We have all heard the phrase, “behind every great man is a great woman.” Typically when women hear it, it is taken as a compliment. The fact that Michelle Obama publicly condemned such comments along her husband’s campaign trail made me respect her from the start.

Like Michelle, it bewilders me that there are still no quotes like “stand next to,” or “by your man,” (of course other than Tammy Wynette’s song “Stand by your man” or in a negative context after a male politician cheats on his wife and she decides to stay).

Why are there no expressions like, “next to any great man is a great woman,” or visa versa or no man at all?

It was about the time I was beginning to ask myself these questions that my July 21 copy of The New Yorker arrived with the satirical drawing of Barack and Michelle Obama on the cover. What bothered me most was not Barack in a Somali robe and turban fist-bumping his wife, but rather Michelle Obama’s caricature in militant attire with an Afro holding an AK-47.

The flareup over Michelle’s “radicalness,” “unlady-like potential first lady behavior” and “angry black woman issues” flooded media outlets across the country from the first day Barack decided to run for President.

One of the beginning concerns was over her senior thesis from Princeton University titled, “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.”

In the paper, Obama wrote that the path she chose by attending Princeton University would likely lead to her “further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow [her] to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant.”

In her introduction, she wrote about her experiences at Princeton and how they made her very aware of her “blackness,” more than ever before.

Following snippets of her paper being quoted on the Internet, commentator Jonah Goodberg remarked on National Review Online that Michelle’s full thesis would be unavailable until after Election Day at the Princeton library.

He mockingly remarked, “I wonder why,” suggesting that her anger would lose her husband the presidency.

This societal pressure for women whether it is first ladies, women in power or any other type of woman to remain calm, pretty and silent made me think back to the Democratic campaign trail when critics ruthlessly dubbed Hillary Clinton the “Ice Queen” due to her willful, demanding, resilient and fierce character.

With “Iron my shirt” Hillary Clinton nutcrackers still on the market, suggestions that she had an unfair advantage of becoming a New York senator because her husband had an affair, and the genuine fear that we could have become a “Vaginal America,” it is no surprise to me that Michelle is still being attacked for the same superficial reasons (especially now that her husband is President-elect).

The problem with most white first ladies (with the exception of Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Hillary Clinton) is that society has pressured them to be meek in their advocacy. (Both Bush ladies, for example, advocated literacy as their primary cause in a country with a 99 percent adult literacy rate).

Society also criticizes black women for being loud, out of control and radical when they do not “assimilat[e] into a white cultural and social structure.”

Sadly, too many women (of all colors) in this country follow Barbara Bush’s advice to be good, silent and “Don’t correct your husband,” (she said to Ricki Green in a 2004 interview when explaining what advice she gave to Laura on how to be a good first lady).

Michelle is intelligent, cultivated and possesses a sense of elegance in her strength and confidence – she is a mentoring figure that rejects both black and white stereotypes of what it means to be a “proper” woman and first lady.

She embodies the unsaid expression of standing next to her man, fighting to make sure that there is a Vaginal America; that this part of America still has a voice. That this voice is saying something like, “We are angry and are not going to be silent anymore.”

Originally Published Sunday, Dec. 7, 2008