G20: First Lady makes an impact with royal embrace and fashion sense

Published on Thursday 2 April 2009 22:18

IT IS the question that seemed to dominate the US media yesterday – did the Queen or Michelle Obama make the first move in Wednesday's embrace?

Such is the level of interest in the Obama's meeting with their royal hosts, the president and First Lady's every gesture has been analysed by the media.

And the overall verdict is that the visiting Americans did their country proud.

The New York Post summed it up nicely. Emblazoned across a front-page picture of the Queen with Mr and Mrs Obama is the slogan 'ROYALTY! And Mrs Windsor, too'.

"The Queen doesn't even touch her sons," one commentator mused as CNN analysed the incident throughout the day.

But rather than overstepping her role, the accepted assumption stateside is that it was the Queen who made the first move, reaching out to touch her guest.

Meanwhile, Mrs Obama yesterday visited an all-girls school in north London. She told the 240 girls about growing up on Chicago's south side, and urged them to think of education as "cool".

"Be the best that you can be," Michelle Obama urged the young women.

She urged her audience to have "confidence and fortitude" to determine their own success.

Mrs Obama choked up as she took to the stage to speak to the pupils at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School in Islington, north London.

Fighting tears at one point, she described her audience as "the future leaders of Great Britain and this world". She said: "Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common.

"For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would standing here as the first African-American First Lady."