Leave Malia Obama Alone

Breaking news: Malia Obama, daughter to former President Barack Obama, hates Donald Trump and she…drinks wine!

It all began when the Daily Mail apparently discovered a “secret” Facebook page of 20-year-old former first daughter this week, where she supposedly published distaste for Trump precisely once in a string of hot pink Post-It notes.”Donald Trump is president. This is not normal. Donald Trump is evil. Don’t be complacent,” they collectively read. And that totally unsurprising reported detail alone—along with the images of a private near-21-year-old citizen drinking a cheap bottle of wine on vacation—suddenly and abruptly viral. But what the countless headlines are missing is that scolding a young black woman expressing an opinion and being human, or deeming it newsworthy at all, isn’t just rude in the old “children are off limits” way, it’s both sexist and racist.

There are also gaping factual gaps in the regurgitated unnewsworthy “news”: For one, there’s no way to know if the young Obama wrote the notes, or if this photo is even of a space that belongs to her or a friend. It also is important to mention that while conservatives lose it over the anti-Trump messaging, the fact is that the Post-It note photo is the only one the Daily Mail found damning enough to reference or, more likely, the only anti-Trump message Obama posted on the account because she has a life. The tabloid also alleges that in the wake of the Las Vegas country mass shooting, she shared a petition link demanding gun reform. This is not decidedly anti-Trump but, in today’s America, completely normal. And absolutely necessary. And no doubt, what we would expect from a member of a loud and proud anti-gun family.

The rest of the photos uncovered by the Daily Mail mirror what any young girl would post on their social media—cute portraits, selfies, photos of her and friends relaxing lakeside, or on a post-high school trip to Chile and Bolivia. There’s even an absurdly relatable photo of Obama on her Macbook in the bathtub with a shower curtain collapsed over her head. So, no, Obama’s Facebook is not a treasure trove of “Fake News Media” and Trump slander (even if it were, I’d still stan)—it’s just a normal young woman’s account.

“Yes, we forgive a man killing an innocent animal, but we want to reprimand a young adult for sipping on Whispering Angel and expressing her right to freedom of speech.”

Trump stands for everything the oldest Obama child, a young black woman and Harvard progressive, does not. There’s no real angle here; Trump has referred to women—black women—as “dogs” and there’s still a lot of tension floating around the rumor that there’s a tape in which Trump says the “n-word” multiple times, contested by former employee and White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman. He’s evidently made fun of, or outright insulted, every minority in America. And let us not forget these unforgivable five words: “Grab them by the pussy.” In all honesty, it’d be weirder if Obama—daughter to Michelle Obama—wasn’t anti-Trump.

But what is even more puzzling than the The Daily Mail blasting the 20-year-old’s supposedly classified anti-Trump Facebook, is how quickly they scorned her innocuously sipping rosé with friends poolside on a girls-trip in Miami. She turns 21 in four months and she’s in college; experimenting with substances once unavailable to you, as either the child of the President of the United States, or just the child of strict or, for most of us, normal parents is par for the course. We can only imagine that a life spent (without choice) in the spotlight paired with a Harvard curriculum makes her no less entitled than any other college kid to kick back with friends and relax. If you’re mad, you’re probably just jealous.

It’s ludicrous to say “boys will be boys” when a supreme court nominee is accused of rape (yes, we’re talking to you Brett Kavanaugh), but lambast Obama whenever she is photographed doing anything slightly less than perfect. Kavanaugh was 17 when he was said to have assaulted Christine Blasey Ford, only a year younger than when Obama was photographed smoking cannabis—and scolded—at a college party. So boys can be boys—and violent ones at that—but a young woman can’t smoke a joint at a party, or drink rosé with close friends? Above all, she should be granted the same privacy all adults wish for their children.

In fact, history traits the sons of politicians’ transgressions as manly and fearless (in other words, brave), whereas daughters have been designated radical, uncontrollable, and even crazy. When Rose Marie “Rosemary” Kennedy, sister to former-president John F. Kennedy, was accused of rebelling as an adolescent—doing normal teenage things like sneaking out to see boys—and maybe even having sex (who really knows?), these were seen as irredeemable behavior problems. She was seen to be such an embarrassment that her father arranged for her, at 23 years old, to receive a prefrontal lobotomy that would leave her permanently incapacitated. She couldn’t walk, speak, or use the restroom on her own…for the rest of her life. And she lived like that for more than 60 years, dying of natural causes at 86 years old.

So many years later, however, the surfacing of a photo of Donald Trump Jr. posing next to an endangered leopard he shot and killed on a safari trip caused minor backlash (like sponsors for The Apprentice), but it hasn’t stopped him from becoming a figurehead of the right and a trusted mouthpiece for his father. Yes, we forgive a man killing an innocent animal, but we want to reprimand a young adult for sipping on Whispering Angel and expressing her right to freedom of speech. It all makes perfect sense.

Another significant point publications are bypassing is the one surrounding race—Obama, as genuinely virtuous as she is for a college student—is the first former-first daughter who is also a young black woman. This can’t be overlooked, as studies show adults consider black girls “less innocent” than white children and don’t truly discern them as kids from as young as 5 years old. This erasure, termed adultification, has done nothing but serve to eradicate the childhoods of black girls, as adults survey them as less in need of assistance and security.

This type of dehumanization better defines what’s really going on with the relentless criticism of Obama throughout the years; the objections to her behavior we’ve observed for nearly a decade now. Her actions are policed—the Daily Mail labeled her innocent poolside rosé as an “antic,” which by definition means “foolish, outrageous, or amusing behavior”—because adults have never respected her as child, let alone a young woman; it’s as though Obama has been disallowed to propagate the childhood granted to white boys and girls.

So, while publications have acted properly, admonishing critics of Obama to stop harassing her and let her live, we need to recognize why she shoulders the obligation to appear perfect and wholly adult-like at all. It comes down to clear sexism and racism. And not acknowledging that is a disservice to both her, future politician’s daughters and young black girls alike.