She took the stage with the utmost confidence, even with the hundreds of eyes glued to her every movement and the pressure looming behind her. I couldn’t help but gape in awe as Michelle Obama took to the podium in the recent Democratic National Convention. No matter your political affiliation, there’s no doubt First Lady Michelle Obama is the epitome of class and feminism.

I’m a 16-year-old high school junior, who can get easily distracted by entertainment and immersed in pop culture gossip. And yes, I’m a Justin Bieber fan.  Call me the stereotypical teenager. Like most, although we won’t ever admit it, I secretly dream to become a celebrity, because in all honesty, what can be better? A generation in which Rihanna and Nicki Minaj are the faces I’m surrounded by, I can’t help but find myself compelled to look up to them.

But looking at Michelle Obama at the convention, things begged to differ. As my eyes glued to her enthusiasm and her emotion in her speech, I found myself in an odd spot. A little voice in my head was jealous. Jealous because she was so powerful to the extent that she was able to compel a room of hundreds of people to attentively listen to her every word. Jealous because she is the true embodiment of female independence. Her husband is the President of the United States, and yet she reigns in popularity, fighting for issues on her own, finding ways to solve them on her own.  Whether it’s her Let’s Move! campaign, that inspires kids to become active and maintain healthy lifestyles in order to suppress growing obesity rates or her veterans initiatives such as the creation of the Joining Forces Project which helps veterans find employment after returning from deployment, she’s created a sense of change, created entirely on her own.

I was jealous because Michelle Obama is an intelligent and ingenious Ivy League graduate who did it on her own. Her story so much like that of my own. And she wasn’t one of the few lucky performers or actors or singers who found her big break before high school. No, she’s the product of what everyone tries to instill in us but fails to; the outcome of a hard working kid who studied and went to college determined to succeed.

And at that moment I realized, I wanted to be her or anything that came close to it. With the screams and chants of her name interrupting her speech every few words you could feel, see and hear the power she illuminated, and most importantly the respect the crowd had for her. Her words were eloquently spoken without hesitation. Yes, Rihanna’s music is great, and Nicki Minaj’s raps can easily get stuck in you’re head, but, they aren’t the world’s greatest role models. It’s sad that the only ones who play a factor in our society today, especially for teenagers, are the faces in People magazine and TMZ – half of which dropped out after high school giving millions of teenagers the false hope that they can become like them too- because after all they have the money and the fame.

But, I’m proud, ecstatic, really that there are also people who get recognized because they succeeded educationally, because they help out for the common good and you know what, fashion icons too. After her speech at the DNC, I couldn’t help but smile seeing all of the girls tweeting about her. Sure a few were about her outfit (which was gorgeous!) but a few handful I think realized the importance of her iconic status.

She was a different kind of role model, a different kind of dream, that slowly made a place in their minds. A women that will one day hopefully inspire us to do the exact same thing.