I am talking, of course, about the Michelle-Obama-No-Head-Scarf-in-Saudi-Arabia affair that gripped Twitter this week, and which my colleague Robert Mackey neatly summed up as “Michelle Obama Praised for Bold Stand She Didn’t Take.”
The first lady chose not to wear a head scarf when she and the president visited Saudi Arabia to meet with the new monarch, King Salman, after their trip to India, and that was immediately seen online as either a political message or a snub. Though as Eric Schultz, the deputy White House press secretary, pointed out in a briefing on Wednesday, “The attire the first lady wore on this trip was consistent with what first ladies in the past have worn — first lady Laura Bush, what Secretary Clinton wore on her visits to Saudi Arabia, Chancellor Merkel on her visits to Saudi Arabia, and including other members of the United States delegation at the time.”
To me, this has echoes of the problems Chirlane McCray, first lady of New York City, experienced this month, when Twitter thought she had worn jeans to the funeral of the slain police officer Wenjian Liu. Critics freaked out about how “disrespectful” she was, even though it turned out she was actually wearing a perfectly appropriate viscose jersey pantsuit that just photographed like denim. Oops.
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It took only about a week to change the clothes, the models and even the show’s seating plan.Read more…
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