With Becoming, Michelle Obama Proves She's Just Like You, Me, and Everyone We Know
Remember all the times you looked at Michelle Obama and wondered what she was really thinking? Good news: Her much-anticipated memoir, Becoming, comes out today—and it confirms what we've long suspected: that Michelle is an actual human being who isn't so different from those of us who are still waiting for our invitation to Carpool Karaoke. Consider the following:
Michelle’s dog poops on the rug. Sunny was the culprit and the Treaty Room was the venue. Let others scour Becoming for more substantive revelations; I was hooked when I encountered this tidbit in the preface.
She likes cheese toast. We see Michelle enjoying her first post–White House moment alone—barefoot, in shorts, enjoying the novelty of comfort food she made herself. She writes, “Watching bread turn brown in the toaster feels as close to a return to my old life as I’ve come.” Eat up, sister, you earned it.
She cringes when her man dresses like Don Johnson. I loved Michelle’s description of her very first social outing with Barack. He showed up for happy hour at a Chicago bar wearing a white linen blazer “that looked like it’d come straight out of the Miami Vice costume closet. Ah well.”
Their first kiss was at Baskin Robbins. Regardless of your political affiliation, your heart will melt when you get to the part about Barack and Michelle falling in love. On a warm summer night, the two of them were eating ice cream cones when he looked at her “curiously, with a trace of a smile,” and asked, “Can I kiss you?” Swoon.
Her career path has some zigs and zags. Michelle shares her trepidation about trading a law firm job for a lower-paying position at City Hall and, later, balancing her position as a hospital administrator with her husband’s political aspirations. You might think, Of course you’d give up everything for Barack Obama—but the backstory is complicated. And also really moving.
They fold laundry together in front of the TV. Fine, maybe not anymore, but they definitely did before they moved into the White House. Again, not earth-shattering stuff; just another detail that vaults Becoming from your average buttoned-up political memoir into the kind of book pick you’ll actually talk about with your book club.
Getting pregnant was no picnic. The Obamas suffered a miscarriage and eventually turned to IVF. Michelle writes, “The burden would be more mine than his…. He wouldn’t have his blood drawn. He wouldn’t have to cancel any meetings to have a cervix inspection…. It was me who’d alter everything, putting my passions and career dreams on hold, to fulfill this piece of our dream. I found myself in a small moment of reckoning. Did I want it? Yes, I wanted it so much. And with this, I hoisted the needle and sank it into my flesh.”
They saw a marriage counselor. Barack was reluctant at first: “Couldn’t he just run over to Borders and buy some relationship books?” Michelle doesn’t elaborate much about their sessions with "Dr. Woodchurch"—nor should she—but the fact that she discloses their existence at all feels like a win for couples everywhere. We all have problems. Talking helps. Period.
She eats Chipotle in the front seat of her car. Michelle used to excel at what she calls “the lunch time blitz,” where she left her office to replace lost socks, pick up birthday presents, restock juice boxes, and enjoy a quick solo meal behind the steering wheel—all in an hour or less. In my experience, this is what exactly “balance” looks like. Props to Michelle and her writers for avoiding this word, which puts me to sleep.
They give cringeworthy advice to their kids. Malia and Sasha were getting ready for their first day of their new school in Washington, D.C. The Obamas were still living at a hotel and the “secret people” (as Sasha called the Secret Service) had set up a tent to protect the kids from the scrum of photographers waiting outside. Not exactly your ordinary morning. But the president-elect couldn’t resist dropping some dad corniness into the mix as the girls shouldered their purple backpacks: “And definitely don’t pick your noses!”
She’s super connected to her mom… I always wondered if Marian Robinson ended up staying with the Obamas for the full eight years; turns out, she did. Michelle says, “The girls needed her. I needed her.” But no-nonsense Mrs. Robinson declined Secret Service protection, did her own laundry, and made regular trips to CVS and Filene’s Basement alone. She loved when people told her she looked just like the First Lady’s mother.
...and to her friends. Michelle writes movingly about losing a college friend to cancer. Later, at the White House, she prioritizes her nearest and dearest by inviting them for Camp David Boot Camp weekends—so named because she made them work out with her multiple times per day. Yikes. No wonder we're not friends.
PetSmart is her happy place. In one of the more blissful passages in Becoming, we learn about Michelle’s occasional solo trip away from the White House: “For a short while, I enjoyed the glorious anonymity while browsing for better chew toys as Bo—who was as delighted by the novelty of the outing as I was—loaded next to me on a leash.”
Her feet hurt. Michelle broke the ice with the Queen Elizabeth by complaining about the pain caused by her black Jimmy Choos: “Forget that she sometimes wore a diamond crown and that I’d flown to London on the presidential jet; we were just too tired ladies oppressed by our shoes.”
She breaks the rules. On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court affirmed the right of same-sex couples to marry in all 50 states. That night the White House was lit in rainbow colors, and Michelle grabbed Malia’s hand to sneak out and watch the celebration from the shadows of her own lawn. She was wearing a T-shirt and flip-flops and went against the better judgment of her security detail, but she knew she needed to be there.
She does not plan to run for president. I’ll let Michelle break it to you in her own words: “Because people often ask, I’ll say it here directly: I have no intention of running for office, ever…. I do believe that at its best, politics can be a means for positive change, but this arena is just not for me.”
Sigh.
