OBAMARAMA LIVETH

So, here's the thing. I have a borderline obsession with Michelle Obama. It's an awkward quirk to confess, even to oneself, but it's really not until Google finishes your sentence "Mi -" on your way to researching Michigan's education policies, with "Michelle Obama wardrobe" that you realise that you're well and truly in bona fide fan territory. I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but I can vaguely pin it to when I started getting really transfixed by the White House's Flickr stream. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what did it. It's like the voyeuristic plague infiltrating the minds of the general public via the rise and rise of social media finally crescendoed with the Presidential administration deciding the best way to maintain the present incumbents' public image was to give us snapshots of what the Obamas are up to. ALL. THE. TIME. Obama hangs out with the Dalai Lama. Obama slurping a frosty on vacation in Hawaii. (Everyone say 'Photo op'!) Obama and family watch the World Cup from the Oval Office. (As you do. What else is the Oval Office for?) Obama plays peek-a-boo with some super cute toddlers. Obama has a meeting with the mayor of Toledo at Rudy's Hotdogs. Oh, and what's that? Mrs Obama waits to be introduced to a foreign secretary of state, sporting yet another colourful specimen from her impressively extensive cardigan collection. See? You just cannot look away.

Cue new daily illness: Distraction By Obamas. (Handily abbreviates to DBO.) That photostream; it will get you. You don't want to spend too long contemplating how many minutes of my life have been lost needlessly stalking perusing the every move of the US President and his sartorially gifted spouse lately. It would be embarrassing. I do this thing now where I suddenly feel worried if I've been away from the internet for too long in case Michelle Obama's gone and worn an outfit I've not known about. It's like I have to fulfill my daily quota of Michelle Obama images or I'm at great risk of voluntary implosion. ("Single White Female." - Wait, who said that?!) Now obviously, she and I have taste that is worlds apart. I wouldn't wear anything she does. She would not wear anything I do. However, obvious gaps in age and style do not negate the fact that this is someone who clearly knows what they're doing in the getting dressed department. The woman has a singular sense of personal style not boasted by a First Lady since Jackie Kennedy. An avid supporter of up and coming American designers, she wears everything from Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's line The Row to chains like J Crew with such panache you'd be forgiven for thinking her sole job was to look good. Really, really good. She's also credited with wearing a Jason Wu gown better than anyone else ever, and just casually has a degree from Harvard Law School on the side. In other words, she's sort of a walking recipe for self-loathing.

I'm going to throw the link out there so the rest of you can join me in corporately wasting our time trying to vicariously climb into the lives and, where its female counterpart is concerned, wardrobes of the most powerful couple in the civilised world. Just don't blame me if Google starts to smugly draw attention to your interesting, er, browsing habits when the real world comes knocking. DBO victims, unite. Surely there must be more than one of me. Surely.

As you were.

Barack Obama; infant whisperer

Michelle Obama/UK PM's wife Samantha Cameron, BFFs

Proof that powerful men need wives to de-lintify their jackets, too

www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/