Too much obsessing is never good but it's refreshing to know that girls in Washington are looking up to the Obama girls more than Miley or other celebs.
Tween girls are expert obsessors, of course, and psychologists say this is a perfect storm to set their minds spinning. The Obama girls are hugely famous in a media-suffused culture that values nothing more than fame. They are adorable and touched with the glittering sheen that envelops their entire family, and yet, as Sophie Metee says, they still seem "like normal kids."
At the start of adolescence, almost all girls start "looking for role models outside of their own families," explains psychologist Michael Brody of Potomac. "Whether it's in terms of friendships or teachers or in terms of identification with certain celebrities -- which these kids are -- and a certain lifestyle, like living in the White House. It's a tremendous fantasy."
And most compelling of all: It seems attainable.
Some Washington girl is going to be Malia Obama's new best friend, and why shouldn't it be Sophie? They might meet when the Obamas come to play at Woodacres Park, she schemes, or maybe they'll be in the same soccer camp this summer.
And if some of Katie McCool's current classmates end up going to Sidwell Friends, where the Obama daughters attend school, the Arlington fifth-grader could be one friend-of-a-friend away from a White House sleepover.
Soon after President Obama won the election, Marta Gappy, a Woodbridge fifth-grader, made a decision. "She said, 'I'm going to be [Malia's] best friend. I could be her best friend. She's moving to Washington,' " recalls Marta's mom, Kaye Gappy. "I thought that was kind of odd, I have to admit. . . . I would've assumed Marta would've understood the worldliness of this -- you know, he's the president of the United States. And she didn't. She just didn't." Read the whole thing at WaPo
