This Girl Dressed Up As Michelle Obama For School, And Michelle Loved It

This little girl’s school project got an A+ … at least from the former first lady.

Alexandra Dow, a third grader from Diamond Bar, California, knew exactly who she wanted to be when her teacher asked the class to dress up as someone they believed has made a positive difference in the world.

“[The teacher] said as soon as she gave the overview of the project, Alexandra’s hand shot up and she said she wanted to be Michelle Obama ,” Alexandra’s mom, Audrey Dow, told HuffPost. “She came home that day telling us all about the project and bragging that she would be Michelle.”

And from the looks of a cute viral photo Dow posted on Twitter, Alexandra did an awesome job.

Michelle Obama herself gave the sweet tweet her stamp of approval.

“We were both shocked!” Dow said of Obama’s response. “Alexandra did not believe it at first, then she got teary-eyed and said, ‘I can’t believe Mrs. Obama wrote to me!’ She was talking about it all evening and couldn’t wait to tell friends at school.”

Yet the assignment wasn’t just about dress-up. Alexandra also had to research her subject, write a two-page report, create a poster board presentation and prepare a one-minute speech to deliver as Obama during her school’s open house.

Thanks to all that research, Alexandra learned a lot about the former first lady and was able to draw parallels between Obama’s life and her own.

“We live in an area with a very, very small black community,” Dow explained. “There may be only two other families in her school that are black. When she sees Michelle on TV, she feels so connected to her because she’s brown like her. When she did this project and saw pictures of Michelle as a little girl for the first time, she said, ‘Look! She has hair like mine.’”

Another cool thing Alexandra learned about Obama is that she went to Princeton, just like her mom. In fact, Dow had Alexandra while she was attending the university.

“She was so struck by the fact that Michelle’s teachers had said not to apply to Princeton because she was reaching too high,” Dow recalled, while emphasizing the importance of children seeing themselves reflected in our leaders.

“Alexandra said that sometimes people want to hold you down, but you just have to believe in yourself.”

We think Obama would approve of that message as well.