A feminist against choice

Debra Dickerson is in full-blooded rant over at Salon. She's all upset that Michelle Obama has had to cut back work at her own job to help out in her husband's campaign for president.

You knew it had to happen.

Damn it all, Michelle Obama has quit her $215,000 dream job and demoted herself to queen. Though the party line is that she's only "scaled back" to a 20 percent workload, I doubt her former co-workers will bother alerting her to many staff meetings. She's traded in her solid gold résumé, high-octane talent and role as vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals to be a professional wife and hostess.

Now, the energy and drive that had her up jogging before dawn and a gratifying day of work and family will mainly be spent smiling for the cameras. Just as we watch curvy, healthy-looking singers and actresses like Lindsay Lohan become anorexic too-blonde hoochies before our very eyes, so we're now in danger of having to watch the political version of that process: Any day now, Michelle Obama's handlers will have her glued into one of those Sunday-go-to-meeting Baptist grandma crown hats while smiling vapidly for hours at a time. When, of course, she's not staring moonstruck, à la Nancy Reagan, at her moon doggie god-husband who's not one bit smarter than she is.

My heart breaks for her just thinking about it. Being president will be hard. So will being first lady for the brilliant Michelle -- imagine, having to begin all your sentences with "My husband and I..."

I'm in a feminist fury about Michelle (I'll use her first name to avoid confusion with her husband) feeling forced to quit, but make no mistake: I'm not blaming her. Few could stand up to the pressure she's facing, especially from blacks, to sacrifice herself on the altar of her husband's ambition. He could be the first black president, you know! Also, she must be beside herself trying to hold things together for her daughters. I'm blaming the world and every man, woman, child and border collie in it who helps send the message that women's lives must be subordinate to everyone else's.

Yes, because it's all about the feminists. Does it even occur to Ms. Dickerson that this is Michelle Obama's choice? She could have acted as Howard Dean's wife did and severely restricted her campaigning for her husband. She has two daughters, ages 5 and 8, and could have used them as an excuse not to travel and campaign. She chose another path - to support her husband to attain a job that would give her a new perch to work for the issues that she most cares about. And does anyone think that she won't be able to get back her original job or find a new demanding job if her husband's campaign isn't successful?

In fact, this isn't the first time that she quit a lucrative job because she decided to campaign for someone whose candidacy she believed in.

Her friends and associates describe her as a mother, wife and daughter first (her mother still lives nearby), but they quickly bring up her community activism. She quit the law firm to work for Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) in 1991 and has worked in public service jobs since. She gave birth to their older daughter, Malia, in 1998. In the intervening years she moved into positions of ever-greater authority, and she was earning almost $275,000 a year before scaling back her duties this year. Work became increasingly important, but not for her own identity, according to her friend Jarrett. "I think part of why work has been so important to her, and why she considers herself a professional, is that she cares passionately about what she does," Jarrett said.

Gee, was she sacrificing her law career for...Richard M. Daley? Don't you just hate it when highpower intelligent women have to sacrifice themselves for a mayoral candidate?

Perhaps Michelle Obama feels that she'll be able to best fulfill her own ideals of what matters to her as the First Lady rather than as the vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Maybe she just loves her husband enough to want to do all she can to help him achieve his ambitions. For whatever reason she's put her own professional career on hiatus, that's her choice and aren't we supposed to respect a woman's right to choose?