First lady fashions

Okay, I'm totally blowing the blog up -- sorry -- but I wanted also to share something I saw in the LA Times during DNC week before I forget or the link disappears. I still haven't quite processed this yet, but I think it would make for an interesting conversation one day to discuss the ways in which First Lady fashions have mobilized, at different historical moments (and in other national contexts; we need only think of Imelda's shoe connoisseur-ship), questions about femininity, taste/style, class, race and their ties to the national body (by "body," I refer both to polity and biology, which, of course, as Foucault tells us, are inextricably linked).

The title of this blog entry links to a photo spread the LA Times did on Michelle Obama's many style choices during the democratic campaign. I think the article invites many a-conversation about national attitudes and assumptions about racialized femininities, particularly black femininities, and how they are situated within the field of political spectacle/visual culture, which certainly produces its own set of desires, especially erotic ones.