Michelle’s Indonesian sartorial adventure, cont.

What is the problem Michelle is having with her Islamic outfit in this photo? Are her pants too long, so she’s pulling them up? And why does she look so discomfited? Normally she puts a lot of planning into her outfits and is proud of them (as misplaced as such pride is). Here she looks like a prisoner who has been dressed in an ugly outfit against her will and feels embarrassed and humiliated at how she has been made to look. Was this some kind of coded signal to Western women telling them to submit themselves to Islam?

The blogger Cripes Suzette has a very funny but vulgar commentary on the series of photos of which the above is a part. It’s too raw for me to reproduce or discuss here, but I am linking it because, as gross as the blogger’s comments are, the position of Michelle’s hands in at least one of the photos justifies Suzette’s interpretation. (See especially the photo with the caption, “”Ahhhhhh! NOW we can smile.” What is Michelle doing with her right hand?)

- end of initial entry -

Leonard D. writes:

I can speculate on what the problem with Michelle Obama’s pantsuit was (other than its rather awful drabness). My guess is that she was wearing heels with it. Certainly Michelle often wears heels, as many Amazons do. It is a modern women’s fashion to wear high heels with pants that would otherwise be too long. If you take off the heels, though, then the pants are too long, and you either tread on them (awkward) or use your hands to pull them up to walk. Clearly that is what Michelle is doing in those photos.

LA replies:

A reasonable theory. But if true, it’s a wardrobe mishap of the first order, suggesting that not just Obama has lost his mojo, but his wife as well.

Laura Wood writes:

What a ridiculous get-up. The problem isn’t heels. The whole thing is too big. No one can walk in pants that long and Michelle is trying to hold them up. It reminds me of Michelle’s cartoonish appearance at the Vatican, in which she wore a veil that was too long. In both cases, there seems to be deliberate exaggeration. Perhaps the intention in Indonesia was to highlight the oppression of Muslim women, as if they are forbidden to wear clothes that fit properly. She looks absurd.

LA writes:

Another blog, “I own the world,” has extensive reader comments on Cripes Suzette’s photo layout. Again, very vulgar, but very funny, and, given the extraordinary nature of the photos, not unfair.

I haven’t seen such coarse treatment of a national figure since attending an exhibit on the French Revolution many years ago at the Morgan Library in New York City. The exhibit included cartoons published during the Revolution that featured King Louis, Marie Antoinette, and other royals and nobles in pornographic poses.

LA continues:

And let us also recall the incredible fact that we are only seeing these photos because the White House approved them for release, suggesting a White House that is as discombobulated and distracted in the performance of its duties as Michelle is in her Muslim pants suit.

Or perhaps Michelle herself approved the photos for release! Which would suggest that her self-love is so extreme that she can’t tell when she has made herself into a laughing stock and painful embarrassment. She loves herself, however terrible she looks. Remember that blacks have been shown to have much higher self esteem than whites and East Asians.

LA writes:

Also, it looks as though Suzette shares my obsession with Michelle’s bizarro fashion sense. A commenter at her site writes:

Suzette,<> You are freakin’ hilarious. Have you thought of publishing a coffee table book with all your collected musings on MOO’s fashion wonderfullness? I’d be first in line at the book store.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 15, 2010 10:49 AM | Send