Smashing Stereotypes: Michelle Obama 'Bests' Jimmy Fallon After 'Beating' Ellen

First she took on Ellen DeGeneres in a push-up contest.

Then she challenged Jimmy Fallon to a multi-"sport" competition where she emerged the "victor" as Bo, the first canine, looked on.

Say what you will about Michelle Obama, but she's on the money when she says that she's willing to make a fool of herself in order to promote the notion that Americans, specifically children, should put down their iPods and smart phones, get off their butts and start moving.

Her Let's Move initiative is noble and she's willing to go to bat for it. Literally. In the process of promoting a universally respected ideal -- that kids should exercise -- Obama is also attempting to smash the stodgy, stuffy, tea-and-crumpets stereotype of what an American first lady should be. And that is a very good thing.

Notes on Politics: Michelle in Hot Water, 'Time's' Cover Girl and Kagan to Court

Michelle Obama in Hot Water

While President Obama was celebrating his birthday in Chicago, his wife and their 9-year-old daughter Sasha were traveling abroad in Spain. When the Obamas' Spain itinerary was released, there wasn’t much of an outcry.

Until the photo of our First Lady, looking glamorous and chic while walking through the streets of a southern Spanish town, started getting circulated, most prominently on the Drudge Report. Until reports about the hefty vacation price-tag and the details of the trip were revealed: They were staying at a ritzy, five-star hotel -- where the rooms go for “up to . . . $2,500” -- with 40 of Michelle Obama’s friends on a get-away vacation, to which the Obamas took Air Force Two and brought along 70 Secret Service agents, costing taxpayers major bucks, reported the New York Daily News.

Given the dire economic climate in the United States – including a new report out today saying that the jobless rate is just under double-digits nationwide – this is bad timing. And Michelle Obama’s taking a whole lot of crap for it. The Daily News’ Andrea Tantaros likened the First Lady to a “modern-day Marie Antoinette on a glitzy Spanish vacation” while the peasants beg for an extension of unemployment benefits because they can’t find jobs because no one’s hiring.

Tantaros wrote:

“I don’t begrudge anyone rest and relaxation when they work hard. We all need downtime – the First Family included. It’s the extravagance of Michelle Obama’s trip and glitzy destination contrasted with President Obama’s demonization of the rich that smacks of hypocrisy and perpetuates a disconnect between the country and its leaders. Toning down the flash would humanize the Obamas and signify that they sympathize with the setbacks of the people they were elected to serve.”

All of this hullabaloo reminds me of the kind of flack directed at Nancy Reagan back in the day with her pricey china. Nancy certainly got rhetorically smacked around quite a bit for appearing clueless about the obvious contrast between struggling Americans weathering the early 1980s recession and her regal “Reagan red” designer duds and high-end taste.

Time’s Cover Girl

Time Magazine did something daring. It placed an 18-year-old Afghan woman on the cover this week. What’s so button-pushing about the photo is that the woman has no nose. (She also has no ears but that fact is covered by her hair and a veil.) Why no nose? Because her husband – from whose family she had fled because they severely beat her and treated her like a slave – cut it off. He also removed her ears and left her to bleed to death.

Next to the jarring image on Time’s cover are the words, “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan.” “. . . Afghan women fear that in the quest for a quick peace, their progress may be sidelined,” wrote Aryn Baker. Baker quoted an Afghan parliamentarian as saying, “Women’s rights must not be the sacrifice by which peace is achieved.”

The juxtaposition of the photo alongside the headline -- the if-the-United States-leaves-we'll-subject-other-girls-to-this-fate sentiment -- hasn’t set well with some folks who say that the United States didn’t embark on a war in Afghanistan to “nation build,” but now, somehow, building and fashioning this nation into something more democratic and western has become the U.S. military’s charge. The cover, with its accompanying headline, has been lambasted as manipulative pro-war advocacy. Either way, I can’t get that photo out of my head. It’s damned haunting.

Kagan to Court

After she’s sworn in as the 100th associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by Chief Justice John Roberts this weekend, Elena Kagan will join two other female justices on the Supreme Court, giving this court more estrogen than it’s ever had.

“Will three finally be the magic number that effects real change for women in terms of pay parity, access to education and sexual harassment in the U.S.?” asked Meghan Casserly in Forbes.com.

She continued:

“A study from Catalyst in 2007 suggests it will. In their study of the U.S.’s 500 largest companies, Catalyst found that the point where women effect change on corporate boards is three. Three women on the board proved to be the point where return on equity, return on sales and return on investment capital saw the biggest improvement. The bottom line: stronger than average performance results when at least three women serve.”

I’m just hopeful that there will soon be a day when a woman being nominated to the Supreme Court -- or to a corporate board for that matter -- won’t be something historic. It’ll just be a run-of-the-mill PR announcement.

Image credits: Torres/AP via the New York Daily News and Jodi Bieber/Time Magazine.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Covering the Obamas

There's nothing wrong with noticing that the Obama children are exceptionally cute. It's also reasonable to suggest that the prospect of seeing the girls playing on the White House lawn with their new puppy Bo or swinging on their new swingset outside Dad's office would be a welcome respite from the dour economic news to which we've been treated for the past several months. More than once I've heard and read political pundits likening the White House photos of 10-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha to photos from the Camelot days a generation ago of Caroline and John Kennedy.

As long as media coverage is respectfully restrained and the Obama girls aren't hounded and don't have everything that's on or near their bodies catalogued (like tracking down the makers of their clothing, backpacks, toys, etc.). There was a degree of media restraint afforded Chelsea Clinton when the 12-year-old accompanied her parents to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 1993, but that was still in the pre-blog days, so I remain skeptical that the media can or will exercise such decorum when it comes to the First Kids.

But what has already exceeded decorum and has veered into the arena of tiresome is the coverage given to Michelle Obama, an Ivy League educated lawyer and former hospital executive, a woman with something substantive to say on many subjects. Last month I examined the type of media coverage Michelle Obama was receiving -- including the odd, fetish-like obsession with her bare arms -- in a column which noted that during the span of two weeks, the First Lady was on the cover of four national magazines.

And that was before the G-20 summit in London and the Obamas' trip abroad. Before phrases such as "fashion faceoff" were uttered and the media pit Michelle Obama with the spouse of the French president, as if the women's clothing was competing against one another. Before so-called news media outlets started running slideshows on their web sites of Michelle Obama's outfits and discussing wearing stilettos versus flat shoes on national NEWS programs.

After a week's worth of fluffy, insipid news coverage, I was steamed. My irritation yielded this week's Pop Culture and Politics column over on Mommy Track'd in which I satirically imagine what it would be like if the male leaders' attire was subjected to the type of media scrutiny that their spouses' duds, where the media pay lavish attention to pumps, not the policies and causes the women try to spotlight. How I wish the media would treat these women as women of substance, not as walking mannequins that they want to dress up in designer duds.

Image credit: Huffington Post.