Michelle Obama: Wife, Mother, Attorney, Public Servant and First Lady
October 3rd, 2011 | Posted by jlcrain | Permalink
Before she was gracing the covers of magazines and hosting international heads of state, First Lady Michelle Obama was a working woman balancing a career, raising two children and supporting a husband in Congress.
Mrs. Obama grew up on the South Side of Chicago but later went on to study sociology and African-American studies at Princeton University. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1988, she joined the Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin.
As the first African-American first lady this country has seen, Mrs. Obama has won the American public over with her warm smile, elegance, poise and intelligence. While President Obama has had a tough time tackling such issues as healthcare reform, high unemployment rates, and multiple wars abroad, Mrs. Obama isn’t simply sitting on the sidelines but she has taken on a few causes of her own.
Over the past four decades, obesity rates have soared among American children of all age groups, increasing nearly five-fold among those ages 6-11. Today, nearly 25 million children are overweight or obese. Some experts believe that if obesity among children continues to increase, our current generation of children will become the first in American history to live shorter lives than their parents.
Mrs. Obama has taken on the cause of fighting childhood obesity through her initiative, Let’s Move! The program, launched in February 2010, is a comprehensive initiative, dedicated to solving the challenge of childhood obesity within a generation. Combining comprehensive strategies with common sense, Let’s Move! is about putting children on the path to a healthy future during their earliest months and years, giving parents helpful information and fostering environments that support healthy choices.
“The physical and emotional health of an entire generation and the economic health and security of our nation is at stake,” said Mrs. Obama. “By investing in even one grocery store you might be able to revitalize just one neighborhood. By building more sidewalks [today] you can reduce health costs and budget strain tomorrow.”
