Womenvoices obamaFeminism

One Time FLOTUS Told Men To 'Be Better' And Now It’s A Ringtone

🎶Just be better 🎶
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By 

Senior Reporter, HuffPost

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Mic drop, FLOTUS.
Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

At the United State of Women Summit last week, Oprah Winfrey asked Michelle Obama how men can help in the fight for gender equality. FLOTUS' answer was short and sweet:

“Be better,” she said. “Be better at everything."

The First Lady’s words were so magical that one genius person created a ringtone called “Be Better: The Ringtone” (featuring Oprah, of course). Zee Griffler, a New York City-based filmmaker, told The Cut that her friend jokingly said she’d love FLOTUS’ “be better” remarks as a ringtone and ― voilà! ― Griffler made it happen. 

Head here to listen to the ringtone. 

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Some truly amazing album artwork from Griffler.
Zee Griffler

“Being a multimedia person who went to art school, I thought this is exactly the sort of thing that a best friend casually makes near midnight on a weekday,” Griffler told The Cut. 

You can download the full ringtone on Griffler’s website.

The filmmaker put it perfectly when she said: “Isn’t it great that when you get a phone call you can have Michelle Obama tell anyone in a decent proximity to your phone that men can be better?”

Yes, yes, and more yes.

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Before You Go

Books By Women For A Feminist Bookshelf
(01 of18)
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The Argonauts is a hybrid memoir-essay by Maggie Nelson that digs deep into our entrenched expectations of motherhood, gender, and human relationships, and asks us to look at these issues from a new angle. (credit:Graywolf)
(02 of18)
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Alexandra Kleeman's debut is impossible to put down, or stop talking about, as she weaves questions of intimate female friendships and unhealthy body image into a bizarre, alternate-universe thriller. (credit:HarperCollins)
(03 of18)
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If you haven't yet read popular poet Patricia Lockwood's poem "Rape Joke," don't wait another second; this mind-warping, culturally questioning collection is a conversation-sparker even for those who're intimidated by the poetry form. (credit:Penguin)
(04 of18)
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Leslie Jamison's acclaimed essay collection may be deeply personal, but it also offers food for thought on more universal issues, like how we talk about women's pain. (credit:Graywolf)
(05 of18)
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Asali Solomon's recent novel Disgruntled is a classic coming-of-age story, but also offers readers insights into what challenges come with growing up as a black woman in America, and how parents' ideologies can help and, unintentionally, hurt the children they're trying to protect. (credit:Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
(06 of18)
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Why is it so hard for people to say they just don't want kids? Sixteen writers honestly and eloquently explain the societal pressures and gendered expectations, and why they decided to flout them, in this thought-provoking collection. (credit:Picador)
(07 of18)
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This unsettling crime novel by Ottessa Moshfegh centers on a young, self-loathing young woman and her troubled relationship with her own physicality. (credit:Penguin)
(08 of18)
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Americanah would be a delightful read if nothing more, but it's also a thoughtful parsing of cultural differences, race, and the seemingly small factors that can define our career and relationship choices. (credit:Knopf)
(09 of18)
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Mrs. Dalloway may be Virginia Woolf's novel about a society woman throwing a party, but, of course, it's also about submerged sexuality, the demands of marriage and motherhood, and the unlauded arts performed by women of Woolf's time. (credit:Mariner Books)
(10 of18)
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Helen Oyeyemi uses her gift for weaving powerful truths into fantastical fairy tales in this parable about the fraught dynamic between the male writer and the female muse. (credit:Picador)
(11 of18)
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Mia Alvar's lovely stories of the Filipino diaspora highlight the gulfs found between socioeconomic classes all over the world and the weight of family ties. (credit:Knopf)
(12 of18)
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Mary Gaitskill's debut collection Bad Behavior has become a modern classic, in large part for not pulling any punches in depicting isolated, self-destructive, and desperate characters. (But also because her writing is lethally precise.) (credit:Simon )
(13 of18)
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Okay, this is almost too easy to include, but it definitely gets the feminist-conversation juices flowing. (credit:Harper Perennial)
(14 of18)
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A gritty, unflinching novel centered on a young girl captured by a war photographer being blown forward in an Eastern European bomb blast, The Small Backs of Children hones in on the uncomfortable places where sex and violence meet, and the moments of grossness and cruelty and suffering that are usually too painful to depict in fiction. (credit:Harper)
(15 of18)
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The Bluest Eye was Toni Morrison's first novel, and the first to explore the themes of black femininity and its particular traumas, which she has gone on to heartwrenchingly lay bare the rest of her work. (credit:Vintage)
(16 of18)
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Nobody Is Ever Missing isn't the first novel in which a woman gets to be the unmoored protagonist in search of meaning, but it's still a genre that takes more kindly to men. Catherine Lacey's novel poignantly, in dazzling prose, tells the story of a woman who wants a divorce from her husband, from her life, and from everything, even, in a way, herself. (credit:Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
(17 of18)
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This odd, heavily stylized novel juxtaposes two women -- one so beautiful she disguises herself as a plain woman to discern suitors with pure intentions, the other so ugly she composes music that will seduce men for her -- to tease out the many ways in which women are influenced by society's value for physical beauty. (credit:Norton)
(18 of18)
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This is a four-fer! The Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante are the literary world's current obsession, and they're packed with the stuff of feminist discussion: ambitious women thwarted by societal circumstances, a strong but fraught female friendship, and romantic relationships that prove less egalitarian than anticipated. (credit:Europa)
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