In her first hundred days as First Lady, Michelle Obama has worn her hair mostly in a sleek page-boy, but also occasionally gently waved and upswept. Johnny Wright, the 31-year-old stylist from Frederic Fekkai's West Hollywood salon, who was anointed Michelle's exclusive hairdresser three months ago, has experimented a bit with the White House supermodel, giving her bangs for an appearance in Prague during the G20 Summit and a half up-do for her meeting with Queen Elizabeth.
What Wright hasn't and will never give Michelle, however, are twists, braids, ringlets, dreadlocks, or any other African-American style. Michelle hasn't worn her hair natural since she was a school girl. Only once on a vacation to Jamaica during her college years, did she wear braids, according to friends.
In Chicago, where until last January Michelle had lived her entire life with the exception of college and law school, most professional black women straighten their hair. Ethnic hair can be misinterpreted as defiant or militant, "and you don't want to do anything that's going to put you in a position where people can criticize you," says Laura Washington, an African-American journalist. "I know women who've been fired from their jobs for wearing fros, also locks and braids." It's considered a violation of professional dress codes, tantamount to wearing shorts in the office.
A noted exception is Carole Brown, the Harvard educated financial expert, who succeeded Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett as board chairman of the Chicago Transit Authority. Her braids, which once cascaded around her shoulders but are now cut short, have caused not a stir in the press or the blogosphere. The trains and buses still run (sort of) on time.
But Carole Brown is not the First Lady. "It would be asking a lot of the American public," to accept Michelle in ethnic hair, says Michael "Rahni" Flowers, who did Michelle's hair for 28 years, from the time she graduated from high school through the inauguration. "People assume it means something, when you have natural hair. It means militancy. It means defiance."
Most professional black men wear their hair like President Obama's in an extremely short, non-descript style that requires little care.
Black women, meanwhile, undergo time consuming, costly hair rituals. The First Lady is no different. Almost every week since she was eighteen, until she moved into the White House last January, Michelle visited Flowers' Van Cleef Salon on Chicago's Gold Coast for a wash and styling. Every six weeks during those years, Flowers straightened her hair. She continued to visit him throughout the campaign and even after the election before moving to D.C. It was Flowers who changed the flip Michelle wore at the start of the presidential race to the smooth look she now favors, because the flip was too hard for her to maintain between salon visits.
Flowers showed Michelle how to wrap her hair around her head and cover it with a scarf at night to keep its sleek shape. "In the morning, she could comb it out, and it would be nice and smooth," he said.
After the inauguration (for the festivities Flowers not only did Michelle's hair but also her mother's and daughters' hair) the 54-year-old stylist, declined to give up his venerable Chicago salon, where many of the city's most prominent black women get their hair done, to move to D.C. Johnny Wright then took over as the First Lady's hairdresser.
If Michelle wore her hair ethnic, adds an African-American friend from her Princeton days, "she'd get attacked. She'd get appreciation, too, mainly from black women, but she'd get attacked for not looking the part. She also would be criticized generationally, regardless of race, so older black people would complain too, because it's too ethnic and not professional. A lot of black people have internalized this white standard of beauty, so they would lay into her."
Even with her straightened, non-ethnic hair, Michelle is changing how whites look at black women. What is perhaps most exciting about the new First Lady is not that she's the black Jackie Kennedy, but that she's freeing us from Jackie's polished perfection - an ideal based on white, European notions of beauty and elegance.
Michelle's love of vivid color, bold prints, strong accessories and striking make-up, and her eagerness to wear frocks by young immigrant designers is a kind of apotheosis of African-American style, though to some blacks her style seems muted.
"We tend to wear bold color more than other women because we don't look so hot in pastels," says Michelle's Princeton friend. "So maybe Michelle's color palette seems bold, but compared to what?"
The pale mainstream, of course.
While white people have fallen in love with Michelle for many of the right reasons - her intelligence, compassion, strength, humor and uncynical sense of moral duty - their adulation also allows them to congratulate themselves on their enlightened ideas about race: Here is a dark-skinned African-American woman with classic black features, and we relate to her totally! She's black, and she's one of us.
But would white America feel the same about her, if she let her hair "out" -- that is, wore it natural?
To me, the most offensive aspect of The New Yorker 's July 28, 2008 cover depicting the Obamas as White House terrorists, was the immense afro on Michelle. More than the soon-to-be First Couple's fist bump, or even the assault rifle strapped to Michelle's back, meant to satirize right wing criticism of the Obamas, it signaled the kind of sixties radicalism which passed out of the world with Huey Newton and Malcolm X.
And, yet, when I recently came across a picture of Michelle as a Princeton undergraduate sporting what looked to me like an afro, it intrigued me. I read into her hair a maverick spirit, a willingness to look ethnic in a sea of white preppies. It was the early eighties, a time when African-American college students ironed their jeans and wore collared shirts and twin sets, and in general looked neater and more pulled together than their non-black peers. "It was just the way we were brought up. It had to do with the respectfulness with which you presented yourself," recalls Michelle's Princeton friend.
She insisted the do wasn't a fro, but rather the African-American version of the puffy, heavily layered look popularized at the time by Charlie's Angels star Farrah Fawcett.
But when I showed Flowers, who wears a seventies style afro, the picture, he said, "It looks kind of fro-y to me. A relaxed fro, but a fro none-the-less."
We agreed that Michelle looked adorable. Said Flowers, "Maybe in the next four years she can try something like that."
Michelle has her hair permed like so many in the Afro-American community. Now could we please move on to a more important subject.? She looks like Michelle each time I take a look.
