Visualizing Power: Michelle Obama, Political Communication, and Lifestyle Magazines

Abstract

ABSTRACT Michelle Obama’s tenure as the First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS) comported with many of the gendered expectations of the position, yet it also marked a significant symbolic transformation in the role. As FLOTUS, Obama’s work to address childhood obesity and promote access to nutritious foods through Let’s Move! and MyPlate defined her political identity. On its face, this work echoed the gendered policy issues embraced by previous first ladies; however, we argue that First Lady Obama strategically chose to center a coordinated set of symbolically laden, food-related, and domestic-imagery tropes in mass media publications in order to leverage political influence from within the confines of the feminized role of the FLOTUS. To test this claim, we perform visual content analysis on images embedded in women’s lifestyle magazines. We find that central to her calculated approach was the keen awareness of the symbolic power of domesticized imagery as a vehicle for legible, quickly comprehensible, and, above all else, universally appealing messaging. Thus, to promote her food policy platform and target the public health issue of childhood obesity, the FLOTUS intentionally deployed motifs of food as domestic imagery, which thereby acted as a “velvet glove” tactic to politicking.