It couldn’t be any other topic that Michelle Obama sings with Bruce Springsteen: Glory days. At 59, there was the most expressive first lady in American history, the descendant of slaves who furrowed her brows while planting lettuce in the White House, the one who danced with her powerful goddess hips. So confident we believe in her skin and her role! He didn’t stick his nose in the oval office, but he was solvent in speeches. He tried to de-idealize power and even love; clear that her husband’s breath stank in the morning even if he was the leader, she affirmed. Instead, something was wrong and it was about one of the defining philosophical problems for women, especially if they are black: hair.
Because while the country seemed ready to have a black president, it wasn’t ready for his thick, curly hair, he confessed to Ellen DeGeneres. It would distract from the spotlight, and he decided to straighten them for eight years. Being a black woman with white hair. Wearing a crown imposed in order to soften the racialized appearance. Because even today, showing natural hair is seen as dirty, as it represents a powerful form of black control and oppression. This is well analyzed by Emma Daribi in No me toques el pelo (Captain Swing), and tells how a thirteen-year-old student, Zulaikha Patel, refused to submissively tame her hair and started a protest at a private school in Pretoria. She lost the battle, too young, too alone despite living in Africa.
At the start of the tour of her book Con luz propia (Planet), Michelle appeared with African hairstyles. In her story, she confesses that she was demoralized during the pandemic, until she learned to knit. That he focused on the small things to get back to thinking about the big things. And he stopped torturing his hair, released it and regained his true crown. In its glory days.
