There is a pain with being a dark skin young woman. I don't even think that there is a lot of pleasure for a lot of us with being a dark skin woman.

My name is Valle Fontaine and this is Michelle Obama Black Like Me, a BBC World Service documentary podcast.

And then he said to me, wow, you're pretty for a dark skin as if it's unheard of what does that infer that a

miracle has just occurred like beautiful when dark skin wow that's absurd as if beautiful when black are opposing words.

Mm-hmm.

Although... Although I don't subscribe with having to say what color I am or even what shade of brown I am,

for the purposes of this documentary, I'm within the spectrum of what would be described as a dark-skinned black woman of Caribbean heritage born and bred in London,

where the diversity on the streets isn't reflected on the billboards around me.

In fact, women who look like me are rarely seen around boardroom tables or even in the running to be football as wives. And you kind of get used to it.

But in 2008 I was sitting with a couple of girlfriends at a London pub watching the Democratic National Convention.

Barack Obama had just been nominated as the first black Democratic candidate for president in US history. That was exciting enough, but when

I saw Michelle Obama step out on stage, she was something I hadn't expected.

And I come here as a wife who loves my husband and believes he will be an extraordinary president.

Not only will she a powerful black woman right there on the stage commanding the nation and the world's

attention but most notably to me and my friends was that Michelle Obama was black

like me. She was darker than her husband, dark like us.

Raised on the south side of Chicago.

I think the attraction of a barman was Michelle,

to be fair.

She was a real black woman.

If Abbany was sitting next to me, she has the British honor called the

MBE. We were used to a Eurocentric view of what attractive black women were. And Michelle

...