US First Lady Michelle Obama may just have given girls regressive advice about college

Michelle Obama was her eloquent, well-dressed self as she spoke about the power of the educated woman at an event organised by Glamour magazine in New York on Tuesday. But did the First Lady undermine her own qualifications unknowingly with her off-the cuff remark on President Barack Obama?

She told the audience that “If I had worried about who liked me or who was cute at your age, I wouldn’t be married to the President of the United States.”  Does anyone else see a problem with this statement?

Though the First Lady tried to make an extremely important point about the reason why young girls should go out there and seek higher educational qualifications, did she also hint that there was a different motive behind getting an education other than having a great career and better prospects. That maybe girls should go to university because it is the perfect hunting ground for a potential mate?

As Daily Beast put it , Michelle Obama implied that girls should go to university to “become the kind of woman the president of the United States would want to marry—rather than be such a leader herself.”

In India where girls are married off in some cases before 18 and are not allowed to complete their education, isn’t Michelle sending the ones who do go to incredible lengths to get the education they deserve  a message that instead of being the leader, marry a future leader instead?

According to Unicef statistics, India has the highest number of child brides in the world. It is estimated that 47 percent of girls in India are married before their 18th birthday.

One quick Google search on “finding husband in college” later, it seems it’s not that rare a conversation topic. From articles on “ 50 colleges where you’re most likely to meet your future spouse ” to books advising you to “ Marry Smart ” that says women should spend 75 percent of their time in college looking for a man, it’s apparently quite the thing.

According to an Princeton alumnus  who writes in her book, “Here is another truth that you know, but nobody is talking about. As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from. Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men. So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from. Maybe you should have been a little nicer to these guys when you were freshmen?”

The advice Michelle Obama instead SHOULD have given is: Women, while in college, should invest their time and energy not in finding a husband, but in starting their careers. Prioritising their careers over men. Not the other way around.

Should we women be defined by our choice in men? Absolutely not. In a country where a Quora thread asks “Do uneducated, poor Indian girls make better wives then well-educated and professional Indian women?”, it’s time to change the social order.