proud of our first daughters. joining me now is kelly wallace, chief correspondent of ivillage. last summer the first lady gave kelly a personal look inside her life in an exclusive interview for ivillage. and teresa wilts, deputy editor of essence magazine. they recently published a special issue salute to the first lady. thank you both for being here. great to be here. thanks for having me. kelly, these children seem very grounded. you spent time with the first lady. how does she do it? part of it is she treats them and tries to give them as normal a life as possible. they have to do their laundry. they have to clean their bathrooms. they have to do chores around the house. then she makes time for sleepovers, for homecoming, going to the movies. all the average things kids do. she even calls up friends and say are they okay?
are they the same? she wants to make sure the white house experience isn t changing them. everyone says they re the same great girls. now, teresa, when you look at this picture of the president and his daughters watching the first lady giving her speech at the democratic convention, this is another one of those look behind the curtains. you find the obamas seem to have a genuinely close relationship and it s something that seems authentic that is not staged. definitely. there s a warmth with them. i think watching the girls yesterday was like our 21st century obama moment except that they were real. and, you know, they re just normal preteen, teenage girls. they remind me a lot of my own 12-year-old niece. i talked to her about them and asked what she thought. she said they re really pretty, seem down to earth, and they re funny.
parenting department. essence did this big journal on the first lady. she is the symbol of being a mother, of being a first lady, and of a black woman of high profile. lot of pressure on her, teresa? oh, absolutely. i mean, she s the first lady. she s the first black first lady. and, you know, there s a lot of scrutiny. she s being watched all the time. everything that she does is being picked apart and examined. but she handles it with an incredible amount of grace. our readers can t get enough of her. i think you re right that she handles it and your readers can t get enough of her. i m one of your readers. kelly, teresa, thank you both for your time. have a great night. thank you for having me. while we were all watching the president, some republicans were playing some very dirty tricks. that s next. what are you doing?
a moment they re not under some kind of scrutiny. and the girls are aware of this. they are aware they have this public image to uphold. it s daunting if you re a tween or teen. but they re away of it. teresa, let me go to you. the president recently talked about how his daughters are getting older. listen to this. now that my girls are getting older, they don t want to spend that much time with me anyway. so i ll be probably calling around looking for somebody to play cards with me or something. because i m getting kind of lonely in this big house. teresa, i don t know if he s getting lonely or not, but it is natural as young ladies get older, they tend to want to spend more time doing other things than being under their parents. absolutely. one thing is they re so fascinating to watch. i think we d all like to be able to watch them grow up and see what they re doing as they become young women. but part of being the first