Wednesday, January 21, 2009

HAIL, MICHELLE, FULL OF GRACE (Really?)

Okay, so I'm really not trying to rain on anyone's parade today, but it has to be said, even while we're all still basking in the glow of yesterday's phenomenal revolution of power, that Michelle Obama, while highly educated, and obviously intelligent, and powerful and strong in her own right, and apparently an amazing mother and wife and daughter, is NOT the next Jackie O.

She has a very inconsistent and more often uncomfortably awkward sense of style (or at least appears to have developed one over the last year because before that it wasn't all that bad) and she does not seem to really appreciate or at least understand her body build in order to dress it appropriately (or again, not anymore). The colors she chose yesterday were unflattering and forgettable. She seems like she's trying to "become" something she thinks we want. When what we wanted was what she'd already been.

And her hair all too often just looks like a "giant football helmet" (ala Sally Fields in Steel Magnolias).

And I know I'll get lots of hate mail on this one. And I know it sounds petty. But if she were truly a fashion icon, I'd be the first to give her her props. I'd be up at the crack of dawn stalking the internet and even braving the dressing rooms at Ross to find knock-offs and look-alikes. And I'd be able to swallow all this crap the media is force feeding us -- particularly over the last two days.

And I do think it's great that she's frugal in her fashion choices, and I do think it's wonderful that she taps small, relatively unknown designers. But what good is that going to do the fashion industry if she sends us spiraling back into a fashion depression like the 80s? (Hey, I had the leg warmers and the headband and the black rubber bracelets and the aqua ankle socks over my jeans and the reebok tennis shoes with the velcro strap and the mesh tank top -- all worn at the same time, of course. And it's burned into my memory. AND DAMMIT, WE WILL NOT FORGET!!!)

She very likely IS going to be a fantastic First Lady who will represent us well globally and at home, and will no doubt kickstart a new generation of doers and national service champions.

But the next big fashion icon she is not, people. She's just not.

Isn't it enough that collectively we've made her husband the Second Coming, do we really need to make her the Madonna, too?

Photos courtesy of ABCNews.com/AP.

2 comments:

teeveezed said...

I agree, she's quite ordinary, and that, really, is her charm.

Jo Anna Guerra said...

You know, I would totally second that!