Symbol of aspiration or WAG in chief?
Yesterday, while Barack Obama was discussing how to save the world economy with Gordon Brown, Berlusconi et al, Michelle Obama put in a planned, but mostly unannounced, visit to a girls’ school in Islington, north London. You can read a synopsis of what she said here and there are various videos of bits of it available. She told the girls that when she was at school, she did not “cut class” because she loved getting A’s and thought smart was cool, and that “whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude”. I have a few reservations about it, however, concerning how realistic an example she is of a high-achieving woman.
To put it simply, Michelle Obama’s distinction now is being a powerful man’s wife, a type of female role which has existed in every generation, and like all such roles, you don’t get it by doing well at school. While some American First Ladies have had independent careers (e.g. Lady Bird Johnson in broadcasting, Hillary Clinton in law), others were previously undistinguished (e.g. Laura Bush), even if they became well-known as campaigners on one issue or another. Unlike Cherie Blair, for example, who is a renowned human rights lawyer (some of whose activities have been called embarrassing to her husband), Michelle Obama has actually drastically reduced her independent professional activities since her husband started his campaign to become President. And London girls’ schools don’t often feature speeches by Chicago intellectual property lawyers and hospital executives.
I cannot argue with the message she delivered, and no school management in their right mind would have turned down the visit (and the sight of at least one hijab in the hall demonstrates that inconvenient pupils had not been given the day off, as happened when George Bush senior stayed at a London hotel a few years ago; keeping the visit under wraps until the last minute was an inspired way of seeing to her security), but at a time when one of the biggest problems is the lack of ambition, and the aspiration to be famous for its own sake or to be so-called WAGs (wives and girlfriends of famous men), surely some people will have questioned whether there was some incongruity in a speech of this type being delivered by a First Lady, even one of working-class Black background. Some would surely have taken the message that doing well was less important for a woman than marrying well (not that choosing one’s partner wisely is a bad lesson in itself, but I am sure that is not what they had in mind). I hope the teachers encouraged some discussion in the school about this issue.
