Eliza Reid

That should be enough.

And yet, I know

as a feminist, as a woman, that the patriarchy or social mores or standards or whatever you want to call it, has traditionally marginalized women's voices and women's contributions and women's presences.

And I began to think that maybe that's something I can do with this invisible platform, is I can confound expectations about female spouses of male heads of state.

A couple of years later,

There's a Facebook post that then European Council President Donald Tusk puts on Instagram.

And it's an image of four women, wives of G7 leaders at the G7 meeting.

And their backs are to the camera and they're gazing out to the sunset.

And the caption says, the lighter side of the force.

as if these accomplished, original, talented women, women to whom I could identify then in many ways, were merely some kind of beautiful muses for their husbands' genius.

And I remember seeing this and thinking, ugh, it's too bad that I'm First Lady, because if I weren't, I would post something about this.

And then I had an epiphany of sorts.

And I realized, I am First Lady, and I don't have a rule book, but I do have a blue-checked Facebook account, and no one to tell me what I can or can't put on it.

And so I posted something about it, talking about these women and how it didn't behoove anybody to reduce them to some kind of vital window dressing for affairs of state.

I hit post, and I got on a flight that I was doing that had no Wi-Fi.

And when I landed, there was all kinds of comments on the post, as you can maybe imagine.

One of which was from an old friend who said, you should really write an op-ed about this for a big paper.

And as a writer, I thought, that would be incredible.

I'd love to do an op-ed, but I'm First Lady.

I can't write an op-ed.