It could not be another topic that Michelle Obama chanted with Bruce Springsteen: Glory days. At 59, there was the most expressive first lady in American history, the descendant of slaves who frowned while planting lettuce in the White House, the one who danced with her powerful goddess hips. We believed her so sure in her skin and her role! She didn’t stick her nose in her oval office, but she was solvent in her speeches. She tried to deidealize power and even love; Of course her husband’s breath stinked in the morning even though he was the leader, she said. Instead, something was wrong and it was about one of the determining philosophical problems for women, and even more so if they are black: hair.
Because while the country seemed ready for a black president, it wasn’t ready for his thick, curly hair, he told Ellen DeGeneres. She would distract from the focus, and she decided to smooth it out for eight years. Being a black with white hair. Wearing a set crown in order to soften her racialized appearance. Because even today, showing it natural is perceived as something dirty, since it represents a powerful form of control and black oppression. Emma Daribi analyzes it well in Don’t Touch My Hair (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 beginning of the tour of her book With her own light (Planet), Michelle appeared with African hairstyles. In her story, she confesses that she was demoralized during the pandemic, until she learned to knit. She that she focused on the small to think big again. And she stopped torturing the hair, freed it, and took back the true crown of hers. In her glory days.
