00:00You say in the book, I kept my hair straight throughout the White House years so it would not be a distraction or a talking point.
00:07I knew there was absolutely no way that the first black first lady could show up in braids.
00:13Was that a hard choice for you?
00:17You know, it wasn't hard because the job was more important than the statement.
00:22I wanted to make sure that my work spoke before my clothes or the way I showed up in the world.
00:29Although I knew that the clothes sent a message, I think it was important that at some point as a public figure, I wore my hair natural and in braids.
00:39Because I do believe strongly that all women, we should have the choice about how we wear our hair, what we look like.
00:48And it should not be subject to commentary, particularly by men who know nothing about what goes on.
00:55And how black women in particular wear their hair is their business.
00:59It is not a statement of some kind of lack of professionalism.
01:03We all come to this world in a different way.
01:06And so supporting the young women who are really pushed for that natural hair movement, the Crown Act, which had to be passed to say that how a woman wears their hair cannot be used to discriminate against them.
01:19Which is there's just a lot of education that needed to happen.
01:23And I didn't really have the time to be the lead on that education during the eight years.
01:28We needed to get health care passed.
01:29I wanted to focus the attention on our military families, on getting our kids healthy.
01:34Yes.
01:35And so it didn't feel like a personal sacrifice because I understood the assignment.
01:39But now that I'm out, part of that freedom that you talked about of being 60 is that I can wear my hair.
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