Doug Mills/The New York Times First Lady Michelle Obama applauded during the president’s speech to Congress.Nancy Reagan wore spangled ballgowns. Barbara Bush had fake pearls. Michelle Obama wears her bare arms.
It is February and Washington is freezing, but in appearance after appearance, the first lady displays her long, muscular arms. She is sleeveless on the cover of the new Vogue, she was sleeveless when she discussed menus on Sunday in the White House kitchen, and last night she was sleeveless again, in the House chamber for her husband’s first address to Congress. (All of the other women in the room seemed to be wearing long sleeves; a few even wore turtlenecks). If she keeps going at this rate, Mrs. Obama may do to dresses with sleeves what President John F. Kennedy did to men’s hats.
“Oh my god,” Cindi Leive, the editor of Glamour magazine, exclaimed while watching the address, she said via email. “The First Lady has bare arms in Congress, in February, at night!”
Mrs. Obama’s super-sculpted arms are the result of years of effort. When her children were young, she began working out with a personal trainer, splitting sessions with girlfriends to save money. In recent years, she has exercised several times a week, often rising hours before her daughters to do cardio and lift weights, or spending Saturday sessions with the same personal trainer who guided her husband. At the gym, she is focused and competitive, friends say, counting her reps and teasing when they do not finish theirs.
Now those arms have become Mrs. Obama’s most constant accessory, whether she is wearing a Gap sundress or a designer ballgown. On the Vogue cover, the first lady wears little makeup, subtle jewelry, a simple sheath. It’s her arms that pop out, rippled and gleaming.
Already, a debate is brewing about just what the First Arms signify. “Post-Title IX arms,” Robin Givhan called them in the Washington Post. They represent achievement and self-control, wrote Kate Holmquist in the Irish Times. (Buff arms say: “I’m too serious a woman to show off my legs or my breasts,” she argued.)
So Michelle Obama is athletic and disciplined. Yes, fine, but that was pretty clear before we started examining her triceps on a daily basis. Instead, those bare arms seem like a reminder of everything about her we can’t see.
In two years, she has shown us a great deal of herself, more than most of us would share, and yet right now, we actually don’t know that much about her. What does she think of the White House, and what does she do all day? Does her husband consult her on any of the difficult decisions he faces? Is the “Mom-in-chief” really, totally confident that her children are going to come through this just fine? In a few years, will she still look as confident as she did last night, or will she reach for cover? And is she comfortable as she looks in those skimpy tops, or is she actually freezing?
(A postscript, and a precedent: in 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy wore a sleeveless black sheath to her husband’s State of the Union address. Click here to see how different she looked from many of the other women in the gallery, some of whom were in hats and bits of fur. Thanks to Times reader Kathy W. for the tip and the photo link.)
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