It can be hard for women enrolled in college to fathom another women not attending college because of a man. To many, it may seem the most outrageous, illogical reason ever.
Last week, First Lady Michelle Obama took part in Glamour’s panel “The Power of an Educated Girl” to help us reevaluate how people react to women’s poor reasoning for not attending school.
She discussed the importance of education and her “62 million girls” campaign. Obama she created to raise awareness for millions of girls around the world unable to receive an education.
At the panel, her advice on the topic of boys finding girls unattractive because of their education and girls who don’t attend school to stay close to their boyfriends resonated with many.
According to The Washington Post, women are obtaining the majority of American degrees. In 2010, women acquired 57.4 percent of bachelor’s degrees. To men that are accustomed to living in a male-dominated world, it’s intimidating.
Obama told the girls, “There is no boy at this age that is cute enough or interesting enough to stop you from getting your education. If I had worried about who liked me and who thought I was cute when I was your age, I wouldn’t be married to the president of the United States today.”
The clip of Obama sharing her thoughts with these girls went viral and flooded Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for the past week.
That advice is extremely powerful coming from her.
For starters, she is the FLOTUS — what she says holds a substantial amount of power. Her words could be the final push some girls need to pursue an education.
More importantly, Obama’s message not only speaks to girls that aren’t in school but to graduates and those enrolled — if she is motivating girls to attend school, so should we.
The first lady tells girls to stop judging other girls for not attending school, despite how odd their reasons may be, and start uplifting them. Sometimes women just need that extra push, whether it be from the first lady or another woman.
Obama’s “mic-drop moment,” as The Huffington Post called it, has the potential to change the way girls see education and each other.
Who knows how many more women would attend LSU right now if they were more confident with themselves? Their reasoning for not attending school shouldn’t be any of our concern, but we should make it our responsibility to encourage them to get an education.
An education is one of the deadliest weapons a person can have — there’s not much more intimidating than an educated, intelligent woman. We need to change our focus. We need to motivate as many girls as possible to get ahold of that weapon.
Clarke Perkins is a 19-year-old political science sophomore from New Orleans. You can reach her on Twitter @ClarkePerkins.