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A Day With Major Michelle Curran, the Only Female Thunderbird in the Air Force


In Captain Marvel Brie Larson plays Carol Danvers, an Air Force fighter jet pilot who uses the special powers she gains during an accident to save the galaxy. The movie is fairly realistic—not in the all-powerful superhero way, of course, but in the sense that it’s set in 1995. Just two years earlier, women were granted the honor of flying fighter jets by the U.S. Air Force (USAF). So Danvers is a leader in more ways than one.

But in the 26 years we’ve had female fighter pilots on the Air Force, only five have made it to the Thunderbirds. The demonstration squadron boasts some of the world’s most elite fliers, and those skilled enough to make it serve a two-year assignment. They act as the public face for the USAF, performing jaw-dropping maneuvers at airshows around the country.

Today, there’s only one female Thunderbird pilot: Major Michelle Curran, a 32-year-old Wisconsin native who flies the coveted Opposing Solo position. It means she’s front and center in one of the most visible squadrons in the military. Next year, her last with the Thunderbirds, she’ll get bumped up to Lead Solo, where she’ll be showcasing the maximum capabilities of the planes.

Her favorite maneuver is the vertical roll. “It makes a spiral in the sky,” she tells me. “I’ll go from 150 feet above the ground to 15,000 in a few seconds while rolling. We have music associated with all our maneuvers and for that one I got to pick the song. I chose [No Doubt’s] ‘I’m Just a Girl.'”

The Air Force turns 72 years old this month. Pair that with Captain Marvel providing more visibility to female pilots earlier this year, and the timing seemed right to experience a day in the life of the only female Thunderbird. To really complete the picture, the Air Force even offered a flight in a F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft (which, I learn via Military.com, is a mainstay of the combat fleet).

I didn’t realize I was nervous about the day ahead, though, until I was halfway to the 177th Fighter Wing of the Atlantic City Air National Guard Base. For one, I’d been told most people who go up in a F-16 for the first time throw up or pass out (for reasons I’ll explain later). One way to mitigate the nauseating effects is to drink lots of water, but that meant double the bathroom breaks on the drive there. So now, I’m not only anxious about puking or passing out in front of a badass pilot but also concerned I’ll be late to meet this badass pilot. On top of that, I worry she might be intimidating. What if I call her by the wrong rank? Do I have to salute? What happens if you unwittingly commit a faux pas in front of one of the best fliers in the world?

But from the moment I meet Curran on the scorching hot tarmac, she is warm and funny. She’d just landed from a Thunderbirds show in Sioux Falls and immediately jokes that she needs to fix her hair after sweating too much on the flight over. “These are not breathable,” she adds, tugging at her flight jumpsuit.

Major Curran

Courtesy of the Air Force

Curran has been in the Air Force for 11 years, but flying wasn’t always her goal. Growing up in a small town of about 4,000 people, she knew she didn’t want to stay there forever but she worried about how to pay for college. She was applying to scholarship programs when her father suggested looking into the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). She applied, picking the Air Force as her military arm of choice on a bit of a whim. (“I’ve always liked roller-coasters, I’m a thrill-seeker, and I wanted to travel,” she explains.) Once she visited a base and heard the roar of the jets, though, she knew she wanted to pursue the pilot route. She went for it, even competing for a highly-coveted pilot spot while still in college. Eventually, she was selected. “I was so excited, I called everyone in my family—and none of them answered their phones,” she deadpans. “So that was cool.”



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Read Every Word of Michelle Williams' Powerful Emmys Speech About Equal Pay


On Sunday, September 22, Michelle Williams won the Emmy for her performance of Gwen Verdon in the FX drama miniseries Fosse/Verdon. And once on stage to give her acceptance speech, she dedicated her time to a very important cause: equal pay.

“Thank you so much to the television academy for this and to the incredible cast and crew who have worked so hard to make this TV show, especially you Sam Rockwell. I know how hard you worked,” she began. “I see this as an acknowledgment of what is possible when a woman is trusted to discern her own needs, feel safe enough to voice them, and respected enough that they’ll be heard.”

Williams then explained that every time she asked for anything she needed in order to do her job—big or small—she heard “yes” in reply. “When I asked for more dance classes, I heard yes,” she said. “More voice lessons, yes. A different wig, a pair of fake teeth not made out of rubber, yes.”

