Speculation has been swirling that there may be trouble in paradise for Barack and Michelle Obama, and the former first lady addressed the rumors in a podcast interview released Tuesday. As reported by outlets including NBC, CNN, People, and Fox, she told Sophia Bush on the Work in Progress podcast that she's been focusing on making choices for herself rather than for other people, explaining, "That's the thing that we as women struggle with—disappointing people. I mean, so much so that this year people couldn't even fathom that I was making a choice for myself. That they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing." She explained that she used to avoid making decisions for herself, using her kids or her husband's presidency as an excuse, but now, "I can't blame my decisions and indecisions on anyone other than me."
The Hill theorizes that Obama may have referred, without naming it specifically, to her absence at President Trump's inauguration. "I get to look at my calendar, which I did this year, with a real big example of me, myself, looking at something that I was supposed to do—without naming names—and I chose to do what was best for me. Not what I had to do. Not what I thought other people wanted me to do." As for those divorce rumors, Obama continued, "This couldn't be a grown woman just making a set of decisions herself, right? But that's what society does to us. We start actually going, what am I? What am I doing? What am I doing this for? And if it doesn't fit into the sort of stereotype of what people think we should do, then it gets labeled as something negative and horrible." (More Michelle Obama stories.)
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