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Meghan, I think I agree with your diagnosis but perhaps not your prescription. It’s true that every woman in the public eye in America is instantly run through the sum-of-her-choices machine and found wanting. From Sarah Palin to Angelina Jolie, it seems nobody has calibrated her responsibilities to her job and her family in ways the rest of us can applaud. It’s also true that as women we run ourselves through the sum-of-our-choices machine on pretty much a daily basis. (This morning my 3-year-old’s preschool teacher handed me a laminated book of Our Feelings, in which my son is featured in a desolate-looking photo with the caption “I am sad when my mommy goes for walks and leaves me alone.” Awesome. Immortalized for life as the Mommy Who Ditches.)
I agree that any story about women and choices is mommy catnip, a way for us to check our own bargains and compromises against everyone else’s, which really increases our efficiency by allowing us to beat up on ourselves and others at the same time. But I wonder what’s required to, as you put it, “break free.” I don’t know if it requires reconciling ourselves to the choices we have made or fighting harder for better, fuller choices for women. For Michelle Obama that might mean redefining the role of first lady as something more substantial than Traister imagines. For the rest of us, it may require giving up on the idea that if we take turns in our marriages, the choices for women will get easier or better. Just ask Hillary Clinton how that worked out for her.
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Ladies, gentlemen: Are any of you, like me, getting tired of all the discussion surrounding Michelle Obama's "choices"? Yesterday in the New York Times: a long piece about women worrying whether Michelle "will become a pioneer or a dispiriting symbol of the limitations of modern working motherhood." And last night on CNN: a spiraling segment about Michelle and what she "represents" to all the “little girls out there.” So here’s a woman who has a powerful job and decided to give it up to support her husband when he became president. Does that really send such a terrible message? Or is the terrible message our obsession with scrutinizing her choices and finding fault? Rebecca Traister recently wrote a good piece about the "momification" of Michelle, critiquing the fact that the media spend so much time on her role as a mother. But I think the problem is more complicated: The media know that all they have to do is utter the words "work" and "mother" and "choice" and everyone gets all frothed up, like Pavlov’s dogs at the dinner bell.
To me, the real difficulty in being a professional woman today is that no matter what you do—whether you make the decision to stay at home or go to work, to take time off to help a sick parent or to stay focused on your work—someone criticizes it. Often, you yourself criticize it. You spend lots of (otherwise useful) energy wondering if you’re doing "the right thing." At this point in time, women are called on to be both individuals and symbols—and they treat one another that way. And sure, symbolism is important: I’m a poet, for god’s sake; I get it. But if women are going to push forward toward further equality, the media has to let go of our obsession with turning powerful women’s choices into representative dramas—from Hillary to Michelle to Sarah Palin. Because this psychological wheel-spinning is starting to hold us back, I think—it’s the kind of obsessive "should we, shouldn’t we" that happens when you’re at the end of a relationship and can’t figure out whether to break free.
So, let’s break free. As Michelle herself has said, being first lady is a powerful platform. And the modern professional marriage, for better or for worse, usually requires some alternating in who gets to take the professional lead (that is, if you want your kids to get any attention). It’s too bad, sure, that there aren’t more men stepping up to support their wives—but it’s not as though that’s not happening in our political culture. (Hi there, Todd Palin!) The best way Michelle Obama can act as a role model for women right now is not by making the decision any one of us would make (because we’d all make different decisions), but by reminding us that life is fleeting, and we ought to immerse ourselves in the opportunities and joys of our own life as it exists. Not as it might exist.
Oh, but also this, Michelle: In eight years, tell your husband it’s your turn.
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