The False Freedom of Egoism

Michelle Obama was recently pontificating on her podcast about the alleged difficulty of being a woman in the modern world:

“We weren’t raised with the certainty of maleness… That kind of confidence that young men in their 30s have, which they haven’t earned. They just have it.”

But men weren’t “raised with” confidence either. Rather, there is a certain amount of assertiveness that comes naturally to men. They have a hormonal framework that is different, as is the way that men think. It is a mistake to reduce nature to mere “social construct,” as if every difference between men and women is imposed by a meddling society that yearns to oppress women. We therefore err when we claim that men are more assertive because they have been raised to be such, and imply that women in the modern age were either deprived of such ‘training’ or were taught to display doubt, indecisiveness, and anxiety.

Michelle went on to claim that society “discourages” women from expressing confidence, even when their experience level would justify it. There’s a conflation happening here. It is widely agreed that exuded confidence is attractive to both sexes. What is actually “discouraged by society” is acting rudely or overbearingly, including when one thinks themselves better than others because of real or imagined accomplishments. Likewise, women over-compensating with misplaced aggression when in traditionally male roles is discouraged albeit common (that female police officer isn’t giving you a warning).

In truth, the evidence as it pertains specifically to Michelle does not support her claim that she was discouraged for being a woman, or that she was in any way made to be less confident. In fact, she received constant encouragement and adulation from the press and from her political allies—for her gardening enterprise, her zealous changes to school lunches, and even her Christmas decor. The press loved her, and it appears that she loved the attention.

If anything, there is too much societal pressure for women to be confident—or at least, to want to be seen. In much of mainstream culture, women who choose to raise their children in the home are subtly (or overtly) discouraged. Their decision to serve those who love them rather than the corporate world has been lambasted for decades as some kind of “waste”. This is the case across the mainstream American political landscape (see even President Trump lauding the increase of women in the workforce). Women are encouraged at every level to be more like men.

Michelle went on to opine:

“This stage in life for me, for me personally, is the first time that I’ve been completely free… There’s a real release. Where every choice that I make in my life is not about my husband, not about his career, not about what my kids need, or where they’re going. It’s totally about me.”

It’s a statement that reads like a rare glimpse of honest self-examination. No doubt, she is living in a self-focused time, but should our lives revolve around complete self-interest? Should we desire freedom from obligation? Is that real freedom at all? She claims that it is true freedom, but it is actually the path to despair that so many Westerners now find themselves trudging along. To be deprived of obligation is to be deprived of meaning. If one truly has no obligations, he does not have loves. That kind of untethered, purposeless freedom is not the badge of honor or life goal that Michelle Obama makes it out to be. In earlier times, what she is praising would have been a cause for derision. Indeed, in the language of Classical Greece, an idiōtēs was someone who concerned themselves only with private affairs, rather than engaging in public life or communal responsibilities.

We can see the manifestation of this destructive worldview if we take it to its logical conclusion. If obligation is mere bondage, then one’s own family is a prison, and the State, ready to step in with welfare when we renege on all of our obligations, is to be heralded as savior. That choice is the trading of one’s obligations to loved ones with a dependency that actualizes real servitude. In slavery, food and lodging are said to be "free", but they are in fact paid for by servitude and bondage.

Before we exaggerate female social pressures, we might look toward the experience of men. Men face a societal pressure that is entirely dissimilar to women—to provide for their families. If a family is in a difficult spot and the husband has no job, he is who people will look upon to remedy the situation, not the wife. Yes, the wife can get employment in that situation, and sometimes that is the right move, but she is not who the neighborhood will sneer at, and she will not feel the emotional tug of duty, nor the burden of existential shame.

It is true that fame can be a prison, magnifying one’s every mistake and reducing intimate moments to the entertainment of a faceless mob. It encourages the performance of a persona, making genuine introspection difficult and rewarding the loudest and most vice-ridden parts of the self. But Michelle did not bemoan the fame that has given her a spotlight. She is choosing to embrace it. We can infer that she enjoys the fame and the attention, despite its incarcerating power. Thus, what she's voicing is not a desire for freedom; rather, she is giving voice to her egoism, publicly promoting her overarching sense of self.

True freedom is not the absence of duty, but the willing embrace of it. It is found in love, in service, and in self-sacrifice—not in applause or self-actualization. Michelle Obama’s reflections exemplify the modern confusion between freedom and license, between empowerment and detachment. A society that encourages women to measure themselves by the yardstick of male ambition, or to seek fulfillment in the mirror, is guiding them toward spiritual impoverishment and despair. If we want women to flourish, we ought to affirm not only their capabilities, but also the nobility of quiet, unseen sacrifice—the kind that builds homes, binds families, and gives life its deepest meaning.