co-author on the photo book, African-American literature professor Emily Bernard, writes that Michelle Obama is "a walking medley of contradictions ... just like us, and unlike anyone we have ever seen before. She is both wholly knowable and a mystery. We have been making her up as we go along."