She has coruscating intelligence, beauty, style and -- drumroll, please -- a butt. (Yes, you read that right: I'm going to talk about the first lady's butt.) As I gradually relaxed, as Michelle strode onto more stages and people started focusing on her clothes and presence instead of her patriotism, it dawned on me -- good God, she has a butt! "Obama's baby (mama) got back," wrote one feminist blogger. "OMG, her butt is humongous!" went a typical comment on one African-American online forum, and while it isn't humongous, per se, it is a solid, round, black, class-A boo-tay. Try as Michelle might to cover it with those Mamie Eisenhower skirts and sheath dresses meant to reassure mainstream voters, the butt would not be denied. As America fretted about Obama's exoticism and he sought to calm the waters with speeches about unity and common experience, Michelle's body was sending a different message: To hell with biracialism! Compromise, bipartisanship? Don't think so. Here was one clear signifier of blackness that couldn't be tamed, muted or otherwise made invisible. It emerged right before our eyes, in the midst of our growing uncertainty about everything, and we were too bogged down in the daily campaign madness to notice. The one clear predictor of success that the pundits, despite all their fancy maps, charts and holograms, missed completely? Michelle's butt.
We were too bogged down, you see, in the daily madness of discussing issues, arguing talking points, polling voters, and generally conducting the business of electing the next leader of the free world to address the pressing issue of Michelle Obama's rear end. There was a time when a female writer would have relished a female public figure's words being examined instead of her anatomy, but now that we have left behind that provincial trope, we're free to rhetorically and literally leer at the First Lady's behind and debate its social implications. Free at last. This piece begins with the words, "free at last"- as in Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, which referenced the reverential, ancient gospel song. "Free at last"- as in the eloquent and efficient phrase used by generations of African Americans to embody the tragedy of slavery, segregation, and America's shame, and the corresponding hope that we could overcome them. In this case, the phrase is used differently, as in, "Thank God Almighty, we are free from an oppressive history of First Ladies with insufficiently Sir-Mix-a-Lottian figures." I only wish I could say the piece was tongue-in-cheek, but a) it's not very, and b) that phrase might be inappropriate given the subject matter.