Michelle Obama Gets Personal
What dreams are left for the woman who grew up working class in Chicago, graduated from Princeton and Harvard law and became the first African-American first lady of the United States? Here’s one of them: “To open a secret door for others that hadn’t been opened for me,” by pairing disadvantaged girls with some of the powerful women in the land. Join us for an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look.
by Tamara Jones
Photograph: Peggy Sirota
Michelle Obama is one of those people you sense before you see, her confidence somehow arriving on the scene a few seconds before she does. Even a roomful of antsy teenagers can feel it, leading them to fall silent moments before the first lady strides into the State Dining Room and greets them with a friendly “Hey! What’s happening?” A few starstruck girls gasp, which is exactly the reaction Obama later explains she doesn’t want. These high schoolers are the newest inductees into an elite White House mentoring program created by the first lady herself, and they’re going to be seeing a lot of her. The program is designed to be as intimate as it is intense, so job one is to get the girls past the gasping stage. To that end, Obama launches into a stand-up routine about the double life she’s lived since her husband was elected.
“They call me FLOTUS, for first lady of the United States,” she explains, noting that the president’s internal White House acronym is POTUS. “And there are many times when FLOTUS and POTUS feel like characters.” There have even been times, she says, when she’s craned her own neck to see which celebrity might be causing all the excitement. “And it’s me. Oh, man, it’s FLOTUS. FLOTUS is here. No one told me FLOTUS was coming.”
But for all her diffidence, FLOTUS has game. She can wave her invisible wand and make things happen. Like this innovative program, which taps White House staffers to mentor local high school girls, teaching them how to network by providing them cozy access to the administration’s vast brain trust. One call from FLOTUS, and a handful of 17-year-olds can be over at the Supreme Court chatting up a couple of justices or at the Department of Labor seeking advice from Secretary Hilda Solis about getting jobs in a tough market. Cosmetics mogul Bobbi Brown will be talking to them about beauty inside and out, and the president’s executive chef will bake them chocolate-chip cookies sweetened with organic honey from the hive in the first lady’s garden. FLOTUS doesn’t just make an entrance; she opens doors that are normally closed.
“But sometimes,” Obama tells her class of mentees, “I just want to be Michelle. So you guys have to start slowly seeing me as Michelle, all right?”
For more about Michelle Obama’s unique mentoring program--and why it is so personally meaningful to her--read the full story in the February 2012 MORE, on sale now.
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