(ThyBlackMan.com) Before you side eye me to hell no this is not one of those let’s bash the First Lady posts. This is not one of those race baiting posts about the First Lady that GOP talking heads like to make into mountains. And this is not one of those posts about the crazy rumors about the First Lady.
Now that we know what it is not. Let’s get to what it is.
First Lady Michelle Obama.
She’s gorgeous.
She’s smart.
She’s the First Lady of the United States.
But honestly is Michelle Obama really all that?
Let me start this story at the beginning.
Monday I’m in the grocery store and I see the First Lady’s smiling face on the cover of More magazine. The FLOTUS is on point on the cover. Makeup is flawless. Hair is laid. Smile is engaging but not fake. The cover story on the First Lady details her time in the White House, one of her greatest 
accomplishments as First Lady and how she’s handled her own self-doubt. The cover of the magazine alone had me hooked even more on the FLOTUS. Reading the story made me fall in love. Love like If my mother wasn’t my mother I’d like to pick the FLOTUS in a close matchup with Janet Jackson.
As I ogled over the FLOTUS in the grocery aisle and tried to imagine what it would be like living in the White House I began to wonder, “If Michelle Obama weren’t the First Lady would she still be all she’s cracked up to be.”
The obvious answer is yes, but with the way the world’s been down on sista’s we’d be hard pressed to hear about it.
As of late successful Black women have had their success held against them. Instead of success being a badge of honor it is instead the first mark of tragedy. If Michelle Obama were not the First Lady would she still be considered beautiful, fashion forward, a model in a mom’s wardrobe? Or would she be considered “not a great beauty” as super model Iman referred to her in the early days of the Obama Administration? If Michelle Obama were not the First Lady but just your run of the mill successful Black woman we’d probably only see her as a successful woman with some sob story in Dark Girls instead of covering Vogue.
Michelle Obama’s fabulosity (thank you Kimora) is unmitigated. But is it also magnified by her role as First Lady?
I say yes.
Looking at the FLOTUS do what she does in her own southside of Chicago Michelle Robinson way makes me feel a sense of pride for both her and myself. It’s the same sense of pride I feel when I see other heralded women of color both in and out of the public eye.
Yet that pride doesn’t seem to translate outside of the Black community especially toward lesser known women. A hard working mother of two sometimes is looked down upon for having the exact same resume stats as the First Lady. Our First Lady is exalted as she should be, but other women just like her are piled upon given titles of welfare royalty.
The matter is one of perception, image and representation. All of which on the positive end of the spectrum are desperately lacking in regards to African-American women. For women of color it seems if we are not First Lady are our accomplishments are not as good as that of a woman just like us.
At a time when there is an entire book discussing the role of Black women in the age of Michelle Obama it seems the redefinition Sophia Nelson has introduced into the discourse on Black women falls completely on deaf ears.
Could it be that at a time when one of most powerful women in the world is a Black woman, she’s still nothing more than just a Black woman. It begs the question, “Without a title are we nothing?”
Staff Writer; Nikesha Leeper
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