Michelle's Closet

Today's New York Times published the op-ed "Boosting America, in Her Own Fashion," in which Kate Betts tried to justify Michelle Obama's wearing a British-designed dress for the state dinner honoring the chinese president Hu Jintao. For Betts, a journalist who is currently writing a book about Mrs. Obama as a fashion icon, the first lady has been a sort of people's princess who has "rewritten the dress code for women who work." She argues Mrs. Obama has freed American women from the prison of high heels and heavy jackets, choosing light cardigans and flats instead. But, "most important," she has taught them to "dress for ourselves, something the first lady does so effortlessly it's hard to imagine that there had ever been any dress code for her position." And more: "she's not afraid to flaunt her femininity - so why should the rest of us be?"

Besides reading like a frivolous piece of Pollyannaism, the op-ed (re-)articulates the notion that it takes courage to express one's femininity, suggesting that an "equal rights" agenda has, shamefully, put femininity in some sort of closet (built by the dirty hands of dykey feminists) -- out of which it should come out. This idea fails to consider the role of undergirding and mirror-like re-inforcer of masculinity that "the feminine" occupies. It assumes a femininity completely independent of the patriarchal masculinity that actually founds it, fetishizes it and seizes it. The fact that Betts thinks women can now dress for themselves reveals a naive understanding of how the feminine guarantees the masculine and could never do away with its internalized gaze of the Other, which is its very existential pre-condition (and vice versa). No one, girly or butch, gender-conformant or non, could ever dress or walk or talk or dance for herself. This is one of the most basic pillars of comprehending the human psyche and its subjective division: ID, Ego, Supergo. One's fantasy is always already the fantasy of the other. Following Lacan, when we speak we are immediately in the realm of the lie -- how could the act of dressing be immune to that logic?

"As we are with all first ladies, we are subconsciously invested in her looking good -- it's almost as if there's some sort of pride at stake." One can easily spot the psychoanalytically uninitiated when they refer to the unconscious as the "subconscious." Besides, our interest in Mrs. Obama looking good is very much a conscious one, as Betts herself suggests in her article, since the better the first lady looks in an American-designed dress, the more American designers can do business with, say, China. And as for the "almost pride" at stake in the first lady's appearance, I'd like to suggest that "pride" is the least of it. There is, instead an almost ontological need to re-articulate certain notions of gender (and race) when we allow her looks to wow us and when we trash her. As well as the business opportunities that arise depending on what brands Mrs. Obama endorses through her sartorial choices.

Most problematic of all, I see the constant re-production of the feminine as body and body alone in the figure of Michelle Obama. If one watches her interviews from a few years ago, she reveals a kind of political rhetoric and intelligence in par with Barack Obama. But since 2008 or so she has really embraced the role of adornment with a cause: childhood obesity, which despite being a social preoccupation, also has everything to do with the body. How does this apologetic mix of J Crew and Prada garments serve as a veil to mask the presumption of an "angry black woman" lurking behind it? Is "the angry black woman" also trapped in some sort of closet that needs to be constantly made up and put on display for surveillance so it can pass for something other, so it can assuage the anxiety that assumes the black anger behind the taffeta? What role does race play in one's inability to ever "dress for oneself"?