Iman arrives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute Gala in New York, on Monday, May 4, 2009. (AP Photo/Peter Kramer)

I got these quotes from an email from the folks at Parade magazine, who interviewed Iman, the fashion model. What do you make of what she says?  

“Mrs. Obama is not a great beauty,” Iman, 53 says in Sunday's  PARADE. “But she is so interesting looking and so bright. That will always take you farther. When you’re a great beauty, it’s always downhill for you. If you’re someone like Mrs. Obama, you just get better with age.”

The magazine also asked, the fashion icon if it was difficult to have been one of  the first black supermodels? 

“I did feel a bit ostracized,” Iman says in PARADE. “You suddenly represent a whole race, and that race goes, ‘Well, that person does not represent our ideals of beauty.’ For lack of a better term, it becomes what it was like during slavery. One had the field n— and the house n—. There was this notion that I was chosen by white fashion editors to be better than the rest, which I am  not. I did not like being thought of as the house n— whether it was spoken or whether it was understood. It always left a bad taste in my mouth. I call it ‘the politics of beauty’ because fashion can sometimes be an assault on one’s identity.”