I’m sure I’m not the only one constantly trying to pretend I’ve been transported back 2-4 years, to some point in Obama’s second term when my problems seemed quaint and the world made sense. The Obamas had so much class and grace that we took for granted. Michelle was a big part of that in that she worked tirelessly for her causes, she really connected with people, and she was just an incredible example of the grace, strength and influence of her position. She was also of course the first woman of color to be our first lady. As Tracee Ellis Ross puts it so well in a new essay, Michelle helped shatter stereotypes and false media representations of black women.

Lennie, Lena Dunham’s newsletter, has a new book coming out from their press division with essays by prominent people about Michelle and what she meant to them. This week they published Tracee Ellis Ross’s essay about Michelle and her enduring impact. It was powerful and Ross wrote eloquently about what Michelle meant to her personally and symbolically. You can read her essay on Lenny Letter and here’s an excerpt:

I first visited the Obama White House in 2011 for one of Michelle Obama’s mentoring events timed to Women’s History Month. There’s a photograph of the two of us from that day. We’re in profile, and we are talking with our hands. Her hand is down and my hand is up, and it looks like there’s a bird between us. When I think back to that photo, it’s clear to me that we were just beginning a conversation about being proud, powerful black women in this country, which continues to this day and stays alive whether we see each other or not.

To be in partnership with your husband and to also have your own life is not original, at least not in real life. Having that combination embodied in a figure as archetypal as the First Lady has had a huge impact on our culture. She didn’t shy away from being a loving wife. She didn’t shy away from the importance of fashion to her role. But at the same time she was robustly herself.

We don’t happen to be black. We are black. Mrs. Obama made room for my character, Rainbow Johnson. She validated a Rainbow Johnson for people who had never met a black woman with the revolutionary experience of being joyful. A black woman who is not only surviving but thriving. A black woman who is actually in love with her husband — not an image we usually see in American pop culture. A black woman who can be goofy and sexy, who can be smart and empowered and soft and lovable and vulnerable. Eight years of watching Michelle Obama as a person, not just relegated to doing “woman things,” provided an antidote to all the false representations of black women that have inundated us for centuries — images that don’t represent the reality, or the humanity, of who we are as black people. Of who we are as people. And then to have her name prefaced by two things that are rarely associated with black women — “First” and “Lady” — well, it shattered everything.

[From Lenny Letter]

I love how she mentioned Michelle’s fashion! She was/is a fashion icon and yet she was so much more. There’s also another paragraph about how Michelle called out 45 at the 2016 Democratic National Convention without ever using his name. Ross wrote that Michelle “put the shame back where it belonged” and helped define the pain and sadness that so many of us felt that a man caught on tape bragging about sexual assault could somehow be a presidential nominee. At that point many of us had no clue that it would get exponentially worse, but as you know it did.

Ross put it better than I ever could. Michelle was her husband’s partner and equal, she was her own person and we watched her expertly walk the line between advocate and activist. Michelle meant so much to women and particularly to women of color as Ross mentioned. The first family from 2008 to 2016 represented the best of our country’s values and strengths and they were such a study in contrasts to the current one. If we’re just talking about the current and last first ladies we’re comparing a woman who is a Harvard educated lawyer and in an equal partnership with an fiercely loyal, appreciative man with a model who is, by most indications, in an abusive relationship with a bully tyrant. (There’s no shame in being a model and there’s a whole debate to be had as to whether Melania is a victim, accomplice or both.) There’s so much about this horrific administration and toxic, bigoted family to make us appreciate what we had with Michelle, Barack and their daughters. They will never be replaced but I hope, at some point in the very near future, we’ll have another first family who at least won’t make us embarrassed and ashamed. I also want a president who won’t make it their personal vendetta to break down the moral and economic fabric of our society.

Incidentally, Obama era White House photographer Amanda Lucidon has a book coming out with previously unpublished photos of Michelle. It’s called Chasing Light and you can see a preview here.

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We miss you Michelle!
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photos credit: Instagram, Getty and WENN