Hot Like...Sex and the Obamas

(A riff on an original post and thread at k-spot…)

Damn, the Obamas are a sexy couple.

A genuinely sexy couple, like "they-like-to-have-sex-with-each-other-and-it-shows" sexy. The kind of pair that makes you feel sexy, too, regardless of your relationship status.

Okay, let's put this picture aside for the moment:

That's sexy in a playful and loving way.

And let's put this photo aside for the moment:

That's the sweet "my boo" photo that zie can find in many a family album, the kind that Malia and Sasha Obama will have a good time teasing their parents about when the girls become teenagers. ("Dad, were you serious with that afro and sweater vest?")

No, what I'm talking about are these:

coupled with these:

topped with my all-time favorite:

Someone commented on a blog that what makes the Obamas such a new moving image is their spontaneously affectionate expressions are a refreshing change from the photo-op PDAs we've seen from other US political couples. I co-sign with that astute observation. The last couple I remember displaying such a sensual PDA were Al and Tipper Gore…

…and they got roundly dissed for it.

I think what weirded some critics out is Ms. Gore led an organization that wanted to warn parents about sexual content in music; this made her look like a prude in their estimation. So, the reasoning goes, how and why does she want to censor sexual expression when, apparently, she likes sex herself? She and her husband should contain themselves as she wanted to contain the music industry. (Personally, I always knew the Gores love each others’ drawers: what gave it away was a photo Ms. Gore took of her husband years ago. It’s a black-and-white close-up of him shaving with a towel around his neck. The look he gives to the camera—to his wife through the lens—is pure lust, lascivious suggestiveness of the things they would do when she put that camera down. I know I would have put the darn thing down if Al Gore looked at me like that...)

See, the Obamas aren’t shocking like that, perhaps because neither supports or endorses, to my knowledge, programs or ideas that want to curtail peoples’ sexual activities and feelings about sex put to any art form. Nor do I get the impression that the Obamas are trying to sell how hot their hetero married sex life is and, by proxy, how hot married sex is.

No, what I get is they love the feel of each other: how they feel in each other’s presence, regardless of what mood they may be in; the slopes and curves of each other’s bodies against each other; the minutes before, during, and after they kiss; the words flowing from each others’ mouths and the timbre of the voices that speaks them; the minds and souls of each partner that’s the wellspring of and witness to each other. What the Obamas share is a healthy eroticism, and we are all witnesses to it, if not swept up by it.

The fact that this eroticism is embodied in and interacting between two non-white people may become an issue for some folks, especially those who have problems with sexual openness and PoC sexuality, anyway. As Susie Bright critiques, “sex” equates to “white people having sex” in this culture. Furthermore, white sexuality is tagged as being “proper”=”quiet” and “boring” and “chaste,” especially if the partners are married. (That may be another reason the Gores’ PDA was so heavily criticized.) Black sexuality in this culture has been stereotyped as “deviant,” as “hypersexual” and “animalistic” (the term “buckwild,” anyone?) and “promiscuous.” And Black men and women are labeled as being locked in the internecine War between the Sexes: we’re supposed to despise each other and don’t mind—if not completely enjoy—destroying each other by, of all things, dating “outside the race.” The Obamas—Barack, a bi-racial man who self-identifies as Black, and Michelle, an African American woman—being a married Black couple doesn’t fit those stereotypes, to the relief of some African Americans. They are seen by these Black folks as the paragon of “Black love,” though some critics (okay, haters) see Michelle mitigating Barack’s “Blackness,” as if Barack wouldn’t be Negro enough if he wasn’t with Michelle. The flip argument is, by Barack marrying/sexing/procreating with Michelle, that he’s signifying to some folks that he ain’t even thinking about white people, as if marrying Michelle negates his mother’s existence, like intimate relationships are a zero-sum game among the races.

What I’m afraid of is the Obamas’ affectionate displays will be distorted by the racist lens of savage sexuality. I’m waiting for the day when Michelle kisses or bites Barack’s ear or Barack pats Michelle on the rump or for the leaked stories, true or false, about the Obamas moaning and banging the headboard against the White House walls while they’re having sex. The punditry and moral tsk-ers will start screaming that these actions makes the Obamas unfit to run and represent the United States:"Those BLACK PEOPLE are SHAMELESS! They're so OUT OF CONTROL! So SEXUAL! We know THEIR daughters will have NO morals, but what about THE CHILDREN! THOSE people are not GOOD EXAMPLES for OUR children!"

Thus, ruining another chance for Americans to have a healthy discourse about The Erotic in its many colorations.

Photo credits: Obamas at North Carolina convention/nyt.com; Obamas de-planing/nypost.com; Obamas in restaurant/dailymail.co.uk; Obamas giving daps/timeinc.com; other Obamas photos/found on Google