As the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign wore on, Michelle Obama, seen here onstage at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, was increasingly praised for her campaign performances. “There was this perception that she was a problem for the campaign,” Vanderbilt University professor Bonnie Dow told the BBC of Obama at the time, adding, “The outlines of that problem are so easily tied to negative stereotypes about African-American women — that they are matriarchal, pushy loud.”
By the time of the Democratic National Convention, though, Michelle’s public perception had improved, with The Washington Post calling her DNC speech a “major turning point” for her. Dow apparently concurred, telling the BBC, “When we go into the DNC [and] she gives this speech, introducing the president by saying ‘I stand here as a wife, mother, daughter, sister,’ you see the beginnings of a very purposeful rehabilitation of this image.”