She continued, “All of these things, they require effort and they cost more money. But my bosses never presumed to know better than I did about what I needed in order to do my job and honor Gwen Verdon.”

More important, they didn’t just support her with props and lessons. They supported her with equal pay.

“And so I want to say, thank you so much to FX and to Fox 21 studios for supporting me completely and for paying me equally because they understood that when you put value into a person it empowers that person to get in touch with their own inherent value. And then where do they put that value? They put it into their work,” she said. “And so the next time a woman and especially a woman of color—because she stands to make 52 cents on the dollar compared to her white, male counterpart—tells you what she needs in order to do her job listen to her. Believe her. Because one day she might stand in front of you and say thank you for allowing her to succeed because of her workplace environment and not in spite of it.”

She finished the speech with a shoutout to her daughter. “Matilda, this is for you, like everything else.”

Fans quickly took to social media to share their praise for Williams’ speech.

“That Michelle Williams speech belongs on a plaque,” one tweeted. “Michelle Williams thank you for acknowledging that there is a far greater wage gap for women of color than literally everyone else including white women,” another noted.

Celebrities including Kerry Washington and Debra Messing also took to Twitter to celebrate Williams.

Fans also called out how supportive Williams’ best friend, Busy Phillips, was during the speech:

Backstage, Williams spoke out more about equal pay. “I’d know from the inside how difficult it was to feel like you were ever really getting ahead. And no matter how many accolades [I got], I couldn’t make it translate into long-term security, so the discrepancy with All the Money in the World illustrated not just a larger point for me, a woman of privilege, but how difficult it is for women of all [backgrounds],” she told press. “When you look at all numbers, 52% on the dollar is what a hispanic woman will make compared to a white male.”

For the record, Williams is spot on with her speech. August 21 marks Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, the point in the year when the average black woman’s wages finally equal what a white man earned the year before. It’s time we all start talking more about pay disparity—on the Emmys stage and off.



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Barack and Michelle Obama Just Released a Summer Playlist Full of Bops


We’ve always known Barack and Michelle Obama are cool, but they just keep outdoing themselves. On Saturday, Barack went on Instagram and shared everything he and Michelle have been jamming to lately, proving that they’re still some of the most on-trend people we’ve ever had in the White House.

The playlist is basically a summer turn-up mix, and includes everyone from Lizzo to Drake and Rihanna to SZA. They also made sure to put new romantics Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes on there, in addition to D.C. rapper Goldlink and flamenco experimentalist Rosalia from Spain. There are also some standard classics that never go out of style: “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing” by Stevie Wonder, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” by Frank Sinatra, and “Can I Kick It” by A Tribe Called Quest.

“With summer winding down, here’s a sampling of what Michelle and I have been listening to — some new, some old, some fast, some slow. Hope you enjoy,” Barack wrote.

The playlist came just a few days after Barack had shared what he’s been reading this summer. His list featured collected works by Toni Morrison, who passed away this month, as well as The Nickel Boys by Pulitzer-winner Colson Whitehead and How to Read the Air by Ethiopian-American novelist Dinaw Mengestu.

Just before the playlist came out, Lizzo had tweeted that Barack had been the first president she could vote for and how proud she was to exercise her right to cast a ballot. She, understandably, freaked out on Instagram a little while later when the former president revealed he’s been listening to her hit, “Juice.”

“I TWEETED THIS AT 10:26AM AND ONE HOUR LATER PRESIDENT @barackobama TWEETED ABOUT ME!!! WE’RE FRIENDS NOW I DONT MAKE THE RULES!!! STREAM JUICE!!! OBAMA’S 6# FAVORITE SONG RN,” she wrote in an overjoyed, all-caps caption.

We would be losing our minds, too, Now, excuse us while we blast this playlist at every summer barbecue left in 2019.



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Meghan Markle's Interview With Michelle Obama For British Vogue Is Here


Meghan Markle has notched another “first,” becoming the first-ever guest editor of British Vogue‘s September issue, which is out next week. The duchess decided to feature some of the women who serve as her biggest inspirations in its pages, which she’s called “Forces for Change.” Also included in the historic issue is a Q&A she herself conducted with former First Lady Michelle Obama. That interview was published by Vogue this week, and it’s brimming with powerful insights and thoughtful words of advice.

We shouldn’t be surprised: Over and over again, the former FLOTUS and best-selling author has inspired women with her wisdom on marriage and relationships and her enlightened perspective on parenthood. She’s done it again in the interview with Markle.

