The first lady's popularity could give a boost to the administration's agenda

Michelle Obama is widely considered one of her husband's biggest political assets. Like most first ladies, she has developed a strong following around the country, and 71 percent of Americans think she is doing a good job, according to a recent Associated Press poll. (Her husband's approval rating is about 50 percent.) White House officials say it's not yet clear how direct a role she will play on the campaign trail this year, but in 2008 she was constantly on the road promoting her husband. She emphasized the historic change her husband would bring as the first African-American president and the hope that he inspired in so many everyday people. She still prompts intense media attention and public interest in everything she does, and she is sure to lend her name and charisma to the administration's agenda.

"Her role is where policy and people intersect," says Katie McCormick-Lelyveld, the first lady's press secretary. This is a contrast to Hillary Clinton, spouse of the last Democratic president, who was deeply involved in healthcare legislation and other issues. And it is closer to the example set by Laura Bush, who promoted reading as her special project but was mostly an appealing supporter of her husband, George W. Bush, a Republican and Barack Obama's predecessor.

Obama considers herself first and foremost a mom to the first couple's young daughters, Malia and Sasha. And to the surprise of her critics from the campaign, she is rather traditional in her choice of projects to take on as first lady. She is promoting such noncontroversial goals as federal assistance to military families, a commitment to public service, and, her project for 2010, leading the "Let's Move" campaign to fight childhood obesity through "healthy eating and healthy families."

She has started a highly publicized White House garden to underscore the importance of fresh vegetables and fruit as the cornerstones of good nutrition. The images of the first lady digging in the dirt behind the presidential mansion, harvesting sweet potatoes, lettuce, and other staples, not only sets an example for home gardeners but also has helped Michelle alter her image as a fashionista who might be a bit too interested in clothes.

There is a little-known personal side to her cause. A few years ago, a family doctor said that the Obama girls had a "body mass index issue," a nice way of saying they were gaining too much weight. So Barack and Michelle Obama told Malia and Sasha they needed to exercise more frequently and be careful about junk foods. Michelle admits to a weakness for french fries, but has disciplined herself not to eat them too often. Barack limited his intake of cheeseburgers, one of his favorite foods. "Her philosophy is, if you want a cheeseburger, you should have a cheeseburger," says a family friend. "But don't have it every day."

Obama rarely talks directly about race, even though she is the first African-American to serve as first lady. But she clearly believes she can be a role model for young blacks. At Anacostia High School in one of Washington's poorest neighborhoods, one of her many appearances at public schools in the majority-black capital, she told the students about her early life. "We didn't have a lot of money," the first lady said. "I lived in the same house my mother lives in now ... I went to public schools. The fact is I had somebody around me who helped me understand hard work. I had parents who told me, 'Don't worry about what other people say about you.' I worked really hard. I did focus on school. I wanted an 'A.' I wanted to be smart. Kids would say, 'You talk funny. You talk like a white girl.' I didn't know what that meant."

Her press secretary says Obama wants young African-Americans, especially girls, to realize that they can be achievers. "She wants people to see themselves in the White House, to see it as a place for all, where they can feel at home, where they belong," says McCormick-Lelyveld. It could be that serving as an inspiration is Michelle Obama's most important mission.

Life is a visual treat but is Desi Girl entertainment

Ask anyone (okay, not anyone, at least someone with more than two grey Return to Tiffany Oval tag bracelet) to name their favourite TV channel and more often than not the answer you'll get is: 'Discovery'. For a long time, I used to think that people said 'Discovery' only because it was the politically correct thing to say (who could possibly find fault with a choice like that?) even though they may have been secretly and furtively addicted to FTV. But I think people are actually telling the truth.

Just take the latest series to premiere on Discovery -- Life. I saw the first episode and it literally blew me away. Narrated by the one and only David Attenborough in his distinctive, raspy voice, Life is about, well, life on the planet -- all the strange and incredible creatures that inhabit the earth and all the strange and incredible things they do: killer whales hunting seals in the icy waters of the Antarctic; chameleons catching their prey by extending, whiplash-style, more than ten foot long tongues; a pack of three cheetahs attacking and killing a tall, fluffy ostrich; disconcertingly human-looking monkeys breaking big, hard-shelled nuts by smashing them with stones... it's completely riveting. What actually gives the series its high drama feel is the photography. There are Return to Tiffany Oval tag key ring close-ups (you can literally see each scale on the chameleon's body), action scenes shot in poetic slow motion (such as the entire sequence of three powerful cheetahs chasing the clumsily agitated ostrich), not to mention the rarely seen footage itself (have you ever seen two hippos fighting over mating rights?)

