Michelle Obama says that her husband makes comments on her wardrobe and asks her why she needs more shoes.

By MARIAN BURROS


WASHINGTON - Reporters are not the only ones with a particularly keen interest in what Michelle Obama wears. Her husband, Mrs.Obama says, notices everything. In fact, she has learned not to wear a certain gray metallic belt when the president is around.

“Barack calls it my‘Star Trek’belt,”the first lady said in a recent interview. “He doesn’t understand fashion.”

The interview, which started out on the subject of the new White House vegetable garden, ended up ranging over a variety of household topics, which Mrs.Obama addressed with substantial fun-poking at her husband, her mother and herself.

On the president and her wardrobe:“He’s always asking:‘Is that new? I haven’t seen that before.’It’s like, Why don’t you mind your own business- Solve world hunger. Get out of my closet.”

She teasingly imitated him: “You didn’t need any more shoes. The shoes you had on yesterday were fine. Why can’t you just wear that for the rest of the presidency?”

The first lady said she was not naturally thin and, like most other people, had to exercise and watch what she eats.

“I have hips, and I have them covered up with these pleats,”she said, pointing to her Maria Pinto skirt.

To keep those hips from spreading, she said, she follows an exercise regimen of light weights, calisthenics, jump-rope and a cardiovascular routine that includes interval running.

“This is work,”she said.

Regular exercise allows for dessert, French fries and a burger - every now and then. But she would eat the fries every day if she could.“They are my favorite food in the whole wide world,”she said.“I could live on French fries.”

As a child, she much preferred peanut butter to the vegetables her mother, Marian Robinson, served with dinner every night.

“My mother, who is now a grandmother - and that’s a whole ‘nother person - seems to believe that she never, ever really made us eat anything that we didn’t want to eat,” Mrs.Obama said.“It’s just a lie. I’ll get my brother here, and we can spend hours railing about how we hid lima beans in our napkins. And for the days we had to eat liver, we were gagging over it.”

But Mrs.Robinson the strict mother became the quintessentially indulgent grandmother, her daughter said.“She thinks I’m strict in terms of food,”Mrs.Obama said, “but really everything I learned, I learned from her. It’s just now these are her grandchildren.”

“She thinks Malia and Sasha should have dessert every day, three times a day,” the first lady said.