As Markle writes in the introduction to the back-and-forth, she proposed the interview to Obama “over a casual lunch of chicken tacos and my ever-burgeoning bump” and emphasized that she’d intended it to be just “a few simple questions to garner a few simple answers.” But Markle was in for a surprise.

“What was sent back to me, however, left me somewhat speechless,” Markle continues. “A few ‘simple questions’ (which she could have answered with a sentence or two) were returned to me as a thoughtful, reflective and beautifully curated narrative—a gentle reminder not of how but of why she has become such a globally respected public figure.”

The Q&A covers the issue of global equality for women and girls, lessons Obama has learned from her years in the public eye, and motherhood—which makes sense given Markle’s status as a brand new mom. Referring to a message Obama sent Markle on Mother’s Day, the Duchess of Sussex asked Obama what being a mom had taught her.

“Motherhood has taught me that, most of the time, my job is to give them the space to explore and develop into the people they want to be. Not who I want them to be or who I wish I was at that age, but who they are, deep inside. Motherhood has also taught me that my job is not to bulldoze a path for them in an effort to eliminate all possible adversity. But instead, I need to be a safe and consistent place for them to land when they inevitably fail; and to show them, again and again, how to get up on their own,” Obama answered.

Obama also said that she would encourage her daughters to “keep trying on new experiences until they find what feels right” instead of trying to stick to a path or a set of expectations.

“Becoming who we are is an ongoing process, and thank God—because where’s the fun in waking up one day and deciding there’s nowhere left to go? That’s something I wish I’d recognized a little earlier. As a younger woman, I spent too much time worrying that I wasn’t achieving enough, or I was straying too far from what I thought was the prescribed path. What I hope my daughters will realize a little earlier is that there is no prescribed path, that it’s OK to swerve, and that the confidence they need to recognize that will come with time,” she continued.

Markle asked if that advice would have been different if Obama had had sons instead of daughters, and Obama replied with a poignant response, invoking her own parents. Her advice, she wrote, would have been the exact same:

“My parents, particularly my father, taught my brother and me at an early age to treat boys and girls exactly the same. When I was still in elementary school, my dad bought my brother a pair of boxing gloves. But when he came home from the store, he was carrying not one, but two pairs of gloves. He wasn’t going to teach his son to punch without making sure his daughter could throw a left hook, too. Now, I was a little younger and a little smaller than my brother, but I kept up with him. I could dodge a jab just like he could, and I could hit just as hard as him, too. My father saw that. I think he wanted to make sure that my brother saw that as well,” she said.



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Michelle Obama Responded to Trump's Latest Twitter Rant Against Baltimore


As former First Lady Michelle Obama once famously said, “When they go, we go high”—and that’s exactly what it appears she’s doing following President Donald Trump‘s latest Twitter rant. Only a week after a racially charged Twitter attack on four female congresswomen of color, Trump lashed out on Saturday (July 27) at Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, attacking both Cummings personally and his district in Baltimore.

“Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA,” Trump wrote. “As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded. Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.”

The attack, which Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and many others also called out as racist, likely stems from some recent political drama: NPR reported that on Thursday, the House Oversight and Reform Committee, a committee overseen by Cummings, voted to authorize subpoenas for records of senior White House officials’ to ascertain their use of personal emails and text services for work purposes.

Cummings quickly responded to Trump’s tweet, writing in reply, “Mr. President, I go home to my district daily. Each morning, I wake up, and I go and fight for my neighbors. It is my constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch. But, it is my moral duty to fight for my constituents.”

Obama was among those who quickly defended Cummings—and Baltimore—on Twitter. Her response was subtle, but extremely classy: She clapped back against the President’s invective with a tweet highlighting one of her favorite Baltimore organizations, the Lethal Ladies.

“On #NationalDanceDay, I’m shouting out the Lethal Ladies, a Baltimore STEP team who I saw perform back in 2017. I’m so proud of you all—and everyone who’s dancing today,” she tweeted, along with a short video of their performance.

In the video, the young women not only display their talents but send their own powerful message as well.

“What Michelle Obama taught us when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level,” their instructor says adding, “Our motto is…” Then, the young women reply in their dance, “When they go low, we go high/Raise our standards to the sky.” Hear, hear.





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Michelle Obama Wore Her Natural Curls, and People Are Living for It


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.

Erika Goldring/Getty Images

“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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