The other day, Michelle Obama went full Wal-Mart in her outfit on the First Family's taxpayer-funded Grand Canyon excursion, and the journalistic fashionistas are having the vapors. I am almost, but not quite, sympathetic to the First Lady. It seems she wore short shorts and what might be charitably described as a casual top.
Avoiding the appearance of queenly behavior is politically wise. But it does American culture no favors if a first lady tries so hard to be average that she winds up looking common.
If the First Lady had not been sold to the American public as a fashion icon, a woman of elegance and grace, and if she had not willingly catered to this claque with bizarre Spider Woman outfits and queasy-making colors and textures juxtaposed, I would truly pity her plight. We all sometimes head out the door with too little thought to how we look.
But having made well-publicized shopping sprees in Paris, and willingly catered to the fashion idolatry directed her way for purely political reasons, I think that Mrs. Obama has accepted the mantle of clothing exemplar. It is a crown that will not rest easy on her head.
I suppose there must be some people who genuinely regard Michelle Robinson Obama as beautiful, elegant, and tasteful. But I am not among them. I have yet to meet a heterosexual male who finds Michelle a hottie. The media hype portraying her as the heir to Jackie Kennedy may persuade a few, but in most instances I believe that it only reinforces the reputation of such media outlets as purely propagandistic organs, the same folks selling the equally implausible narrative of the town halls as full of Nazis and astroturfers.
Mrs. Obama is the mother of two children, with a million dollars' worth of staff, including, reportedly, a full time makeup artist. Having accepted the mantle of Jackieship, she can do better.