Michelle Obama Wore Her Natural Curls on the Cover of Essence Magazine

Allure
Updated
Fans are living for this.

Stop my heart: Michelle Obama just showed off her natural curls on the cover of a print magazine for the very first time ever.

Debuted today, the former First Lady appears on the December/January cover of Essence with her coils on full display. The look was paired with neutral makeup and a white statement suit, allowing her megawatt smile and stunning ringlets to take center stage.

This marks the first time Obama has shown the world her texture in a more official capacity, and fans couldn't be more excited. Countless Instagram users took to the comment section on Essence's post to express their awe and adoration for the First Lady and her cover look. "Omg the hair is beautiful" and "gorgeous, love the natural hair!" are just two of myriad similar responses the post sparked.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BqNHBcvHABP/

Before this public appearance, Obama was spotted on vacation last year wearing her natural hair in a ponytail (which the Internet also went wild for). Prior to that, fans had called upon the First Lady to show off her natural style while in office, though they didn't get their wish.

Recently, Obama revealed what it was really like to get glammed up while her husband was in the White House, and called out the "double standard" that exists between women and men in the public eye. "I came to depend heavily on [stylist] Meredith [Koop] but also equally on Johnny Wright, my fast-talking, hard-laughing hurricane of a hairdresser, and Carl Ray, my soft-spoken and meticulous makeup artist," she writes in her memoir, Becoming, per Elle.

While Obama wore her hair exclusively straightened while living in the White House, Wright confirmed last year that her hair has been "100 percent natural" for almost a decade. "I stopped doing her relaxer the first year of the administration," he told Refinery29 in 2017. "Very shortly after that, her hair grew out completely. She has no relaxer anywhere on her hair, not even on the tips."

Needless to say, we couldn't be happier to see Obama shake it up on the cover of Essence in her natural hair. Here's hoping it's the first of many.

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