MO in MORE Magazine

Snippets of the article here and below. It's only available in its entirety in print. (FYI: this issue has been MORE's best seller in its history so far.)

Michelle Obama: Camelot 2.0?
With her sheath dresses and his Berlin moment, the Obamas seem to be playing the Kennedy card. Is Michelle tempering her South Side Chicago strength with Jackie's softer sell to help Barack capture the White House? And what might that strategy cost her?
By Geraldine Brooks

Here, some choice quotes from Obama:

Asked if she believed in the James Baldwin quote, "Male in female, female in male, white in black and black in white":

"I didn't believe that as a child, no. Or as a teenager." She began to believe what Baldwin wrote only much later, she says, when her working life brought her in close to a wide range of people. "When you live in the world a bit more and you have more exposure to people and their values and their true souls, you make friends, you make enemies, you roll up your sleeves and work with people. You find out that our spirits are more connected. ... People who think they wouldn't like someone of a different race always find someone they like and come to trust. And then they treat that person as the exception, when in fact [she] is probably more the rule."

On trust:

"Trust has no color. I've come to realize that, and I think that we're beginning to realize that as a nation."

On "work-family balance":

"What I found myself -- and most of my friends -- doing is we just cope. We're taught that as women: Just handle it. Just adjust. We accommodate to things that aren't healthy instead of turning around and going, 'This has got to change.'"

On feeling guilty as a working mom:

"It's like, oh, so you take half a salary and you do the same amount of work. They don't take anything off your plate ... I was always guilty, 100 percent of the time. 'Am I doing my job to the fullest? Am I being the kind of mother I want to be to the fullest?'"

On the unusual way she secured her job at University of Chicago Medical Center while on maternity leave with her second child:

"I'll do this as a courtesy, demand a whole bunch of stuff he's not going to give me, [the president] will say no, and we'll be done." To make the point, she went to the interview with 2-month-old Sasha in her arms. "I had on a breastfeeding top. I strolled in: 'Hi! This is me! New baby! ... And I said, I can't be in your office all afternoon in meetings. Also, I can't be your diversity -- a nice person who could 'represent.'" To her astonishment, he said yes to everything.

On how being over 40 helps her weather the criticism:

"This might be a confusing journey if I were 30 or 20. But at 44, fortunately, I'm more comfortable with who I am and I'm more clear about who I am. Had I done this 10 years ago, I don't think I could have done it with as much enjoyment. It would have been more painful. Now all the hard stuff really just rolls off your back."

On what politics has taught her:

"You don't pay attention to the highs and lows. And you embrace the positive. If you talked to my mom, we were raised just like that."

Read the full article in the October 2008 issue of MORE magazine.