First Lady Michelle Obama
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But in her Technicolor dresses and famously buff bare arms, it's hard not to wonder if Michelle isn't daring us all to just roll with it, to be a little bolder at a time when the country could use all the courage it can muster. "You've got to make choices that make sense for you," she says, "because there's always going to be somebody who'll think you should do something differently." When prodded, she admits with a wry smile that there are moments when she misses her old, anonymous knock-around days. "It's a lot easier to live your life," she says, "when everything you do doesn't have a consequence."
But that path, at least for a while, is blocked. Just before our interview, she'd been out on the South Lawn walking Bo when she took a wrong turn. "We happen to walk past the gate where the visitors were coming, and I heard this 'Yeaaaa! It's Bo!' ... Bo is like, 'Who's calling me?'" She's laughing now at the spectacle of a dog who is world-famous, at a house trafficked by thousands of strangers every day, at a life in which every stroll can become a headline. "I was like, Oh, darn, I should have gone around the other way."
Michelle in Words and Photos To read the full transcript of her interview, see more behind-the-scenes pictures and trace her evolution as a fashion icon, go to time.com/michelle_obama