Style over Sustenance

The message coming from the First Lady volunteering at a food bank could have been about helping Americans struggling to put food on the table -- if they even have a table.  Instead the message is about a pair of $540 shoes. Does this encourage Americans to volunteer?  Or does it perpetuate the selling of the Obama family image?

I don't think Michelle Obama is a bad person or that she did this purposefully.  However it reveals a concern I harbor about the new administration -- a concern about style over substance (or in this case style over sustenance).  Wearing a pair of expensive Lanvin shoes, even if unintentional, sends out a message of status and elitism. Most people can not afford these shoes and even those who can aren't able to buy them because they are sold out.  Presumably most people receiving services at the food bank are poor.  More than lacking $540 shoes, they lack power.  

Without power, poverty endures.

Fairness flashback -- On July 30, 2008, The Huffington Post did an article on John McCain's expensive shoes. 

President Obama Feeds the Five Thousand

 ¹³When Obama heard what had happened, he withdrew by Air Force One privately to 1000 feet above Lower Manhattan. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot across the Brooklyn Bridge. ¹⁴When Obama landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick. ¹⁵As evening approached, the Cabinet came to him and said, "This is a remote place, and it's already getting late. Send the crowds away with food stamps, so they can go to Albertsons and buy themselves some food." ¹⁶ Obama replied, "They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat."¹⁷"We have here only Michelle's pair of Lanvin sneakers," they answered. ¹⁸"Bring them here to me," he said. ¹⁹And he directed the people to sit down on the bridge. Taking the $540 pair of sneakers and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the soles. Then he gave them to the Cabinet, and the Cabinet gave them to the people. ²⁰They all ate and were satisfied, and the Cabinet picked up twelve basketfuls of broken Lankin soles that were left over. ²¹The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.

(source: First Lady Michelle Obama volunteers at a Washington D.C. food bank in style -- a J.Crew cardigan, capri pants, and $540 sneakers from French design house Lanvin. (Read the full story here at the New York Daily News).

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