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Why Michelle Obama says Barack needs more friends.

Speaking at the Obama Foundation Summit earlier this week, former first lady Michelle Obama heaped praise on her husband — with one big caveat.

Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Glamour.

She praised Barack Obama's decency, honesty, and integrity and talked about how important those things were to her own growth and success — but she was careful to note that he is just one part of her much larger support network.


"I love my husband, and he is my rock, but my girlfriends are my sanity," she said while being interviewed by her friend, poet Elizabeth Alexander.

Obama spoke about how close-knit friendships with other women calmed her during a frenzied existence in the White House, kept her grounded, and even held her accountable to her values and ideals.

Then, addressing the men in the crowd, Obama added: "Y'all should get you some friends."

It's well known by now that men and women generally do friendship differently. Women's friendships are known to be much more emotionally intimate and rewarding while men's often are more likely to be surface-level and based on shared activities. According to some real talk from the former first lady, women just do friendship better.

"I’m, you know, sad for you guys," she said. "Y’all should get you some friends. Get you some friends and talk to each other, ‘cause that’s the other thing we (women) do; we straighten each other out on some things, our girlfriends."

Her husband, she says, is no exception.

"Sometimes I’m like, 'Barack, who you talking to? And it can’t just be Marty [Nesbitt],'" she joked. "Y’all need to go talk to each other about your stuff because there’s so much of it. It’s so messy."

Speaking off the cuff, Obama pretty much nailed what friendship researchers (a real job!) have been saying about men for a while.

Men do need more friends.

Studies show that chronic loneliness is a near-epidemic in adult men, with both the quantity and quality of our friendships falling off a cliff once we reach adulthood, and that the suicide rate for middle-aged men is more than three times that for women.

This doesn't happen by accident. We live in a society that encourages men to suppress feelings from a young age so they don't appear "weak." The emphasis on "strength" in men often comes at the detriment of many other (arguably more important) traits.

It's time for this to change. "It’s powerful to have strong men, but what does that strength mean?" Obama mused. "You know, does it mean respect? Does it mean responsibility? Does it mean compassion?"

It'll take a big cultural shift to get more men opening up to each other, but having someone as influential as Michelle Obama addressing the issue is a good start.

You can watch the full interview below:

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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You're obviously not going to confront them about it because that's all sorts of uncomfortable, so you think of a better, way less ballsy approach: leaving a passive aggressive note on their car's windshield.

Satisfied, you walk back to your car feeling proud of yourself for telling that liar off and even more satisfied as you walk the additional 100 steps to get to the store from your lame parking spot all the way at the back of the lot. But did you ever stop and wonder if you told off the wrong person?

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There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

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8 nontraditional empathy cards that are unlike any you've ever seen. They're perfect!

Because sincerity and real talk are important during times of medical crisis.

True compassion.

When someone you know gets seriously ill, it's not always easy to come up with the right words to say or to find the right card to give.

Emily McDowell — a former ad agency creative director and the woman behind the Los Angeles-based greeting card and textile company Emily McDowell Studio — knew all too well what it was like to be on the receiving end of uncomfortable sentiments.

At the age of 24, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin's lymphoma. She went into remission after nine months of chemo and has remained cancer-free since, but she received her fair share of misplaced, but well-meaning, wishes before that.

On her webpage introducing the awesome cards you're about to see, she shared,

"The most difficult part of my illness wasn't losing my hair, or being erroneously called 'sir' by Starbucks baristas, or sickness from chemo. It was the loneliness and isolation I felt when many of my close friends and family members disappeared because they didn't know what to say or said the absolute wrong thing without realizing it."

Her experience inspired Empathy Cards — not quite "get well soon" and not quite "sympathy," they were created so "the recipients of these cards [can] feel seen, understood, and loved."

Scroll down to read these sincere, from-the-heart, and incredibly realistic sentiments.

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This woman's powerful 'before and after' photos crush myths about body positivity

"Body positivity is about saying that you are more than a body and your self-worth is not reliant on your beauty."



Michelle Elman, a body positivity coach, helps people who are struggling to find confidence in their own skin.

After persevering through numerous medical conditions and surgeries in her own life, Elman realized a few years ago that body positivity wasn't just about size or weight. Things like scars, birthmarks, and anything else that makes us feel different of self-conscious have to be a part of the conversation, and she tries to make the movement accessible to everyone.

Sharing her own journey has been one of her most effective teaching tools.

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Yet, here we are.

PPE masks were the last thing on Leah Holland of Georgetown, Kentucky's mind on March 4, 2020, when she got a tattoo inspired by the words of a close friend.

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