Is America Ready for a First Lady with Natural Hair?

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Reading one of my favorite natural hair sites -- CurlyNikki.com -- after a day of meetings and my heart skipped a few beats.

I saw THE picture.


I. was. done. The pic was sent to CurlyNikki via Twitter, but it's gone viral in the natural hair community and it's all over Facebook and Pinterest. Hell, it probably was a trending topic on Twitter or all I know (it wasn't by the time I saw it). 

The Natural Hair Pic That Shook Twitter
At first, I thought: WTH? Is this real? A closer look revealed it was a Photoshopped image, but the visual?

The image was so good that for a split second, I had to get myself together! Had the First Lady gone natural? She'd be that "curl friend" in my head. I just knew she'd be all up on HairNista.blogspot.com, CurlyNikki.com and BGLHOnline.com, looking for advice to maintain her natural.

Would she do a twist out, wash and go, braid out? What's her regi? Products? Then I thought, "Whose hair is this?!" LOL. A naturally curly friend told me it was NaturalChica's hair. If so, what a compliment to have your hair Photoshopped on the First Lady!

Straight vs. Curly

What If?
Had me imagining for a moment: What if First Lady wore her curly natural hair? Now, let me say that I've always believed that First Lady is a heat trained natural. Plus, I heard her stylist Johnny Wright say on the Steve Harvey Show that FLOTUS has her natural hair flat ironed/pressed -- no chemicals.

But it got me to thinking, what if?

Malia and Sasha have been known to rock twist outs, puffs, braids etc. But what about FLOTUS? What if she ditched the heat?

How cool would that be? A good friend of mine and I have talked about this for months, about how the world would take First Lady Michelle Obama with natural hair. Would her natural hair be accepted or criticized?

HairNistas, you know I'm all about doing you. If you like it, I love it. Michelle Obama looks good no matter how she wears her hair. Her straight bob styles and updos are always FLY -- shiny, full of beauty, body, thick and lush. In a word -- gorgeous!

Yet, I think she would look as equally stunning -- if not more -- wearing her hair naturally curly.

The Reaction
Is America ready for a curly first lady? I don't know, but I hope so.

FLOTUS is one of the most powerful women in the free world. You'd like to think that she could wear her hair curly and not a peep be uttered -- in a perfect world, it would -- but that's not the case. Everything she does, says, wears and doesn't wear -- remember the media hype over her bare arms? -- is talked about, examined and debated.
No matter what she does, FLOTUS gets plenty of hate. Remember that New Yorker magazine cover a few years ago of a gun toting Mrs. Obma wearing an afro? Yeah, she would get some of that reaction, I'm sure. But for the most part, white folks could probably care less.

The problem would like with us -- Black folk.

My question: Are Black folks ready for a curly First Lady?

No doubt, we'd have the biggest problem with it. Trollers on ratchet blogs already dog Sasha and Malia out for their natural hair styles. Do you really think it would get better with FLOTUS?

 I can just see it now:

FLOTUS? Damn! Has everyone gone natural?


How is she going to represent with THAT on her head?

NOOOOOOOO!!!!

That is NOT my FIRST LADY!


WHY didn't she wait for second term for this ish? Obama isn't going to elected a second term for real, now.


Calm down, everyone. FLOTUS isn't rocking her curls -- yet.

But we'll be waiting with open arms if and when she does!

What do you think of the image? Would FLOTUS be accepted with her curly hair?