Michelle Obama took the stage at the Essence Festival in New Orleans on Saturday (July 6) to have a conversation with Gayle King—and dispense some great advice about dating and marriage. We’re always here for whatever pearls of wisdom Obama has ready to share, but fans of the former First Lady were here for another thing, too: her natural curls, topped off with golden ombré highlights.

We don’t often see Obama’s hair worn like this. She’s openly spoken about having to adopt a “hair strategy” in the White House as part of a deeply frustrating but all-too-real reality about navigating her role as a Black woman in politics.

“Well, you know, the first thing you’ve got to worry about is how to keep [your hair] healthy,” Obama shared on the 2 Dope Queens podcast. “My whole goal was, I want to end this with hair on my head. And so now you’ve got to think about, How do you do that, you know? What are you doing? And are you swimming? Are you working out? But this wasn’t just a first lady journey. This is a black professional women’s journey.”

The strategy was so involved, she said she was “sure a lot of white women are sitting over there going, ‘Man, I didn’t know all that was going on.'”

It’s not just highly visible women like Obama who have been policed about the way their hair grows out of their head. Black women are also passed over for jobs or promotions—despite their qualifications—due to prejudices about their natural or braided hair. California, in fact, just passed the first law of its kind banning discrimination against people with natural hair.

Twitter was here for the moment.

“Natural haired Michelle Obama is the good luck charm I needed today,” one fan wrote.

One of the last times we saw Obama with her natural curls was on the cover of Essence in 2018. She was also pictured with her natural texture in 2017, a few months after leaving the White House. Here’s hoping we see more of her curls in the future.

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