Michelle Obama is a good example of the 21st century woman.
She knows she doesn’t have to be anyone except who she is and that is absolutely fine. From delivering a magnificent speech at the Democratic convention to hands-on meetings, advocating on behalf of military families, Michelle Obama depends on her intelligence and work ethic. At roundtable meetings, Michelle listens to the personal stories of military spouses at barracks across the nation who work hard to keep their families together while their loved ones are serving in abroad. One woman said it felt as if this was the first time anyone had had the kindness to ask “how we (the military wives and husbands) are doing.”
As First Lady, she has also become an advocate for poverty awareness, nutrition, and healthy eating. Michelle is able to combine all the separate aspects of her life and make a whole that is amazing.
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is the wife of the 44th President of the United States. Raised on the South Side of Chicago, she attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School before returning to Chicago. There she worked at the law firm of Sidney Austin and met the man who would become her husband. She also worked as part of the staff of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and for the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Unlike Ann Romney's so-called perfect marriage, Michelle relationship is refreshingly like many others. While Barack and Michelle Obama may have what appears to be a perfect soul-mate union now, they have worked through difficult times together. Their marriage hasn't always been ideal. No marriage where one partner is career-centered ever is.
This is one of the prime reasons for the high divorce rate among actors. Creating and sustaining a career is exhausting, time-consuming, and leaves energy for very little else including a spouse. The key to a successful relationship where one partner is career-driven is for the other partner to take a back seat and shoulder the activities of everyday family life pretty much on their own.
In his book, Renegade, author Richard Wolffe recounts a stretch in 2000 when the Obama marriage went through a time of not talking and no romance due to Barack's unsuccessful run for Congress. Michelle felt he was selfish and career-driven and he thought she was cold and lacked understanding of his goals. At the time of his unsuccessful career move, they were parents to two year-old Malia.
By the time baby Sasha came along, their marriage was strained almost to the breaking point. They decided to work through their problems and differences and make the marriage solid. The decision for Barack to make a bid for the White House was a joint decision between the two of them. Even with that decision made, Michelle had no intention of changing who she was or her own ideas.
The idea that a President's wife was someone who stayed in the background, only trotted out by her spouse to perform the least important of official duties, are long past. In fact, the days when a woman was only a satellite to her husband’s shining sun are, thankfully, as antiquated as the Univac computer we see in history books.
Michelle Obama is a terrific example of a woman who speaks her mind, succeeds in her chosen career, and is determined to make a change in people’s lives through her own efforts.
In 2016 perhaps we may see a Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton ticket after all.
The Clinton would be Hilary and the Obama would be Michelle.
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© 2012 copyright Kristen Houghton all rights reserved.
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Like this article? Check out other great pieces from the outspoken and insightful, Kristen Houghton. (Did we mention she is a best-selling author, too?)
Ann Romney: Why We Will Never Relate
Should You Forgive...Everything?
Books by Kristen Houghton:
No Woman Diets Alone - There's Always a Man Behind Her Eating a Doughnut
And Then I'll Be Happy! Stop Sabotaging Your Happiness and Put Your Own Life First
Remember, Hetty? (A Short Story)
Nourishing Thoughts: The Little Book of Sayings for a Healthy, Happy Life
erikdolnack
Do most women in America relate to Michelle Obama? Really?
In all fairness, Ann Romney gave a speech at the RNC where she boasted of all sorts of claimed hardships that she and Mitt “suffered” under when they were just starting out in life. Then Michelle Obama does her best to top that routine by also claiming hardships.
Neither of these elitist prima donnas has a clue what the average common working class American lives like!
Most American women can’t afford to attend Princeton, let alone Harvard Business School, yet Michelle Obama has attended both. Yeah, this is a woman who’s really seen some desperate times in her life! Hardly. This is just another spoiled rich, out of touch, wealthy elitist who couldn’t tell you what a loaf of bread costs today if her life depended on it. When’s the last time Michelle Obama had to purchase a gallon of gas at the pumps, I wonder? When was she ever let go at a job and had to file an unemployment benefits claim? What’s that? ...NEVER!
And even if there’s a grain of truth (har-dee-har-har!) that either Michelle Obama or Ann Romney ever had some rough years years ago, so what. Their husbands surely have forgotten ALL about those bleak years and can’t relate to the average American family today any more than Donald Trump could relate to a trailer park. For one, I don’t buy for one second that these spoiled, pampered, elitist snob plutocrats have ever had anything less than champaign and beluga caviar all their lives.
I find it utterly insulting that these spoiled rotten rich bastards would even pretend to understand the plights of working Americans today. Especially when its their class that almost destroyed our economy and have basically stolen everything middle and lower class peoples ever had.
Bring back the guillotine!
erikdolnack
Whenever I hear these wealthy elites boast of the “hard” times they’ve endured in the past, I have to ask what motive they’d have.
If the elites are to create some illusion of meritocracy (where one actually doesn’t exist in practice), they must get the message out that they too started from humble beginnings (har-dee-har-har-har!). In fact, regardless of the difficulties you may be suffering as we speak, that’s NOTHING compared with the travails that the Romneys and the Obamas have endured. But unlike you, they aren’t whining! The message is clear: “Toughen up, sissies, grow a set, be a man, and maybe one day you’ll earn it like we did!”
That is the message being sent, loud and clear. The upper class needs an underclass, but the elites today don’t want grumbling servants. Instead, they want happy slaves. So they create this myth that they were once regular, hard working people with jobs and bills just like the rest of us.
But were they really struggling, ever? C’mon. That’s absurd and everyone knows it. These spoiled rich elites have never known hard desperate times and never will. They no more “earned” their great wealth than any of the rest of us earned our indebtedness. Both were determined politically. All wealth is distributed politically in societies. Always was, always will be. Why else do the rich lobby government each and every day for hundreds of millions of dollars each year, if not to get what they want politically?
The point isn’t whether Ann Romney or Michelle Obama struggled in the past or not, or how much. The point is that none of them are struggling right now, today, in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Not only is it a blatant insult for these princesses to flaunt their diamonds at luxurious banquets for all to see, but they even now get to boast that they’ve struggled even harder than the rest of us too, and unlike us, they never complained. In fact, they’re laughing about it openly, as if to show us that poverty can be fun.
I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Romney, if poverty and struggling are such a good time and so full of laughs, then why don’t we trade? You can have my job, my income, my apartment, my bills, and my debts, and I can live in the White House, be served by your servants, be waited on by your staff, and go around the world being entertained by other super wealthy world leaders. Do we have a deal? No? Then SHUT UP!
I’m tired of all these arrogant rich criminals flaunting their delusions of grandeur in the media all the time. These people must think that their fecal matter doesn’t stink.