Much Ado about nothing! http://manchestersquare.blogspot.com
I swear to God, people are too petty for kind words. She needs to wear what she's comfortable with and frankly, for her face -- she wouldn't look all that hot in braids, dreads, twists, OR an afro.
That "afrocentric" stuff ain't for everybody just because they're black.
I'll be honest. I'm a black woman who has long curly blonde braids. It's been my style since I was a kid. Mother hated it, didn't care. Couple of model examples, but mine is blonde and long as theirs: http://attitudehair.co.uk/pics/curly/diane01.jpg or http://attitudehair.co.uk/pics/curly/emma02.jpg


People who've had problems with my hair have been black men and women. Some either love it or hate it. With white men and women, they absolutely love it. They are so intrigued and awe, they want me to do their hair like mine. 

Black women are so hung up with hair. I feel if you have the confidence and do not have an intimidating aura, you can get anywhere. If you want to wear a fro, braids, whatever it doesn't matter, be yourself and be presentable. A fro and braids can be presentable.
Black women are the ones who are so stuck to what other people think of them and what they think white people think of them, when really white people could care less, maybe it was like that back in the days, but today it's a different time.
I'm certain that she does more than just a hot comb touch up every 6 weeks. She works out every morning. I had wildly curly hair all my life, and I could not keep fit and have good hair everyday. Something had to give -- and in my case it was the hair.
But I did try the Japanese straightening method. Boy did that work! How easy it was to do anything I wanted with limp silky strands.
My point is, that it only takes ONE physical activity to wreck a neat hair style -- especially when extra-curly /frizzy hair is the issue. MO MUST have chemical help. PLUS combs and presses. She needs and does all she can get.
And what makes you think she's ever going to reveal all of that?
Because when you own a flat iron, thermal-press combs and whatever? You can do that.
Just because you don't know how to handle your curly hair, don't presume to know the limitations of others.
A lot of people these days who've had straightening chemicals have grown them out and cut that crap off because there are more options for styling kinky-curly hair however we want. It's all GOOD hair and we do not want to give up our beautiful natural texture just because we want to wear it straight at times. I'm not afraid of my hair "reverting" when I sweat like you apparently are -- you just wear it curly or iron again when you're ready.
BTW -- every 6 weeks I get a cellophane conditioner color and a hair trim -- not a relaxer. So quit assuming every 6 weeks automatically means chemical straightener. Many folks will come to learn that it's the CONDITIONING and REGULAR CUTS that make kicky hair manageable, not straightening chemicals.
Stop this nonsense, please.
Well said sis!
Furthermore, the fact that you're using the phrase "good hair" with a straight face in this day and age suggests that you might want to stop worrying so much about what's on top of your head and pay a little more attention to what's inside it.
Who here thinks what? I'm getting a flurry of messages. Many, I'd say, are highly angered at Whites. But I still don't understand exactly why. Some seem angered at Michelle's lack of sensitivity to what they see as an important movement. And still others say, screw that. We're staying natural. Is there no consensus on this topic among Black women? I don't know... so many different messages...
And, oh, another thing. White women have issues with their hair too. That's fairly obvious. I say most women pick the styles they choose has to do more with attracting men than anything else. I know. It sounds crazy. I think too many women, both Black and White, spend too much time, worrying about what men think. I think amongst themselves they don't really care what they look like. That's why they're called sisters. Am I right about that? Or abysmally off?
Then again, there is lots of competition among young women today, to be perfect. I mean a lot of them do their nails weekly, drive fancy cars, and are always dressed sharpely. Sometimes I wonder what are we teaching women today? For example, are we teaching them to use their brains? Why do we—or do we?—place so much emphasis on some ridiculous standards of Beauty? Each culture has its own standard of Beauty and we need to respect that.
Thus it's a political and cultural statement. All choices involve values, culture, power and consequences for going against the norm of whoever has the power. It is clear, documented, etc. that Black women are pentalized in the work force for wearing their own natural hair styles.
Michelle is an intelligent woman and she knows this fact. People already found her "Too Black" i.e. too focused on issues of her ethnicity/race during the campaign. Many disparaging things were said and written about her "Blackness". If she wore her hair "natural" he would have had a hard time getting white support.
It's about power people, who has the power to pentalize or reward you for affirming their standards of beauty.
I am a Natural hair wearer and willing to accept the consequences; but anyone you wants to pentalize me will have a fight on their hands when I find out. They will not get a free ride for their racism, nor any affirmation from me that my natural hair is not up to their Euro-American standards. I honor my Ancestors and my Creator, with my naturalness; the texture of my hair, the color of my skin, the size of my lips and nose. I will not dishonor them, by the unatural and harmful skin bleaching, heat, hair chemicals or plastic surgery.
I will not insult your intelligence by pretending that I feel your pain. I don't---at least not in terms of superficial physical features. My ancestors were slaves, too. However, they became mixed-race soon after they arrived, largely rendering moot the issues of hair texture and skin color even though they were held in physical bondage---or at least half of them. Some escaped.
It deviates from the norm, it's unconventional, some say, but I love it for its unique characteristics. And yes, it's a radical style, but I love that! There is so much boring hair out there today...everyone wants to look the same. What's happening? I think I can understand the rage some person's feel. If I were an AAwoman I WOULD be political about it, since it's a practice that goes back to Slavery. But that's just me. I still say women should wear their hair anyway they want, and not worry about what other people say. It's a waste of time. Well, not really.
Your thinking is a bit too militant for the crowd that hangs around here. And you raise serious issues, but you're thinking seems flawed sometimes. I get a feel for the energy behind your words, but I can't really tell where you're coming from.