US First Lady Michelle Obama graces the cover of the New York Times Style Magazine

US First Lady Michelle Obama will feature on the cover page of the next issue of the New York Times Style Magazine, T.

The October 23 issue will celebrate the US first lady in a piece called “The Greats,” which will also see six other celebrity icons including Lady Gaga, Junya Watanabe, Zadie Smith, Kerry James Marshall and William Eggleston grace the special edition.

Michelle Obama’s feature, “To the First Lady, With Love,” contained heartfelt letters from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Gloria Steinem, Jon Meacham and Rashida Jones all acknowledging how the first lady inspired them.

Adichie wrote;

“Because [Obama] said what she thought, and because she smiled only when she felt like smiling, and not constantly and vacuously, America’s cheapest caricature was cast on her: the Angry Black Woman.” 

“Women, in general, are not permitted anger but from black American women, there is an added expectation of interminable gratitude, the closer to groveling the better, as though their citizenship is a phenomenon that they cannot take for granted.”

Rashida Jones described the first lady as; 

“Michelle Obama embodies the modern, American woman, and I don’t mean that in any platitudinous or vague way. Rarely can someone express their many identities at the same time while seeming authentic.”

She is the modern American woman in every sense and it was an honor and a privilege to watch her thrive for the last eight years, described Rashida Jones of the first lady.

US First Lady Michelle Obama