Michelle Obama Watch

Luckily after our initial post on this blog about Sasha and Malia Obama, the weeMichelles, we haven’t had to post much about them other than a certain blogger saying Malia Obama was “too grown” in her Access Hollywood interview, but the Times Online did an interesting comparison of Sasha and Malia with young royalty in England. The title is Malia Obama and Sasha Obama: level headed girls facing a big change:

Of all the children of famous faces, politicians’ children seem to have the roughest time. (Minor royals also take a pounding: constant personal attacks on Princess Beatrice recently prompted the Duchess of York to make a televised appeal for the press to back off.)

Criticism is levied at them from the tenderest of ages, beginning with their parents’ choice of nursery school and ending with public humiliation at the slightest slip-up. If they prosper, they are accused of nepotism; if they are less than successful, they are mercilessly pilloried. Curtis Roosevelt, the grandson of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, has recently published a memoir describing how his upbringing robbed him of self-confidence. At 78, he has yet to recover from the trauma.

For Malia and Sasha, the stakes are even higher for one simple reason: they are girls. There is nothing young girls are more sensitive about than their appearance, and there is nothing the media seems to enjoy doing more than criticising how politicians’ daughters look or behave.