"For Michelle Obama, Girlie Clothes That Lean In"

"However much you may want to dismiss sartorial stereotype, it’s inarguable that such styles spark an almost Pavlovian response in the lizard brain: They bring to mind the decades when gender roles were codified and distinct, when women’s sphere was the home, and their game plan didn’t necessarily included higher education...
We live in the era of the Merkelization of female political dress, which has seen women like Ms. Merkel, the German chancellor, and Hillary Rodham Clinton adopt what is effectively the male uniform in softer, brighter colors to remove the topic from the conversation. (It’s a pantsuit. It’s a beige/orange/teal pantsuit. Enough said.) Another way to explain the strategy is “bore them into talking about the issues.”

There’s nothing wrong with it (men do it, too), and it prevents a situation like the one that arose a few years ago when the French housing minister Cécile Duflot wore a floral dress to speak in Parliament, and was met by catcalls and whistles, which then spawned a whole debate about her dress and the reaction to her dress, and entirely overshadowed whatever it was they had been debating at the time. But what does it say about the visual identity of role models?

In choosing to meet young women in clothes that, perhaps, make her look like them — or how they may want to look if they didn’t have to wear school uniforms — Mrs. Obama was implying: You can dress like a girl and dream about getting a Ph.D. (or a law degree, if we are being picayune), too."
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/fashion/for-michelle-obama-girlie-clothes-that-lean-in.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000&_r=0&referrer=

I love this. It's that thing where women learn to time the introduction of feminine clothing when they first join a lab. We shouldn't have to do that.
Related: Re-appropriating Pink.