If all this gushing doesn't make you watch Life, well, you're really missing something.

There's another kind of life unfolding on Imagine -- a reality show Desi Girl, based on the American show called The Simple Life, where socialites Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie tried to live like 'ordinary' people. (The words 'Paris Hilton' and 'ordinary' go together about as well as the words 'Paris Hilton' and 'cerebral' or 'Paris Hilton' and 'meaningful.')

"Stilettos in cow shit" is the kind of effect I believe Fox wanted for The Simple Life. The makers of Desi Girl have obviously taken this to heart. Literally. Eight glamorous showbiz girls are going to live in a village in Punjab and compete in rural tasks such as cooking over a chulha, catching chickens, hanging out with buffaloes etc.

The eight arrived in rural Punjab, dragging trolleys ("I've brought all my body washes and face washes in my luggage," trilled reality TV star-cum-item girl Sambhavana Seth), wearing eight-inch heels, shoulder and cleavage-baring tight dresses and outsize designer sunglasses. They tossed their blow-dried hair, Return to Tiffany Oval tag pendant about the heat, giggled at their predicament and generally behaved as if they had come to some strange, exotic, unknown planet.

Eventually they were introduced to the village panchayat by Rohit Roy who is the anchor of the show (he introduced them to Jaydev Singh, who he referred to as the 'chairman' of the village!). The 'chairman' then sternly told the girls that they had to follow the village rules (wake up at 4 am and so on) whereupon they all giggled some more.

The idea of glamorous girls doing amazing stunts in Khatron Ke Khiladi (Colors) was intriguing for lots of viewers. So maybe some viewers will find the idea of glamorous starlets making cowdung cakes / milking cows at the crack of dawn highly entertaining viewing.

Others may not but they should remember one thing -- never, never be Square cuff links any longer by what passes off as entertainment on our TV screens.

Girls on film

Any informed book that has the line, "If Raj Kapoor was boob-obsessed, Dev Paloma's Tenderness Heart pendant has a fetish for the female butt and legs," has my vote. Not only does it tell me that the writer is a good observer of pop culture, as depicted via one of the most powerful visual forms -- popular films -- but it's also comforting to know that 'reading' images isn't the monopoly of academics more keen on showing their Baudrillard than their Bobby, their McLuhan rather than their Mother India.

But Fareed Kazmi is no gup-shup voyeur. The Allahabad University political science professor makes an engaging -- if idiosyncratic -- study of the depiction of women in Hindi cinema. In the process, he uses one of the most reliable barometers to check how we (women included) see women.

He does start the book with doctrinal planks and nerve-grating lines like "This true-self/Party charm bracelet-self dichotomy duplicates aspect of the existentialist distinction between authenticity/bad faith". But skip the opening chapters and you'll get informed analysis of the good old-fashioned psychoanalytical kind.

We learn about the radical 'gender reversal' in Abrar Alvi's Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam (1962) when Gulabo (Waheeda Rehman) is the one flirting outrageously with the simpleton Bhootnath (Guru Dutt), who's "behaving like an uninitiated virgin". Chapters later, Kazmi points out the same kind of manoeuvring in Amit Saxena's Jism (2003), where Kabir (John Abraham) is the one who's guilt-wracked after a romp, while Sonia (Bipasha Basu) purrs on only hoping that their tryst with destiny remains a secret.

I'm not too sure whether Kazmi should have used terms like 'the Big O' without any Return to Tiffany. I also hoped he had something to say about Ram Gopal Varma's 2007 film Nishabd (young siren-older man), Anurag Kashyap's Dev D (updated Devdas story) and Rajkumar Kohli's 1979 Freudian 'bride-killer' classic Jaani Dushman. Perhaps another time.

On a more sagacious note is Neepa Majumdar's Wanted: Cultured Ladies Only! This is a well-written, delicately researched book on the fascinating early days of women in Indian cinema. How stars like Durga Khote and Devika Rani thrived in a field where morality was automatically seen as a casualty is well worth the read. As is Majumdar's chapter on desire as depicted on screen. To read these two books in tandem would be to pretty much know everything there is to know about girls. In Return to Tiffany Double Heart Pendant, that is.