It’s really funny to me that the Duchess of Sussex and Michelle Obama are both doing podcasts which release weekly episodes within a similar time period. Both podcasts – Meghan’s Confessions of a Female Founder and Michelle’s IMO – are getting so many headlines, but only one of the two women is talking about nitty-gritty personal stuff, and it’s not Meghan. Michelle is truly in her Protecting My Peace/IDGAF Era. Earlier this year, Michelle made the choice to skip Jimmy Carter’s funeral AND Donald Trump’s inauguration. Skipping both of those events back-to-back definitely created some speculation about the state of the Obama marriage. The conversation was basically “what does it say if Michelle doesn’t care enough to keep up appearances?” The thing is, Michelle was trying to telegraph her hatred for Donald Trump, as opposed to telegraphing anything in particular about her marriage.
Michelle Obama is finally opening up about her decision to step back from certain public events. The former first lady raised eyebrows when she did not attend the second inauguration of President Donald Trump in January. The move came shortly after she missed Jimmy Carter’s funeral, where she would have been seated beside Trump.
Though her absence from the spotlight after the new year sparked rumors of bitterness, scandal and even marital discord between her and former President Barack Obama, she now says it was simply “the choice that was right for me.” In the April 23 episode of her podcast, IMO With Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson — which she co-hosts with her brother — Obama and guest Taraji P. Henson get candid about living life in the spotlight and the criticisms they face as Black women.
“People couldn’t believe that I was saying no for any other reason, they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart,” Obama said of the headlines surrounding the inauguration and her husband’s solo outings. “It took everything in my power to not do the thing that was perceived as right, but do the things that was right for me, that was a hard thing for me to do.”
The author and activist said she had to “basically trick” herself into following through on her desire to skip the inauguration — by ensuring that she would have nothing to wear if she started feeling the pressure to attend.
“It started with not having anything to wear,” Obama said of the moment she finalized her decision. “I was like, if I’m not going to do this thing, I got to tell my team, I don’t even want to have a dress ready, right? Because it’s so easy to just say let me do the right thing.”
If her team didn’t prepare a dress for her, she knew she wouldn’t be able to change her mind. Attending events without her husband, or vice versa, all tie into Obama’s efforts to practice the “art of saying no” when it feels like the right decision.
“It’s a muscle that you have to build,” she explained of her philosophy. “And I think we suffered, because it’s almost like we started training late in life to build that muscle, right? I am just now starting to build it. I want our daughters, I want the young women out there… I want my girls to start practicing different strategies for saying no,” she continued. “After all that I’ve done in this world, if I am still showing them that I have to keep- I still have to show people that I love my country, that I’m doing the right thing, that I am always setting, going high all the time, even in the face of a lot of hypocrisy and contradiction, all I’m doing is keeping that crazy bar that our mothers and grandmothers set for us.”
This is surprisingly powerful and profound: “I want my girls to start practicing different strategies for saying no.” Girls and women are conditioned – by families, partners, peers and society – to say yes, to go along, to accommodate, to not make waves, to not stand on business. That’s over now, at least it is for a lot of women, especially women of color. Practice saying “no, I don’t think so.” “No, I don’t want to.” “Nope, not doing that and I’m not going there.” “No” is a complete sentence as well. You don’t have to justify “no.” You can just say “no” and go about your day.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
