"How dare you claim that Michelle Obama isn't beautiful!" huffed some who have apparently never actually seen a photograph of the woman.
She's not beautiful, not by any sense of the term.
And she can be plain or ugly by continuing in her attempts to play like she's 20 years younger than she is, chasing after clothes that neither fit her nor suit her. Or she can grow the hell up and find a way to accept who she is.
If and when she does that, she might qualify for pretty because when women stop trying to copy someone else's look and find acceptance with their own, they become a lot more attractive.
The non-feminist 'message' isn't our calling out the myths of "beautiful" and "fashionable" Michelle. The non-feminist message is a woman well over forty-years-old attempting to act like she's Hillary Duff, refusing to accept who she is or the years she has on her which should offer some level of wisdom and experience.
To offer a more telling example, Barbra Streisand is today a very beautiful woman. That resulted not from plastic surgery nor from attempting to copy the hottest look of the day. It resulted from knowing and accepting who she was. The jittery thing in her yearbook picture isn't an ugly woman. It is an awkward young woman and the awkwardness vanishes when she begins to be the best Barbra she can be and accept that that's the most any of us can ask of ourselves..
It's a lesson Michelle could be teaching young women and girls today. Instead, she wants to pretend that someone with her girth can play fashion model. It's not going to work. And it's humiliting not just for her, but for all women.