Actually I find it more damaging simply because she is routinely compared to white women. What this does is reaffirm that white women are the ones to which all standards of beauty must be judged. There are plenty of WOC that are beautiful and yet the media can never acknowledge us as such.
I personally read the whole thing as sarcastic; the facial expression on the woman in the postcard looks very much like an “O rly?” to me. :p (Still gonna read that link though! Good stuff.)
Gee, Jill, I’d appreciate what you’re saying — you know, the sarcasm and the suggestion that Michelle is being treated to sexist standards and all — except that, in this case, it really is true — she’s asking for it. On the recent European hop, Michelle continuously changed into one glamorous outfit after the next, multiple times a day, as if she were acting in a damn play or something. It was calculated to get the precise reaction she got, and it is disingenuous to cast the blame on the media’s reaction to Michelle’s fashion sense when it’s Michelle who is purposefully engendering all the attention to it — from her kitten-heeled shoes to her well-toned, sleeveless arms. Michelle is purposefully defining fashion sense for an entire generation and is obviously relishing the fact that she is being mentioned in the same breath as Jackie, Diana and Carla Bruni. Thus, it completely misses the mark for you, or anybody else, to cry “sexism” just because some dopey Beltway pundit happens to mention that she’s wearing a Thakoon ivory tweed grosgrain-trimmed coat.
I’m pretty sure “She’s asking for it” = automatic “it’s not sexist!” argument FAIL. Nice try, though.