Walker on Michelle O., or the stupid job of First Lady

It’s hard not to read a major Oedipal* subtext to Rebecca Walker’s work. It ain’t hard to link the distancing from feminism in her writing to her struggles with her mother, Alice. This dynamic was obvious in a recent column for The Root about Michelle Obama.

I don’t know what Michelle Obama’s so embodying feminist goals that she surpasses them is supposed to mean, especially given the quote at the end of the article: "The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class—it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity." I don’t know what feminism is if it isn’t the cause of freedom, and I don’t know how you surpass that.

Too, Walker’s criticism of feminism’s “monopoly by women over 50” would have been a say wha? moment for me if I didn’t know who her mother was or that she’s has had a very public falling out with her.

In most senses of the words “feminism” and “monopoly”, the claim is totally false. If feminism means the broad movement for women’s equality, I’m counterexample number one, being a feminist and still many years shy of 50. And I know I’m not the only one. What Walker has to mean is that her mother monopolized for her what feminism is, and she’s got issues with her, so she’s got issues with feminism. I can’t think of a nicer way to make sense of her blather on the subject.

Of course this hasn’t hurt Walker’s career, since the powers that be are always delighted to give an anti-feminist woman, better yet an anti-feminist black woman, plenty of airtime. It’s too bad, though, because there are interesting things to say about Michelle Obama. I think Michelle Obama is the bomb and I loved it that she was quoted immediately after the election saying she’d be working to raise awareness of the struggles of working moms. And damn is it something fine to see a gorgeous, regal black woman as First Lady of the United States of America.

But all that wonderfulness doesn’t change that fact that First Lady is a sucky thing for any self-respecting person to have to be. A pure decorative adjunct to a man in power—what could be more antithetical to feminism? Even as I glory at how Michelle Obama will raise the position to its highest function, and indeed to some extent by her very existence open new possibilities for black women and women in general, I’m sorry the position still exists and sorry for Michelle Obama. She’s putting her own career on hold to go sit on a pedestal and try to give her daughters as normal a life as possible while they’re on a pedestal.

Walker’s right that Obama’s response to a question about having to leave a “high-powered and highly compensated career” was graceful (though the bit about her kids coming first was straight from the necessary script of a First Lady). Quite so, one’s whole life defines who one is, with what this culture normally means by career (paid work in the market) being only one part of a meaningful life. But that doesn’t mean it’s right that in our system women married to men in very high positions of power are required to sacrifice their own ambitions.

Still, if Hillary Clinton shows anything, it’s that the crappy job of First Lady just might finally be transformed into a stepping stone to power in one’s own right. And that thought opens all kinds of avenues for fantasy about the future.

*Of course this is not the right word for struggles with one's mother and her legacy of power; not surprisingly, our language lacks such a word.

Slogan of the week

The first in an occasional series, Highlights of my reading while pumping breastmilk...

Writing in the Nation, Linda Gordon says, "As the feminist slogan goes, "Women deliver." I've never heard this slogan before and don't know who used it, but it rocks. Here's Gordon's explanation, which encapsulates a big chunk of the meaning of feminism:

In other words, when women control resources, the social gain is greater than when men control resources. Improving health for the poor is as likely to produce progressive change as any other strategy, because health activism these days requires challenging the world's most powerful and destructive
forces. Matters of the body are politically fundamental.