But that’s not how Michelle experienced it. She understood that alongside the straitjacket that political wives were supposed to stay in (the adoring and compliant helpmeet, charming but not too opinionated; the same straitjacket that Hillary had once rejected, a choice she continued to pay dearly for), there was an extra set of stereotypes applied to Black women, familiar tropes that Black girls steadily absorbed like toxins from the day they first saw a blond Barbie doll or poured Aunt Jemima syrup on their pancakes. That they didn’t meet the prescribed standards of femininity, that their
...more
