Michelle in High Cotton

BENILDE LITTLE

The first time I saw a picture of Michelle post 2008 inauguration I literally cried. She was featured in the Style section of the Sunday New York Times, dressed in that fabulous, custom-made purple dress. I was reading in bed, next to my husband who handed me the section, knowing it was then the first thing I read. I got a few lines into the story, welled up and then literally burst out crying.

"Why are you crying?" Cliff asked. By now he was used to me breaking into tears, the way some people break into song. Do you remember the way the Holly Hunter character in Broadcast News used to have an appointment sob daily before everyone else showed up for work? She would sit on the floor in her office, unplug her phone and sob. For no apparent reason. Me too.

"I'm just so happy. She's like me," I said.

She was the first woman I'd ever seen in The New York Times — or any majority media outlet — with whom I completely identified. She was part of my tribe. He looked at me, surely thinking, She ain't really. But my dear husband had the good sense to keep his opinion to himself. He must've understood that I knew something he didn't; an unuttered, undecipherable code of Black womanhood that he'd never be able to tune in to. It's kinda of like the way we say gurl to each other, but more nuanced. Gurl can be an appraisal, but a loving one that basically says, "I see you. You are me and I am you."

I'm not gon front, I'm not talking about all Black women: We are not a monolith. We have nuances and there are tribes within this tribe. Michelle is part of my tribe. In my tribe:

• We're honest with ourselves and the world around us.

• We value other women. We hold each other up with no interest in the tear down.

• We strive to achieve and keep it real for us — however that looks. There's no one size fits all.

Tracee Ellis Ross is a part of our tribe. She shows up sans makeup and without gettin' her hair did. She gangsta raps as an alter-ego character, T-Murda — which is straight-out hilarious. She shows up on Blackish with her hair cornrowed and bamboo earrings, and then she shows up straight-up fashion flawless. I love what seems like her acceptance of her total self — not just as a glam actress and daughter of a superstar icon.

Holly Robinson Peete is part of the tribe, too. She went to Sarah Lawrence (as did Robin Givens — they actually had a fist fight there), did her successful sitcom stint — never playing chitlin', neck-rollin' stereotypes — found a good, smart, solid dude (an athlete, no less), had a bunch of babies, stayed married to him and does important foundation work. Props to gossip queen Wendy Williams and 80s It girl actress Givens, but neither of them are part of this tribe and they probably wouldn't want to be. / It might be easier to say who we are not. We're not: Glamazons who stomp around in six-inch heels, hoisting a handbag that costs a salary in some parts of the country, with somebody else's straightened hair down our backs. Publicly tearing folks down is not edifying for us. We want to look good but like ourselves with an individual twist — like Michelle rocking a J. Crew sweater with an haute couture skirt.

Pre-Michelle, the Black women in media — who weren't Halle Berry or Oprah — were either perfect pitch, high bourg or stone ghettoians (Lil' Kim), no shades or complexities as humans are. We can be round-the-way, love being with our peeps from the 'hood, be comfortable having drinks with our girls at The Mandarin Oriental, sit on museum boards, have close friendships with white girls and some of us have white husbands — all while holding on to an inner compass, not one set by someone else's judgment of what's best.

Michelle was a real hard-working professional, from a working-class South Side Chicago family, who shuttled her daughters to dance lessons and movie play dates on Saturdays. Just like I did. She looked regular — could look amazing (like in that purple sheath) or not — sometimes photographed with her hair pulled back and not in a cute chignon, but in that I-need-to-go-to-the-beauty-parlor-but-I-don't-have-the-time look. Her good Chicago friend Yvonne Davila insists that Michelle is "Real. She is you, she is me, she is everybody."

Coming from the South Side provides natives with a very specific sense of place. Chicago is an extremely racially polarized city and Michelle has that "thing" people from the South Side have. I have a good friend who grew up there and she says, "It's hard to get that South Side out of us." I asked her to explain it and this is what I've gathered: folks from there have a defiant grounded-ness; a resoluteness perhaps born in the Black Belt (Alabama and Mississippi) where most Black Chicagoans came from.

The Black Belt had the largest cash crop, cotton, and those enslaved there, it has been said, were treated most harshly. (To be clear, that's like saying the whippings were every day instead of six days a week.)

The South Side attitude of togetherness was borne of being excluded from much of the city's political power for so long. When a Black man, Harold Washington, was finally elected mayor in 1983, Black people there were literally dancing in the streets.

People from the South Side have a tell-it-like-it-is way about themselves. Now, don't get it twisted. It's not all Kumbaya togetherness. There was and is a sharp class division there, too (although everybody Black was down with the election of Harold Washington). There are the generations of Chicagoans who are college-educated folks; some who are so light-skinned you gotta look hard to discern any African heritage. In the early days, that segment filled selective groups like Jack and Jill, the Links, some Greek-lettered organizations.

Michelle's dad worked fixing boilers in the city's water department and her mom went to work as a secretary after her children entered elementary...