Michelle Obama: Driving a Smart Sensuality Message into Your Head One Day, One Photo Op and One Interview at a time
Saturday, April 25, 2009 at 6:40AM 
via Huffington Post, the First Lady talks to White House staffer's kids on Bring Your Children to Work Day.Yesterday's Huffington Post Headline: Michelle Obama repeats Two Most Controversial Articles of Cothing asks readers to rate her look 'Love it' or 'Lose it'.
Current results on Saturday morning are 58% 'Love it', 42% 'Lose it'.
Guess what? Michelle doesn't care.
Teeing off with the same 'controversial' (two 'fashion don'ts' now mixed together in one outfit) outfit, this morning's NYTimes reminds us that FLOTUS is a First Lady in Control of Building Her Image.
Doug Mills/The New York TimesWhile Oscar de la Renta and Arnold Scaasi critique Michelle's fashion 'misfires' and her unwillingness to be dictated to by magazine stylists and the Seventh Avenue establishment, Michelle moves ahead, methodically creating her own image as a Smart Sensuality woman.
Fashion is not her passion, but a subset of a wide range of interests that motivate our First Lady. First and foremost, Michelle Obama is at the wheel of her own PR machine, aided by communications director Camille Johnston and press secretary Katie McCormick Lelyveld.
Perhaps Michelle is still smarting from the Conservative media's attempts to portray her as an angry Black woman. She also knows that in today's blogosphere, a single scathing commentary often ends up on page 1 of Google search. The post could be a pack of lies, but readers and digital distribution will make it 'true'.
The same digital media that helped elect the Obamas can also bite them in the backside, when ignored or not properly managed.
The NYTimes piece quotes the president's senior adviser David Axelrod as saying "I wouldn't say we're tryng to soften her . . . but there is an effort to get to know her. Yes. We want people to know her. There were caricatures of her during part of the campaign.”
Some feminists are disappointed in the early days of Michelle Obama's First Ladyship, articulating concerns that we're not seeing enough of FLOTUS's significant intellectual capital at work.
It's clear to me that she's building her platform, one interview and one photo at a time. And we must acknowledge the fact that both the media and the public are obsessed with Michelle, the new style icon.
In an interview published in April 2009 i-D magazine, a preeminent design and fashion trends publication, Miuccia Prada reminds us that "apart from several heroic moments in politics and history, in the end people only perk up when they're talking about other people's private lives . . . "
Team Obama understands this reality, as if a fashion stylist was writing their playbook. As a Smart Sensuality woman, Michelle Obama knows that the key to seduction and influence in today's world exists in combining style, brains and sensuality with a good heart.
Once her audience is sufficiently captivated and trusting of her character and instincts, Michelle Obama will wave her wand of influence wider and more visibly in public policy. I doubt that we will ever see her as a policy wonk, even though she clearly has the savvy and brainpower.
Michelle Obama knows that you get more bees with honey. AND, many of her policy goals are directly tied to the populist woman that FLOTUS projects.
Our First Lady genuinely believes in family and friends, a good marriage, organic food, and individuality -- to cite a few of her passions. These issues are not fluff to Michelle, but the bedrock of her strategy for living a good life.
Meanwhile, Michelle dumfounds publicists and fashion stylists, magazine editors and celebrity advisers, insisting that Team Michelle will control her image, not them.
This 'refusal', delivered with charm and smiles, is new for image-makers accustomed to calling the shots. Watching from the sidelines, I'm lovin' this First Lady who's striving for authenticity, another characteristic of a Smart Sensuality woman.
I assure you that when Michelle Obama and Queen Rania sat down to tea, they weren't discussing their favorite fashion designers. The two women were hatching a Smart Sensuality plot to convince us to care about serious problems, in America and around the world.
Michelle's genuine charm offensive will extend into the policy arena, when she senses that we're ready to listen. I suspect that she's also sizing up the media and the blogosphere, for evidence about the scope and size of an audience that wants to hear about these topics.
Are we ready? Do we care? The brilliant Miuccia Prada says 'not really'.
Of course, Miuccia Prada has all but invented the term Smart Sensuality woman, using clothes, art and cultural influences to communicate her ideas. Rest assured that Prada's also on board the Smart Sensuality bus, a simple mode of transportation that began rambling through America several months ago.
Just remember that FLOTUS is one sly girl, as impressive a strategist as you get today.
The pundits are looking for a Gulfstream in the sky, when Michelle's actually in a Greyhound, stopping to pick up passengers at the local 7-Eleven.
As a Manhattan woman who's all but given up taxis, in favor of riding the New York subway again after decades in the yellow fleet and private limos, I think I know where she's comin' from. Anne
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