It is Michelle’s Time, a Wife Dressed for Success

Always elegant, they compare her to Jackie. But her determination resembles more Hillary’s.

Even though at this moment the fact might seem incredible, Michelle Robinson Obama, 44 years of age, a beautiful woman, strong, intelligent and not at all sympathetic, resembles, under many aspects, Hillary Rodham Clinton. She will have to be careful not to find herself in the plague, as Hillary did when she arrived to Washington (that is if Michelle ever reaches it). Washington was a very apt place for both Misses Bush– who are opposites–or the fashionable Misses Reagan and Misses Kennedy, but it can also be an obstacle for those women who have the same determination, the same professional success, and the same interests as their presidential husbands.

This race appears somehow pathetic–and the major newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post state–the style comparisons and the character affinities between Michelle and the inevitable Jacqueline (the only First Lady who has been able, until today, to dress well and to look great with her beautiful dresses). There are also comparisons between Michelle and the avoidable Barbara Bush, brought up because of the large as a pigeon’s egg pearl necklaces and her allure of a woman “dressed to win.” It is true that the necklaces bring a certain pretentiousness; Michelle and Barbara have this in common, however, one is the pomposity of someone who has made a career and who dresses as a conqueror (Michelle), and the other one is the pretentiousness of the birth of an excellent marriage, an arrogance brought at its peak which reveals itself overall within the indifference of the line, with the white hair and the thick heels (Barbara); it is her way of dressing–and of being–like Queen Elizabeth of England, apart from the fact that the Queen has a more serious look, and, instead, the ex-first lady has a more rapacious one.

Going back to the comparison with Hillary Clinton, it has to be said that when it comes to style, which fascinates so much the American people in this race to the nomination (in which politics are not in a race with perkiness), we can also let ourselves go to perkiness and make it look as if it were a psychological scrutiny. As of the affinities between Michelle and Hillary, we must admit that the only possible point, at which we can find similarities among the two, is really within the way they dress. Let us put that aside and list the convergent points first: they both went to Law school in two of the most prestigious Ivy League universities; Yale for Hillary and Harvard for Michelle. They both married very intelligent and ambitious young men who similarly attended law school, which turned out to be the same career for both couples with the men’s progressive immersion into politics, and the wives with a growing professional prestige: Hillary is a partner to the most important law firm in Arkansas, and Michelle is the vice-president of a university hospital in Chicago.

But when it comes to clothes, each analogy falls: Michelle is extremely elegant, always in order, sober and audacious. She also has magnificent arms, which often stand out with her sleeveless dresses (which even Jacqueline did, but only because in her times this was fashionable; Michelle is more self-conscious). She has a fit body, similar to the one of the black athletes at the Olympic games, to singers like Whitney Houston; the opposite of the traditional image of the African-American woman, who fights overweight issues as soon as she attains success (such as Oprah Winfrey who seems to explode in her clothes). Poor Hillary instead, has never managed to dress well. She has never managed to get rid of her big behind which she hides under the longer jackets; her look is the same as when she was in college, the nerd with glasses and the arms filled with books, wearing whatever came her way.

If we do admit that Hillary and Michelle have more things in common than Michelle will ever have with any other past first lady, the sophisticated Jacqueline, the pearled up Barbara, the neurotic Nancy, what will the clothing gap have to do with it? If I were an American reporter, this would be the inquiry that I would dedicate myself to.