Happy birthday, Sasha Obama! The younger daughter of former President of the United States and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama celebrates her 24th birthday on June 10.
While the Obama sisters, Sasha and her older sister Malia, are low-key when it comes to their public presence and lack social media, their parents couldn't resist the urge to gush over their second born.
On Tuesday, both Barack, 63, and Michelle, 61, took to Instagram with the same photo, a relatively recent, previously unseen snap of the family-of-four seemingly on a tropical vacation, and a personal tribute.
© InstagramIn the snap, the sisters look so grown up posing beside their parents, with Sasha nearly as tall as her famously strapping 6'2" dad, dressed in a beige tube top and a chocolate brown maxi skirt.
"Happy birthday to my sweet girl, Sasha! Can't believe how quickly time has flown. I'm so proud of the woman you've become. Love you always!" Michelle gushed in her caption.
Barack wrote: "Happy birthday, Sasha! Watching you grow into the incredible woman you are has been a true gift. I'll always be proud of you and will always be here for you."
© WireImageIt is reported that Sasha is currently pursuing higher education, after previously graduating from the University of Southern California, and is currently based in Los Angeles, where her older sister also resides. Malia is a filmmaker and writer, debuting her own short film at the Sundance Film Festival last year and creating an ad for Nike earlier this year.
While both sisters have forged their own identities outside of the legacy left behind by their parents, Michelle confronted the idea of them rejecting their childhood at first during a conversation with Kate and Oliver Hudson on their podcast Sibling Revelry recently (joined by her own brother and podcast co-host Craig Robinson).
Oliver asked the brother and sister whether they experienced moments with their children simultaneously expressing a desire to emulate their parents while also wanting to separate themselves from them completely, and the Becoming author confirmed that her daughters definitely went through that phase, and still do.
© Instagram"Our daughters are 26 and 23, they are young adult women," she said then. "But they definitely went through a period in their teen years…it was the 'push away.'"
"They're still doing that, and you guys know this of children with parents who are known," she continued. "You're trying to distinguish yourself. It's very important for my kids to feel like they've earned what they are getting in the world."
© Getty Images"And they don't want people to assume that they don't want to work hard, that they're just naturally handed things, they're very sensitive to that. They want to be their own people."
The former First Lady did conclude, however, that as they've gotten older, Malia and Sasha are "embracing" the principles she and Barack imbibed in them as parents, plus their actions when they were younger. "They understand us as full human beings now in the same way that I discovered that about my parents."
