Laddies Sleeveless Dresses

The whole issue of how much skin is "socially acceptable" to show in public by First Ladies has been ongoing from almost the start of the presidency.

When Dolley Madison famously wore her low-cut dresses that showed off her shoulders and the top of her bosom, former First Lady Abigail Adams snidely remarked in a private letter that Mrs. Madison looked like "a nursing mother." There was a famous anecdote about Dolley Madison encountering an old friend who, like her, had been a Quaker, but left the faith. She looked at his head and saw he was no longer wearing the large black hat that Quaker men traditionally did (like the fellow on the Quaker Oats box). "Brother," she asked, "where is thy broadbrim?" He looked at her gown without sleeves or neck and with plunging neckline and quipped back. "Sister, where is thy kerchief?"

Some forty-five years later, when Harriet Lane - the niece and White House hostess of the bachelor President James Buchanan (and the first to be called "First Lady") popularized what was called the "low-neck lace bertha" it set off something of a popular style - yet when her immediate successor Mary Lincoln wore shoulderless, armless dresses, she was criticized as "showing off her bosom."

When Frances Cleveland, the 21 year old bride of President Cleveland, wore gowns without sleeves and showed off her shoulders, the Women's Christian Temperance Union circulated a petition pleading for her to cover up her skin because she was a bad influence on the morals of young American girls.

In the Twenties, Florence Harding wore some evening gowns that bared her shoulders - despite her being 60 years old - keeping current with the vogue of the Jazz Age, but she also carried capes and wraps so she could cover up when she wanted to.

Grace Coolidge frequently wore evening gowns in the flapper style - without sleeves. She is wearing a sleeveless red dress in her White House portrait - which you can find online at the White House.

Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower sported what was then called 'the new look" of the post-war era and frequently wore shoulderless and sleeveless evening gowns - and received no criticism or even snide remarks, despite being in their late 50's and early 60's.

In fact, Mamie Eisenhower is I believe the only First Lady who wore a sleeveless, neck-less gown to her husband's Inaugural Ball in 1953 (in her famous "Mamie Pink") and then again in 1957 (in yellow/gold). Mamie Eisenhower also sported sleeveless dresses at the end of her tenure, in the late 50's and early Sixties, reflecting the newer style for women's clothes - and, of course, her successor Jackie Kennedy helped to widely popularize this style. Jackie Kennedy also wore numerous evening gowns in bright and pastel colors that were sleeveless and shoulderless.

In recent years, Nancy Reagan often wore sleeveless and shoulderless evening gowns to state dinners, but during the daytime dressed more formally and covered.