Michelle Obama is embracing her sixties with energy, humor, and a renewed sense of self. She says this chapter of her life feels uniquely her own — one where every decision reflects her personal choice.
“I tell people, ‘The sixties? Oh, a wonderful time. It’s a wonderful time,'” she shares in an interview ahead of the Nov. 4 release of her new style book, The Look. “I feel like this is the first time in my life that when I say and do something — here in this interview, writing this book, rolling it out in this way — these are my choices.”
One choice she’s clear about: how she handles gray hair. “I’m coloring that gray hair,” she says matter-of-factly. “I’m not wincing when I see one, but I’m not leaving it there long.”
It’s a beauty habit that runs in the family. “My mother was the same way,” she says of her late mother, Marian Robinson. “My mother dyed her hair until the day she died. She had a beautiful sandy blonde color that mixed in well with the gray. I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to be doing that too.'”
Still, she’s content to let time take its natural course in other ways. “That’s just the thing — I really don’t do much else. I think, fortunately, Black don’t crack, so I’m doing all right. But yeah, I will be dying my hair until there is no dye in the land.”
Health, she emphasizes, is central to her lifestyle. A devoted tennis player, Obama says she never skips the essentials: “My health has always been paramount. What I eat, working out, I go to regular doctor’s visits. I do not miss a mammogram. I do all the things that I’m supposed to do, because I value my health and that also allows me to enjoy this time — because I’m not achy, I’m not sore, I’m not sick. I’m as vibrant as I’ve ever been.”
This stage of life, she adds, comes with a liberating sense of independence. “This is the first time in my life when every decision I make is for me,” she explains. “As mothers, as women, as wives, a lot of times we spend our lives making decisions like, ‘Well, I’m doing this because of my kids,’ or ‘I changed my job to accommodate this,’ or ‘I’m supporting my husband in that.’ And, ‘No, I’m not going to take this job,’ or, ‘I’m not going to try this thing.'”
Now that her daughters, Sasha (24) and Malia (27), are grown and thriving, and her husband, Barack Obama (64), is happily settled, she feels completely at peace. “We are the former president and first lady. It’ll be 10 years, almost, that we have not been in that job. Okay? We are formers.”
And for Michelle Obama, that reality — the freedom, the health, the self-assurance — is what makes her sixties so truly wonderful.
