What's Really Happening

With her approval ratings over 70%, higher than her husband's, Michelle Obama has moved from angry black woman to America's best mother, wife, and First Lady. Not on Fox News, but everyplace else.

Cousin Laura sent me some wonderful photographs this weekend, including this one of Hillary Clinton huddled in a conversation with Michelle Obama. The caption: Bill thought he was president, too!

The White House Goes Modern

Michelle Obama is featured in the March issue of Vogue, wearing her own clothes, including some J. Crew and some more Jason Wu, who designed her inaugural gown. Read the feature and fall in love with our new First Lady.

And now the Obamas want to put modern art into the living quarters of the White House! David Ross, former director of the Whitney Museum and the San Francisco Museum, has some ideas on what the Obamas might want to hang. It's fun, take a look.

Realistic Ambitions in the Wake of the Equal Pay Act

My husband and I are visiting our college-aged daughter for a wintry few days. Last night we took out six students--five young women and a man-- for a long, relaxed dinner. Three of the students attend a business college; three of them attend a women's college. These kids aren't slackers.

Much to my daughter's dismay, I like to ask big questions and then listen intently to the answers. "What would be your absolutely ideal job, the thing you really want to do?"

Their answers were surprising.

Two of the young women said they wanted to balance their careers with having families. One favored business, the other was still unsure, vacillating between math and French. We joked that it sounded like she wanted to become Marie Curie, the only person to get a Nobel Prize in two categories: chemistry and physics.

An answer to this question that included balance would have been improbable just a generation ago. We didn't think in those terms. We thought in terms of having it all. Some of us were wildly disappointed, others made compromises, others abandoned, because neither the workplace nor the family structure considered a woman's needs in a two-career family.

And balance was made a bit more feasible this week when President Obama signed the Equal Pay Act, assuring women the opportunity to litigate compensation disparities when they are not paid equally with men. Thank you, Lilly Ledbetter. Thank you, Mr. President, for making the Equal Pay Act your first legislative act.

Perhaps my generation made this so much an issue because as the first women entered professional suites, our children felt our absences or our disappointments. With Michelle Obama as the First Lady, this discussion is hot and detailed, and goes beyond fluff by examining the policies that prevent women from balancing, like not being paid equally. Check out the New York Times continuing pieces on the Balancing Act. Click through it for some interesting contributions by policy advocates.

Back to the answers to my question: Another young woman wanted a job like her mother's who is a vice president in a health care company. "I loved going to work with her," she explained. "She has a great job." I suspect she also has a mother who enjoys her work.

Another young woman aspired to becoming a physician although she is worried that it has gotten so difficult to get into medical school, that she might have to go for a PhD. first, to get the research and science down.

Our daughter wants to be Secretary of State! She was raised by a mother who was a professor, then a nonprofit executive, so I managed to have it all, mostly because I gave up some of my ambition to become a mother. I surrounded her with a menagerie of women: all sorts so that she could find herself among them.

Today's New York Times Magazine focuses on college-educated women who chose to become mothers without men and without romance in their lives. It's a read.


And the young man wants to start a company around an invention of his own, but he doesn't want to be CEO! After a freshman course in entrepreneurism, he understands his limitations.

Are these kids realistic way beyond their years, or verging on burned out already?

On the Street--At The Hairdresser

I take measure of what suburban women think at my hairdresser's. I don't mean the customers, who usually just complain--about their husbands, children, housekeepers, doctors, children's teachers-- or talk about plastic surgery, jewelry, or decorating. I mean the colorist who dyes my hair, the stylist who cuts it, and the manicurist whom I've known for twenty years. After many years of working with me, they know what to expect: we talk about politics, film, and more politics.

I started going to this salon just before the 2000 election. The colorist had never participated in an election before, so I helped her find information on the web, and although she knew I was a Gore fan, she decided for herself whom she would support for president. By 2004, she was pretty appalled by the Bush administration, but I seem to remember that she didn't actually vote. She had a newborn infant then. Kerry did that for novices. Gave them no reason to pick themselves up and inconvenience themselves to drop their routines and baby to go to some elementary school and stand on line to vote.

However, for this election, both the colorist and the hair stylist were engaged. We had many lively discussions about Hillary or Barack throughout the primary season.

They both were Hillary fans, having been impressed with her as First Lady and then New York State Senator.

Who was this Obama, anyway? However, they both voted for him, won over, like most of us were to the different spirit that he brings to politics.

