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Who dressed you?

Proof that a woman’s worst enemy is almost always another woman:

As a dis­tant observer of fash­ion, but a close stu­dent of the semi­otics of female power, I am a lit­tle puz­zled by Michelle (Obama’s) fre­quent choice of sleeve­less dresses at offi­cial moments. She is an attrac­tive woman, whose height gives her a com­mand­ing pres­ence, and it is clear that she puts effort into ton­ing those upper arms. So the dresses look good; but this is not about pretty. She is in her for­ties, and the sleeve­less sheath is the province of younger women, and/or socialites; it works for cock­tails or a bar­beque, but not church or work. (And yes, she is clearly chan­nel­ing Jackie Kennedy. But Jackie’s clothes — and everyone’s in the early 1960s — were a lot more grown up and sophis­ti­cated.) The sleeve­less bit seems too casual, and maybe a lit­tle too reveal­ing for the role she is cur­rently play­ing, and the one to which she aspires. Suc­cess­ful First Ladies — and here Laura Bush is a good model — man­age to con­vey a care­ful mix of dis­tance and familiarity.

Meow! Maybe Mrs. O. wants to demon­strate her lack of Kill Whitey tat­toos. (Note that I am not so catty as to repro­duce a photo of Mrs. Bush in one of her fun, dis­tantly famil­iar out­fits. But TBogg did.)

I expect we’re in for a great deal more of this. As a frumpy res­i­dent of the frump­i­est part of the heart­land, I only recently learned the mean­ing of “style” when used as a verb. My daughter’s friends, all cable-TV sub­scribers, “put together out­fits” for one another, hold­ing them up on hang­ers with neck­laces and acces­sories draped over them. “Who are you wear­ing” is not a ques­tion for Jame Gumb anymore.

But you know what I like about the way Mrs. Obama dresses? That it looks like she does it her­self. Maybe she doesn’t, but there’s a cer­tain pleas­ant sim­plic­ity to her style, like she has a closet full of good, clas­sic clothes and flat­ter­ing acces­sories that she could put on in the dark and still stand an 80 per­cent chance of look­ing fine. I’m tired of all this bat­shit Pat Field “Sex and the City” sar­to­r­ial lunacy. Michelle Obama wears her clothes; they don’t wear her.

In other words, she doesn’t need Andre Leon Tal­ley, and if she has half the brain she took to Prince­ton, she’ll keep a few mil­lion miles between the two of them.

I’m always run­ning out of here early on Tues­days and Thurs­days, but after weeks of drag­ging myself through Rob’s 10 a.m. tor­ture ses­sions at the gym, I’m finally feel­ing — if not see­ing — some results. So I’m giv­ing it pri­or­ity. But I’ll be back later, to fill out the ideas for the last two gen­res in the DWIFF chal­lenge — mock­u­men­tary and chick flick. (Groan.)

Posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 9:42 am
in Current events.

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19 responses to
“Who dressed you?”

  1. brian stouder said on June 19th, 2008 at 10:11 am

    I really, really respect and admire Michelle Obama.

    Some­day I will tell my great-grand chil­dren that I once shook her hand, and exchanged pleas­antries (nev­er­mind that the pleasantry-exchange lasted approx­i­mately 2.4 seconds!);

    even despite that nowa­days, I rou­tinely argue with my children’s grand­mother (my mom!) about whether or not she is some sort of ter­ri­ble per­son (I say — NOT!)

    Remem­ber that scene in the great old chick-flick “Ghost”, where the bad guy gets killed in the street, and then the ter­ri­ble black-hooded gob­lins come screech­ing out of the nether regions to drag his soul away?

    I think that with the demise of the Hillary Clin­ton cam­paign, lots of anti-woman types have aban­doned her picked-over remains, and are now swoop­ing after Michelle.

  2. Dorothy said on June 19th, 2008 at 10:56 am

    The TBogg link is tak­ing for­ever to load and now my curios­ity is going to kill me until I can see that pic­ture of Laura Bush.

    I hap­pen to have a sleeve­less sheath on today at work, one I made myself. But I don’t look sleek at all, which is how Michelle Obama looks ALL the time. No one should pre­sume to give her fash­ion advice. She does just fine on her own.

