Michelle Obama's Sparkling Thigh-High Heels Are Political

Who else could outshine style icon Sarah Jessica Parker in her home city? Only the woman whose book outsold every other book published this year, in the first 15 days of its release.

On Wednesday night, Michelle Obama stepped on stage at Brooklyn's Barclays Center wearing $4,000 sparkling gold thigh-high Balenciaga heels and a bright yellow, high slit dress by the same designer, giving the audience and the internet full view of the boots. The optics of looking fresh to death are clearly not lost on Obama, whose memoir Becoming uses the lens of fashion to comment on the racial and gendered expectations that constricted her self-expression during her time in the White House. Her bold fashion choice on Wednesday made sense in a book tour that's largely about the politics of expressing yourself.

Obama kicked off her tour chatting with Oprah in Chicago while wearing a white sequined off-the-shoulder top. In her December cover of Elle she dons a flowing white Dior dress with a leather corset and black lace heels, casually promoting another interview with Oprah. And when she does throw on a pant suit, she rocks one that's all denim, or all red, or all white, just to remind us she has it like that.

Obama is living her best uninhibited life right now. When Jimmy Fallon asked her what her thoughts were as she left Trump's inauguration on Air Force One, she said "Bye Felicia." She even hit up the 2 Dope Queens podcast to come on their show, which is essentially an ode to young black women letting their hair down.

She was a boundary-pushing style icon as First Lady too, famously insisting on her sleeveless dresses and inspiring workout routines named after her arms. But, as she writes in Becoming, her self-expression was still largely constricted under the pressure of her former life as the first black First Lady. Despite these constrictions, she still found a way to use her platform to make a statement and highlight young designers.

"I did know that my clothes were making a statement, I knew that was the case," she told the AP, at Barclays. "So we decided why don't we use this platform to uplift some young new designers who normally wouldn't get this kind of attention, because you can change their lives, which is one of the reasons why we chose Jason Wu for my inaugural gown."

From the sounds of it, it was a heavy load to bear, only making her pop out looks all the more becoming.

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