Turnips, Michelle Obama and Lil Jon. The humble vegetable, the first lady and the rapper behind the summer hit Turn Down For What all came together this week in a six-second Vine video that’s hard not to root for.
Obama was in the midst of a #AskTheFirstLady Q&A on the video-sharing site when she took a cheeky question from a well-known Barack Obama impersonator.
“How many calories do you burn every time you ‘turn up?’ ” he asked?
And now the famous response: “Turnip for what?”
Cue the first strains of the Lil Jon song and Obama chair-dancing with a turnip in hand, and thus the makings of yet another viral video from the media-savvy first lady – there have been over 10-million “loops” of the video since being posted Tuesday morning.
Obama has never been shy about opening up on camera, especially for her Let’s Move campaign, which promotes active living and healthy eating for children. Which is why, when one googles “mom dancing,” the first result is a video of her appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2013 (which has nearly 20-million views on YouTube). Tonight Show announcer Steve Higgins introduces the skit as a way “to encourage parents everywhere to get up and get moving with their kids.”
She ends that segment with the Dougie, a fun little shimmy of a dance move that’s become an Obama family trademark. One of the first instances of Dougie-ing came in 2011, when Obama unveiled a Beyoncé song that was produced for Let’s Move. The song, fittingly, is titled Move Your Body.
Barack also reportedly did the Dougie at a 50th birthday celebration for Michelle earlier this year, though there seems to be no video evidence of this momentous event (think of the millions of potential clicks lost).
Many observers cringed at Obama’s latest video, though many more are cherishing the six-second moment over and over again.
What surely is most important to Obama is that she has been continually able to push Let’s Move, now a four-year-old campaign, into the news cycle whenever needed. She still employs more traditional means of getting the message out, including photo-ops in the White House garden and a recent appearance on The Chew. But the first lady and her team clearly planned for her turnip stunt to be a can’t-miss viral hit with the younger audience Let’s Move is trying to reach.
Credit to Obama for pulling the whole clip together with her easygoing nature. Employing one of the summer’s biggest hits doesn’t necessarily assure you a trending topic on Twitter. Just last week, the Rock The Vote movement released a more-official Lil Jon parody video called #TURNOUTFORWHAT to urge young Americans to vote this fall. It features high-profile appearances from Girls creator Lena Dunham, comedians Fred Armisen and Whoopi Goldberg and Orange Is The New Black’s Natasha Lyonne, yet it’s only garnered a relatively modest 740,000-plus views to date, and even less real media attention.
It’s not a fair comparison to look back at Hillary Clinton’s stint as first lady in the early 1990s alongside Obama’s digitally savvy approach to the role. But it is interesting to note that public figures has generally come a long way in communicating their initiatives to the public.