  3. Sue said on June 19th, 2008 at 11:02 am

    The great thing about being a first lady is that there is no job descrip­tion. It’s also the scari­est thing, because you get to screw up with­out even know­ing it, by, say, let­ting your arms show. The writer above thinks Laura Bush is a suc­cess­ful first lady because first ladies need to care­fully mix dis­tance and famil­iar­ity. Oth­ers will dis­agree because Laura is so dili­gently unob­tru­sive. I am look­ing for­ward to see­ing what kind of first lady either Michelle or Cindy will be — first ladies are way more inter­est­ing than pres­i­dents. Read their bios and you’ll see.

  4. Julie Robinson said on June 19th, 2008 at 11:15 am

    When will we stop objec­ti­fy­ing women?

    Dorothy, did you sew your dress on your Singer Feath­erlight? I saw one here in Florida for $400! Remind me to tell the kids not to throw mine out after I die. It could be my one and only heirloom.

  5. LAMary said on June 19th, 2008 at 11:24 am

    I think Laura Bush is suc­cess­ful at not los­ing it com­pletely in pub­lic. What­ever she’s using to ignore what’s going on around is is very effec­tive and allows her to speak with­out slur­ring. The botox keeps the face look­ing serene. Dis­tance and famil­iar­ity through phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. Or cosmetceuticals.

    Michelle Obama is a very tall Capri­corn, and it’s com­monly accepted that tall capri­corn women have style to spare. And they rock.

  6. Jolene said on June 19th, 2008 at 11:43 am

    I find Cindy McCain a lit­tle scary. That eye­liner. Being totally out of the style loop, I’m not sure what the sta­tus of “rac­coon eyes” is right now, but to me, this look is some­thing that came and went. If that’s cor­rect, Ms. McCain is then in the class of women who chose a some­what extreme look in her youth and stuck with it well into her mature years — an odd choice given her wealth and con­se­quent abil­ity to pur­chase up-to-date fash­ion advice.

  7. Dorothy said on June 19th, 2008 at 11:55 am

    Julie I don’t own a Singer Feath­er­weight, but wish I did! I have a Pfaff that’s about 10 or 11 years old. It’s a great machine. One of these days, though, I hope to stum­ble across a work­ing Feath­er­weight and buy it!

  8. Julie Robinson said on June 19th, 2008 at 1:08 pm

    I learned how to sew on my mom’s Pfaff! Keep your old sewing machines; every­thing today is made out of plas­tic. The gears don’t hold up for very long.

    My sis, who does a lot of quilt­ing, says many quil­ters won’t use any­thing but a Feath­er­weight. I took it to col­lege with me, since it was so small. Won­der how many girls today con­sider a sewing machine an essen­tial for the dorm?

  9. Dorothy said on June 19th, 2008 at 1:18 pm

    All I know is my Pfaff helps me keep my san­ity while squeezed into this 1 BR apartment.

  10. kayak woman said on June 19th, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    My younger daugh­ter is a lit­tle out of the ordi­nary, I think, but she not only takes a sewing machine to col­lege with her, she also has a spin­ning wheel.

  11. Jolene said on June 19th, 2008 at 1:56 pm

    I have a friend whose daugh­ter described her “closet sewing” in her col­lege essays. Got her admit­ted to Penn.

  12. Catherine said on June 19th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    My church recently had a “shower” for 18 YOs who were aging out of fos­ter care. One of them requested a sewing machine. My SIL and I were delighted to give it to her! Not a dead art at all.

    I’d rather not get into it over the candidate’s wives’ styles. It just serves to demean and/or obscure their true selves and their real con­tri­bu­tions. Same as the end­less freakin’ dis­cus­sions about Hillary’s pantsuits. Can we talk issues? The com­menters here are always so thought-provoking. Or, maybe we talk about John McCain’s sar­to­r­ial choices? Who’s dress­ing him this week?

  13. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 19th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    Hillary’s “you get two for one” gam­bit for empow­ered women mar­ried to aspir­ing pol, and her sub­se­quent career, make peo­ple look at spouses with new policy-related inter­est, while still hav­ing some fash­ion and social reg­is­ter sludge slosh­ing around in our heads.

    I don’t think we know yet quite how we want to look at polit­i­cal spouses, but off lim­its is off lim­its. They mat­ter, and that’s not gonna change.

    That said, i can’t see any room for objec­tion to Michelle Obama other than that she sup­ports and affirms the idea that her hus­band is quite a bit more socialist-y lib­eral than he’s try­ing to come across. She’s not out ahead of him, or lean­ing in a whole ‘nother direc­tion (the lat­ter being the vibe i sus­pect peo­ple cor­rectly get from Laura, iron­i­cally just as we did from Bar­bara Bush).

