Malia Obama wasn’t in the audience when her father delivered what could likely be the last speech of his eight-year run as president, but instead the newest “party girl” in the nation’s capital was off to Lollapalooza.
While her father was stumping for Hillary Clinton at the DNC, the oldest daughter of Barack and Michelle Obama was photographed at the annual music festival, attending a set from the Norwegian music producer Cashmere Cat. The Chicago Tribune caught up with Malia’s whereabouts, posting tweets taken by some of the other people attending the festival who ran into the First Daughter.
Watch Malia Obama turn up at Lollapalooza during @CASHMERECAT ‘s set. https://t.co/gRKIKI8wr1 pic.twitter.com/QcsL36AMju
— Complex Music (@ComplexMusic) July 29, 2016
Was going hard to @CASHMERECAT and then Secret Service and Malia Obama just pull up pic.twitter.com/lfNRxWzwRu
— Alex Lao (@alexanderlao) July 29, 2016
The story is the latest bit about Malia Obama appearing to sow her wild oats after finishing high school last month. Just a few weeks after her graduation, Malia was spotted partying with friends at a club in Amsterdam. Witnesses said Malia was drinking and dancing until well after 3 a.m.
Radar Online even posted video of what it called her “wild night,” which was originally reported in a news outlet from the Netherlands called Show.nl .
In another story, Radar Online talked to a fellow partygoer who said Malia Obama appeared to be having a great time.
“She’s a superb dancer, much like her father,” said DJ Youri Roest. “She was very flexible, she has good hips.”
“She’s a very cute girl and she was flirting heavily,” he added. “But then I got too drunk and had to perform somewhere else. So I guess I kind of forgot about her, which I feel very sorry about right now.”
Malia Obama has built up a reputation for being quiet and studious, never making headlines for bad behavior during her time living at the White House. Instead, she has been seen as ambitious in pursuit of her dreams, a teenager who started planning for college years in advance and has dreams of becoming a filmmaker. Malia even interned on the set of the HBO show Girls and the CBS show Extant .
But she has shown a bit more typical teenage behavior in recent months, even heading out to a party at Brown University while she was taking a college tour last October. The Daily Caller published a Snapchat photo that showed Malia at the party, with the First Daughter standing next to a beer pong table.
“Malia obama was taking shots and playing beer pong at a party last night LOL,” one person tweeted (via Buzzfeed ).
The bits all fit together into a larger story that Malia Obama has turned into something of a party girl, a narrative being pushed especially hard in some right-leaning political blogs. But while Barack and Michelle’s daughter has definitely been enjoying herself a bit more, she hasn’t lost touch with her serious side.
The Amsterdam excursion, for example, came during a humanitarian trip that Malia was on with her mother and sister Sasha for Let Girls Learn, the White House initiative that aims to address issues that keep young girls from attending schools, especially in third world countries. The site for the Let Girls Learn initiative discussed the major impact the program can have.
“To educate a girl is to build a healthier family, a stronger community, and a brighter future. Unfortunately today, more than 62 million girls around the world are not in school—half of whom are adolescents. We know that countries with more girls in secondary school tend to have lower maternal mortality rates, lower infant mortality rates, lower rates of HIV/AIDS, and better child nutrition.”
Malia Obama has a little bit longer to get her partying out before she’s off to one of the most prestigious universities in the world. She has been accepted into Harvard, but won’t be starting her freshman year until the fall of 2017.
[Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Images]