With Tuesday's inauguration fresh on our minds, the hair stylist and I immediately fell into conversation about how exciting it was for the country, for white people as well as black, to have elected a first African American to the position. We both got teary-eyed as we spoke: reviewing Beyonce's serenade at the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball (why even Jon Stewart couldn't say anything cyncial about how beautifully in love Michelle and Barack looked as they danced while Beyonce sang "At Last"); the crowds on the Mall who withstood the cold to be a part of history; how well behaved Malia and Sasha were throughout all of these public events; and of course, what this means to us as a people to have elected this young, handsome, intelligent, creative bi-racial man.

She asked me what it felt like when JFK was elected. "Was everyone in love with him, too?"

I was in the seventh grade and surely I was. That was how I got hooked on politics, watching those afternoon press conferences: his wit, his charm, how he racked his fingers through that head of hair.

"And were you devastated when he was assassinated?"

The entire nation stopped. I was in biology class in the ninth grade when the news came over the public address system. We were let out early, and I almost ran home to get in front of the television set. Walter Cronkite, the most trusted broadcaster, cried along with us. My mother even let us eat snacks in her bedroom while our family--my father, mother, sister, and I--watched Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassination suspect, over and over again in the basement of the Dallas Police Department.

Then I spoke with the manicurist, whom I've known for twenty years. She and I are the same age, however, our stories are so very different. She was born Jewish in Russia, and came here in her twenties to start a new life. She spoke about how concerned she was that blacks as well as whites were treating Obama like some kind of messiah. She feels our expectations of the man are insane, far too enormous to do anything other than disappoint. (In a fabulously funny "commentary" on The Daily Show, John Oliver spoke with a German man on the Mall during the inauguration. "You have experience with charismatic leaders," he quipped.)

I agree with her: our expectations are insane. But then, I added something I feel deeply: For someone like me who isn't religious, these last months have taught me about the enormous power of hope.

And about that we both agreed.

Michelle Obama--Our New First Lady

The fashion pages are abuzz with speculation about just what Michelle Obama will be wearing at the inauguration ceremony and the balls afterwards. No one knows. It's a deeply hidden secret. This tall, lanky, athletic woman who looks elegant in everything, well, except for the "uterus ablaze" black and red dress she wore Election Night in Grant Park designed by Narciso Rodriquez, our eyes are on her because she is now our First Lady.

On the campaign trail, she has worn J. Crew, Thakoon, Isabel Toledo and Maria Pinto. She even wore a little number from the mall store White House Black Market.

Vogue has a slideshow of designers' suggestions. It's fun to go through.

Does she wear a hat? What kind of coat? And the balls? What colors, how much of her dynamite shoulders should she show?

We are obsessed about what Michelle might wear because we are hungry for a First Lady who will once again reflect the intelligence of American women of the twenty-first century, our potential, and the potential of our daughters and granddaughters. We are hungry for a moral compass, not silence like we had in Laura Bush, who just sat there and smiled vacuously, allowing people to speculate that her views were more somehow "liberal" than her husband's.

We are hungry for a first family with the charm and spontaneity of young children and the demands that they make on busy parents. We are hungry to see ourselves in the First Family. And more. We want them to be glamorous, smarter than we are, better than we are. Because we want to believe that through hard work, collaboration, creativity, and leadership, yes, leadership, and sacrifice, we can get out this global rut.

I want Michelle Obama to look elegant, proud, competent, charming, beautiful, and the representative of American women: all colors, sizes, shapes, and ages. I won't be disappointed by her either. Because I recall the speech she gave in Wilmington, Delaware, early in the primary fight, when Barack Obama was still little known outside of Illinois and those who had seen his meteoric speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention.

In that speech, given in a high school gymnasium and broadcasted on C-Span, Michelle told the story of her life, how a girl from the South Side of Chicago got to Princeton, Harvard Law School, to Sidley Austin, the law firm where she supervised a cocky, brilliant young associate named Barack Hussein Obama, and eventually became counsel for the University of Chicago Medical Center. Her honesty and authenticity, it isn't an easy story, because it wasn't easy being a woman of color attending Princeton University, but she told the story without making it an easier story for us to hear. She caught my attention because she wasn't hesitant to speak about the opportunity given to her to attend Princeton and the incredible hard work it took to graduate with honors.

What I admire about both Barack Obama and Michelle is that they don't make anything easy. Unlike George Bush who sees the world in simplistic terms--good and evil--the Obamas understand the nuance of living in this complex world. We have much to learn from them about nuance, complexity, and patience. As we wait to see this elegant, intelligent, young new President and his First Lady, as he takes the oath of office and then as they enter the inaugural balls, perhaps take a moment to watch that wonderful will.i.am video, the one that came out just before Super Tuesday, Yes We Can.

Yes We Can if we work together.