Well, maybe she just doesnât feel like it, a decision that shouldnât feel radical but still somehow does. As Obama explained to Bush, the rumors surrounding her decision to simply bow out of some aspects of public life proves how many expectations women still carry on their shoulders.
âAs women, I think, we struggle with disappointing people,â she said. âI mean, so much so that this year peopleâ¦couldnât even fathom that I was making a choice for myself that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing.â
She continued: âThis couldnât be a grown woman just making a set of decisions herself, right? But thatâs what society does to us.⦠We start actually going, What am I? What am I doing? What am I doing this for? And if it doesnât fit into the sort of stereotype of what people think we should do, then it gets labeled as something negative and horrible.â
Although Obamaâs circumstances as wife to a president are certainly extraordinary, her comments immediately resonated with women across the country because of their universality.
So often women are the ones who sacrifice their own needs, goals, and wants for others, especially if they are raising children. Moms are so consistently and constantly needed, giving everything we can of ourselves to our kids to ensure they are happy and healthy, that our own needs are often pushed aside. A mother not only creates her child from her own body, but she is expected to sacrifice for them, over and over again. Itâs fulfilling and lovely, but also can be exhausting.
And no matter how egalitarian your marriage is, there still is an expectation that a wife is supposed to support her husband, both socially and professionally. The Obama marriage is indisputably one of equals; they both went to Ivy League schools, and they both worked in high-powered law careers. But when her husbandâs career went stratospheric, Obama immediately took on the role of supporting him. It was never a role she wanted (she famously hates politics), but it was one she excelled at. And itâs a role we still expect women to shoulder for their husbands, even if they must give all of themselves to do so.
Perhaps this is why Obamaâs comments have felt quietly revolutionary to so many. Since the podcastâs release, women on the internet have been chattering up a storm about how they struggle to say no to anything anyone asks of them, whether itâs their spouse, children, or career, simply because we have been socialized to never do so.
As women, society tells us that we need to take care of our own needs last, to put on our own oxygen masks after affixing one to the face of our child. Only once our duties are done can we breathe. Many women said online that they had watched their own mothers go through a similar transformation when they were empty nesters, finally able to put their own needs first once everyone, finally, stopped asking them to give.