Michele Obama Complains About Being Known as ‘Barack Obama’s Wife’

Former first lady Michelle Obama continued what some critics are calling her complaint tour, most recently lamenting during an episode of Call Her Daddy this week that people solely viewed her as “Barack Obama’s wife.”

On the popular nouveau feminist podcast, Obama expressed frustration that being former president Barack Obama’s wife obscured her personal accomplishments.

As quoted by the Daily Caller, Obama said:

People would be like, “Well, how do you know what to do in this role?” And to me, it was clear that… you don’t know anything about what I did before I came here… But I was like, well, I went to Princeton and Harvard. I mean, I practiced law. I was an assistant to the mayor in Chicago. I ran a nonprofit, a 501(c)(3)…I was a vice president for community relations at the University of Chicago Hospitals. I was a dean of students.

All of that just disappeared in the course of this whole election, and you now see me as just Barack Obama’s wife… That quickly my shoes become the most important thing about me… not unique to me, it can happen to the best of us. So, I shied away from fashion leading the conversation. But I knew I didn’t completely control it. So, let’s lean in. Let’s lean in with what we do. Let’s make sure that we have a plan and a strategy in place for how fashion, just like everything we did in the White House, would have meaning and impact.

Obama also warned mothers during the podcast that they should maintain their careers.

“You don’t have to get off your career track. And I don’t even recommend it,” she said. “Because kids grow up fast. And then they’re gone. You’ve sacrificed everything. And you know, when they leave, they leave. They close the door and act like you never sacrificed.”

Obama, 62, while promoting her book about use of fashion The Look, has faced criticism for her complaint about being first lady: that she was under the “white-hot glare’ of extra scrutiny because of her skin color.

As author and editor Arthur Kirn put it while discussing Obama’s tour on the “Megyn Kelly Show” in November:

It is exactly the opposite of what she said. She got more grace. She could have done almost anything… America had put her in the White House. The same America that wasn’t going to allow her any grace? What, they put her in the White House as a joke to trip her up? This is ridiculous.

The former first lady also complained about difficulties of being a woman in America during a July episode of IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson.

“Women, we have so many landmines, and barriers, and don’ts, and limitations… I think it’s important for all guys listening, especially men raising daughters, to realize that difference,” she said. “… inadvertently, as you are loving and raising these beautiful girls, there are so many rules that make us small.”

She’s also complained in recent months in her podcast about out the difficulties of navigating her marriage in the public eye, even criticizing the way her 64-year-old husband chews his food.

Not all was negative, however, in the Call Her Daddy podcast. In closing and talking about the country, Obama struck a positive note.

She said:

This has been a unique time. No wars. No great depression. If you look at the history of the country, this little period, it’s not free of a lot of problems, right? But it’s been a continued shot upwards. We may be in a time where we are experiencing a bit of a dip, but we are still moving forward.”

“As Barack says all the time,” she added, “if you could pick any time in human history to be alive, when you think of disease and poverty and science and equality and openness and access, would you pick any other time to be alive than right now? I know I wouldn’t.”

Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.