Role Model and Personality of the Week!

MICHELLE OBAMA!!!!
A woman we can be proud to look up too!!
Too often, the media depict black women like me as gyrating hoochie mamas, someone's baby mama or dirty crack addicts.
Michelle Obama strikes a pose not seen enough: an accomplished, confident, proud black woman. (And get a load of those arms!)
That seems to scare some people!!
It is said that people are most afraid of what they are not familiar with. And most people don't really know Michelle Obama.
But to be frightened by her, by the idea of her as first lady? That's just downright silly...Seriously.

She was a darling of the media and campaign crowds when her husband, who calls her "my rock," started running for president. Barack Obama's advisers viewed her as his "secret weapon." In Iowa, aides started calling her "The Closer" because of her ability to win people over. After one speech in Muscatine,OH, half of the mostly undecided crowd signed supporter cards for Obama on the way out.
"People aren't used to strong women," Michelle Obama said when she played guest co-host on "The View," the ABC daytime talk show. That appearance was part of the image makeover, to soften her up so most people wouldnt see her as a threat and an angry black woman.
America likes a certain type of first lady — the adoring, smiling, know-your-place-and-stay-in-it kind who stands beside her man, doesn't upstage him and won't dare show bare arms in public. Career political wives, not career women.

As stated by Michelle Obama, "Don't get me wrong; I like soft. Who doesn't? It helps make us women, but it's just one facet of who we are". And Michelle Obama has shown plenty of "soft" already; go watch the family's much-talked about interview with "Access Hollywood," or read her recent interview with Ebony magazine.

But let's cut through the spin and pose this question: In the grand scheme of things, what does Michelle Obama REALLY have to be angry about? Not MUCH!!!

Which is why attempts to paint her as an angry, fire-breathing sister are so laughable.

By all accounts, she has a great husband — who has made history and could make more if he is elected on Nov. 4 — two charming daughters, a power career as a hospital administrator, a million-dollar home in Chicago's Hyde Park and ... those biceps to die for.

She embodies the hopes and dreams of millions of black women, who quietly have longed for the day when we'd see one of our own where Michelle Obama is now — this close (*fingers crossed!) to measuring the White House for draperies and picking out a new china pattern. (I hope she makes at least one room ghetto...just joking)

She's also a role model for Girls everywhere (LIKE ME!!), especially those of color, who have been beaten down by poverty, broken homes, failing schools, low self-esteem and every other obstacle life can put in their way.

"There's not a parent on planet Earth who wouldn't want a daughter like this!
Think of those girls and how it could help them to see someone like Michelle Obama — strong, self-assured, devoted to family, triumphant over some of those same issues in her own life and possibly headed to the White House — and think to themselves, "Yes, I can!!."

Written by Darlene Superville, who is black, has been an editor on The Associated Press' national politics desk for the presidential campaigns of 2000, 2004 and 2008.