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Image Credit: The New York Times

Nestled between the white monuments of Washington D.C. is a new dash of green. On September 17th, Washington D.C. opened a weekly farmer's market near the White House. This opening, ceremoniously attended by Michelle Obama as well as hundreds of shoppers, led me to think about the ways in which the First Lady has championed the sustainability movement. One of her first ceremonial acts as a resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was to plant a garden. The White House website includes a film about digging this garden and compares Michelle Obama to Eleanor Roosevelt, the only other First Lady to plant produce on the White House lawns. In her remarks at the opening of the Farmer's Market, Michelle Obama refers to the White House gardens as "one of the greatest things that I've done in my life so far" and describes supporting the Farmer's Market as an extension of her commitment to making healthy food more widely accessible.

Together, the White House gardens and the adjacent farmer's market represent a distinctive "greening" of the First Lady role. Rather than directly entering the health care debate as Hillary Rodham Clinton did in 1993, Michelle Obama argues that her emphasis on healthy eating is an important part of the discussion of health care. In her speech to the farmer's market, she said, "I've realized that little things like a garden can actually play a role in all of these larger discussions. They make us think about these issues in a way that maybe sometimes the policy conversations don't allow us to think." How do the Washington D.C. farmer's market and the White House garden participate in conversations about such issues as health care and economic stimulus? Is Michelle Obama advocating policy by digging gardens and shopping locally or are these photo ops merely obfuscations of policy discussion?

The White House website offers numerous examples of Michelle Obama's visual and spoken rhetoric on the subjects of sustainable gardening and healthy eating that could make for interesting classroom discussion.