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Malia Ann Obama’s decision to step away from the Obama surname in her professional life is not a rejection of her family, nor a dramatic bid for reinvention. It is something more deliberate and more mature: a claim to authorship over her own story. By using her middle name, she is not erasing where she comes from. She is choosing how she is introduced. In an industry that thrives on labels, she is quietly declining the most obvious one.
