In light of those questions, coverage of Michelle Obama’s “reintroduction” becomes both more revealing and more frustrating. Yesterday’s flurry of media appearances is ostensibly about “softening” Obama—which is pretty much a euphemism for feminizing her, which is pretty much a euphemism for rendering her less problematic for the voting public and the press. (When’s the last time we heard about a male politician’s reputation in need of softening?) One general takeaway from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, after all, is that we still treat the Strong Woman, both in idea and in practice, as something of a paradox; see the Times piece on the “reintroduction tour,” which refers to Michelle-O’s nickname as “The Taskmaster” and notes that, “in her commanding cadences, some people—and not just conservatives—hear a lecture.”

That rash of appearances is about diffusing Obama as a singular political entity and focusing on her instead as a member of a family that just happens to be involved in politics. Relax, the Obama campaign is saying, through signing Michelle up for The View and putting hers and Barack’s just-quirky-enough, romantic-comedy-worthy love story on the cover of US (Celebrities: They’re Just Like Us, Only Better!) Weekly. Michelle’s just like you, only famous! She’s struggling, just like you, to balance her job—which just happens to be campaigning for her husband—and the needs of her family! She, too, is a Modern Woman! Or, as the presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin put it on an MSNBC appearance this morning, “She has a story to tell that I think will resonate with a number of people….That’s a story that’s a woman’s story.”

But it’s worth noting, as far as political strategy goes, that the rumors about and criticisms of Michelle Obama that the “reintroduction tour” is ostensibly meant to combat have focused not on her role as wife and mother, but on her patriotism (secretly hates America!) and her racial attitudes (“Whitey”!). Though the rumors have thus far been entirely unsubstantiated, they’ve been character-focused and relatively deep in their scope, as far as that goes.

Yet the Obama campaign’s strategy for repositioning Michelle in the public mind is not to slap a flag pin on her demurely Jackie-esque dress or to arrange photo ops of her hugging white people, preferably while sporting something from Ralph Lauren’s latest line; it’s been, rather, to render Michelle, the 5’11” Princeton-and-Harvard educated lawyer and business executive, as…girly. The Obama campaign is, in essence, fighting the charges of racism and lack of patriotism leveled against Michelle not on their head, but from their side: with feminism. Or, rather, with something related yet almost contradictory to that. Call it femininityism.

The Obama campaign is betting, on the one hand, that “softening” Michelle, for all that implies, will make her a more empathetic figure for the Legions of Ladies who had supported Clinton in the Democratic primaries and will likely be a key demographic in the general election. But it is also, apparently, assuming that such a feminized portrayal will render Michelle less problematic as a political figure in general, diffusing her famously strong opinions in the fog of femininity and suggesting that those opinions are tangential, not central, to who she is as a person. It’s assuming not only an inversely proportional relationship between being feminine and being threatening, but also that that relationship is a causal one. Even TNR’s excellent Michelle Cottle, analyzing Obama’s View appearance yesterday, subscribes to that logic (emphasis mine):

Watched Michelle O on “The View” this morning. I’m sure the crazies will be parsing her appearance for signs of black rage or hormonal imbalance that I failed to pick up on, but she certainly seemed to do a fine job: she said nothing newsworthy, played nice with Hasselback, graciously acknowledged Whoopie’s praise for helping dispel some of the more pernicious stereotypes of black women (but in no way advanced that line of discussion), and mentioned daughters Sasha and Malia every chance she got. Her black-and-white floral frock (sleeveless, of course) made her look pretty but not threatening, and she and Babs even had some girly discussion about the evils of pantyhose. What gal can’t relate to that?

Again: She said nothing newsworthy. She was pretty but not threatening. Thus, she did a fine job.

Indeed, what gal can’t relate to that?

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