    My hes­i­ta­tion with the Oba­mas gen­er­ally is a clear pref­er­ence to hav­ing more gov­ern­men­tal direc­tion of the econ­omy, indi­vid­ual lives, and odd details of fam­ily life (for a pre­view of com­ing attrac­tions, check Google­News with “Que­bec, field trip, cus­tody”). But Michelle would be a fine First Lady, even if i didn’t sup­port ninety per­cent of her husband’s polit­i­cal agenda — and i prob­a­bly wouldn’t sup­port at least fifty per­cent of McCain’s: it’s all a mat­ter of degree.

  14. nancy said on June 19th, 2008 at 2:40 pm

    My hes­i­ta­tion with the Oba­mas gen­er­ally is a clear pref­er­ence to hav­ing more gov­ern­men­tal direc­tion of the econ­omy, indi­vid­ual lives, and odd details of fam­ily life (for a pre­view of com­ing attrac­tions, check Google­News with “Que­bec, field trip, custody”).

    That last seems a bit unfair, Jeff; do you really think the Oba­mas are going to push pol­icy to med­dle in indi­vid­ual fam­ily squabbles?

    How­ever, here’s a trick I found use­ful over the past 20 years or so: Keep repeat­ing, “He’s a pres­i­dent, not a king.” Even assum­ing he gets a Demo­c­ra­tic Con­gress, I expect a very dif­fer­ent Pres­i­dent Obama than can­di­date Obama. As for more gov­ern­ment direc­tion for the econ­omy, I’d be pleased if they just closed the Enron loophole.

  15. Catherine said on June 19th, 2008 at 2:45 pm

    I don’t mean to shake a vir­tual fin­ger or say that any­thing should be off-limits. I love a good snark as much as any­one (cf., Princess Beat­rice). I just am some­how… weary… of the sex­ism inher­ent to the clothes/plastic surgery/toned arms talk. OK, yes, I’m still sad about Hillary. If there really are 18 mil­lion new cracks in the glass ceil­ing, which I would love to believe, how come we’re focus­ing on how Michelle Obama sat when she inter­viewed Matthew Brod­er­ick on The View?

  16. MaryC said on June 19th, 2008 at 4:11 pm

    Dorothy, I can’t get TBogg’s link to load either but I’ll bet it’s the beige beaded dress that Laura wore to the Met exhibit of Jackie Kennedy’s clothes. One of the least flat­ter­ing things I have ever seen her in and you do imme­di­ately think “sofa” when you see it.

    I’ve always had a soft spot for Laura Bush ever since I heard her hob­bies were read­ing and smok­ing (even though I gave up the lat­ter 13 years ago). And also because (and Jeff alludes to this a bit) there’s some­thing a lit­tle sub­ver­sive about her, some­thing that makes you think that she doesn’t really give a damn about liv­ing up to every­one else’s expec­ta­tions of the First Lady, regard­less of how many inner-city tots or breast can­cer sur­vivors they make her pose next to. Wear­ing the beaded beige sofa cover to a gath­er­ing of over-thin, over-dressed, over-botoxed soci­ety matrons? Kind of flip­ping them the bird, I thought. She could look stun­ning if she wanted to, but I think she wears those ill-fitting, muddy-colored, boxy pantsuits as another mid­dle fin­ger to the world.

    On the other hand, there’s no excuse for tour­ing Europe in that wrin­kled blue suit. She’s the First Lady — doesn’t any­one in her entourage know how to use a travel steamer?

  17. Julie Robinson said on June 19th, 2008 at 4:16 pm

    There is hope for our race when 18 year olds want sewing machines. Spin­ning wheel? Dou­bly cool.

  18. Scout said on June 19th, 2008 at 7:53 pm

    Maybe the young hip­sters that know how to whip up pil­lows, cur­tains and uphol­stered head­boards on HGTV are the rea­son why the Y (X?Z?) gen­er­a­tionists are proud of their home-ec skillz.

  19. Dorothy said on June 20th, 2008 at 6:46 am

    Actu­ally Scout I read some­thing awhile back that gave credit to the show Project Run­way for get­ting young peo­ple inter­ested in sewing again. Stores like Joann Fab­rics and Han­cock Fab­rics have seen a huge resur­gence in their sales and they gave credit to that show (and oth­ers of their ilk, I’m sure).

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