THREE DOPE QUEENS

Michelle Obama Used to Romp Around the White House in Cutoffs

“You gotta have hair and clothes that can transition.”

by Brooke Marine

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Photo by @dopequeenpheebs.

On Wednesday, Michelle Obama stopped by for a surprise finale episode of 2 Dope Queens, the popular WNYC podcast hosted by comedians Phoebe Robinson and Jessica Williams, who released a farewell letter on WNYC’s site.

“We’ve got some big news, so you might want to sit back like Wendy Williams about to serve the tea,” Robinson and Williams wrote. “The final episode of our beloved podcast 2 Dope Queens is hitting your feeds today! In the words of Boyz II Men, it’s the ‘end of the road.’ We want to thank you, listeners, for being with us from the very beginning,” they continued. “As for this last episode, we are going out with a bang, y’all. A conversation with her majesty Michelle Obama. When the queen calls, the Queens answer! We couldn’t have dreamed up a better, more meaningful, finale.”

While promoting her memoir, Becoming, and speaking about her initiative, the Global Girls Alliance, which connects leadership and development to the Obama Foundation in order to “build up this next generation of leaders,” the podcast opened up with a very frank discussion about a topic 2 Dope Queens often gracefully covers: the complex and politicized relationship black women can have with their hair, and the ways in which men or white public figures are often exempt from exerting the same amount of energy towards their appearance. “This wasn’t just a First Lady journey, this was a black professional women’s journey,” Obama explained.

Obama revealed that she would often get briefings for travel that “men in politics don’t understand,” which included the weather report from her destination. “Are we in the rain? Are there cobblestones? Is it hot? Is it cold?” she would ask, because her hair and outfits would need to be suit the elements. Other women on the staff would then defer to the First Lady for details. “I’d get these briefings, and then all the other senior women who never get briefed in that way would call and be like, ‘What are we doing tomorrow?’,” she would say, before telling them, “Girl, don’t wear heels because we’re on cobblestones and we’re gonna be walking up a hill and there’s gonna be grass…there’s a whole other women thing that no one talks about or writes about.”

Michelle Obama’s Hair Evolution: Elegant, Presidential and Always Inimitably Fabulous

Michelle Obama arriving at the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America

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Michelle Obama making the opening remarks as she and U.S. President Barack Obama host an evening of celebration in honor of musician Stevie Wonder’s receipt of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song

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Michelle Obama speaking as she and President Barack Obama host An Evening of Poetry, Music and the Spoken Word at the White House

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Michelle Obama and President Barack Obama attending a celebration of country music at the White House

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U.S. President Barack Obama has a word with first lady Michelle Obama after they arrive to make a presentation in support of Chicago as the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Copenhagen, Denmark

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Michelle Obama speaks during the ServiceNation launch of ‘MISSION SERVE: Forging A Continuum Of Service’ at George Washington University

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Michelle Obama speaking during the media preview of the White House holiday decoration

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Michelle Obama and husband U.S President Barack Obama waiting for Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his wife Margarita Zavala to arrive for a State Dinner at the White House

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US President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama arriving at the 2010 welcome ceremony of the G20 Summit in Toronto

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Michelle Obama attending an event about the Affordable Care Act at George Washington University Hospital

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Michelle Obama attending an event about the Affordable Care Act at George Washington University Hospital

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Michelle Obama speaking during dedication ceremonies of the new Fisher Houses on the campus of Naval Support Activity in Maryland

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Michelle Obama appears on NBC News’ “Today” show

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Michelle Obama listening during the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner

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Michelle Obama doing a dance after President Obama joked with her during a Cinco de Mayo reception in the White House

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US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama waiting to greet Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, for a reciprocal dinner at the Winfield House in London

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Michelle Obama greeting volunteer workers during the Heroes at Home program’s 1,000th home renovation project in Washington, DC

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President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama speaking to one another during the NCAA men’s college basketball Carrier Classic between the Michigan State Spartans and the North Carolina Tar Heels

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Michelle Obama attending the 2011 Building a Healthier Future summit

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Michelle Obama speaking during the BET Honors 2012 at the Warner Theatre

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Michelle Obama awaiting the arrival of British Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife, Samantha Cameron, prior to a State Dinner as part of an official visit on the North Portico of the White House

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Michelle Obama and daughter Sasha walking from St John’s Episcopal Church after attending Easter Service

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Michelle Obama attending the 2012 White House Correspondents Association Dinner in Washington, DC

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Michelle Obama at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina

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Michelle Obama speaking during an awards ceremony for the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities in the White House

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Michelle Obama attending the 2013 Inaugural Ball

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Michelle Obama speaking during the “Building a Healthier Future Summit” at the Lisner Auditorium of George Washington University in Washington, DC

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Michelle Obama laughing to a joke told by comedian Conan O’Brien during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner

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Michelle Obama speaking during a veterans employment event in the East Room April 30, 2013 at the White House

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Michelle Obama speaking at an awards ceremony in the White House

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During her tenure in the White House, one of the former FLOTUS’ main beauty missions, she said, was to keep her hair healthy, “because at the end we only have one set of hair follicles…and I wanna have some hair when I’m 70.” When asked how often she would her hair done in a week or month, Obama admitted that “it depends on what the schedule is.” She talked about having “up days,” throughout the week. An up day, according to Obama, “was the day I was getting my hair and makeup done,” so that she could make all of her public appearances for the week in one day without having to go through the sometimes arduous process of getting glam’d up for events day after day. Still, she did not need to spend every day in her life in full glam mode, and would occasionally take some time off to keep heat and other products out of her hair in order to maintain its health. “If I was down, I’d be like, don’t call me because I’m not putting heat on my hair and we’re not doing any of that,” she told the comedians.

On her “down days,” the First Lady would wear cutoff shorts and baseball caps around the White House, often to the shock of some of the staff. “[I would be] coming out scaring butlers, like ‘It’s just me! It’s a down day! Don’t freak out,’” she joked. “You gotta have hair and clothes that can transition from doing pushups on the floor with Bishop Tutu—which I did by the way. He challenged me to a pushup contest once,” Obama said, while acknowledging her journey to curate an appropriate wardrobe that ranged from haute couture to casual weekend wear.

Obama also praised the millennial generation for being open to conversations about complex relationship a black woman may have with her hair. “My girls, they own all of what they do…because they were brought up in a generation where it was like yeah this is who I am, this is what I’m doing,” she said. “I think it is a political freedom statement that you all are even talking about this and it gives the space for everybody to talk about it and figure out what works for them and that it is an effort. How are people gonna understand it if we don’t talk about it?”

Related: Michelle Obama Tells Oprah Winfrey That Marrying Barack Taught Her to “Love Differently”