The Quick 10: 10 First Lady Fashion Faux Pas

Michelle Obama is both lauded and disparaged for her fashion choices, especially her recent decision to wear (gasp) shorts while riding Air Force One. But she's hardly the first to choose outfits a little outside of the norm for a First Lady. Here are 10 FLOTUSes (FLOTI?) before her who shocked the nation with their fashion faux pas"¦ or were they just fashion forward?

1. Frances Cleveland was much younger than her Presidential husband "“ 27 years younger, to be exact. So, it makes sense that her fashions were a bit more youthful than a lot of her female White House peers: she wore gowns that showed a lot of skin for the times and loved to show off her bare neck, shoulders and arms. The nation loved Frances and scads of young women copied her scandalously bare look, much to the chagrin of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. They drew up a petition and had copies sent to various branches, then circulated the petitions across the country in an attempt to get Mrs. Cleveland to please think about her position as a role model for young ladies. Their pleas went ignored.

3. We can keep going back to First Ladies who were fond of exposing a little bosom "“ or in the case of Dolley Madison, a lot. Dolley used to be a Quaker, so the expanse of bare skin that she liked to show was especially scandalous for her. First Lady Abigail Adams once wrote in a letter that Dolley unabashedly resembled "a nursing mother." There's a story that Dolley ran across an old friend who had also been a Quaker, but left the faith. Nevertheless, she was surprised to see him without the traditional black hat that Quakers once wore, and remarked with, "Brother, where is thy broadbrim?" The friend is reported to have looked rather pointedly at her cleavage before responding, "Sister, where is thy kerchief?"

4. Jackie Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt and Lady Bird Johnson all wore pants on informal occasions such as horse riding, but it wasn't until 1972 and Pat Nixon that a First Lady actually appeared in a formal magazine picture proudly donning what was formerly thought of as strictly menswear.

5. Long before Obama outraged PETA with his fly-swatting, Ida McKinley upset the Audubon Society with a certain accessory she was fond of. It was an ornamental display of feathers called an aigrette, and she wasn't the only one who loved it "“ American ladies so took to the style that the bird the feathers came from, the egret, became endangered. The Audubon Society issued a formal protest against Ida.

6. Eleanor Roosevelt was always on the go and wasn't much concerned about her appearance or being a fashion plate. It wasn't abnormal for her to show up somewhere with a net around her hair or a white scarf tied around it, which some reporters said looked like a rag.

8. Mamie Eisenhower loved clothes, and she loved pink. Barbie would have felt perfectly at home in the White House during Ike's two terms, because Mamie decked the place out with pink candles and pink tablecloths and even served pink desserts at formal functions when she could get away with it. With tongues firmly in cheeks, the press dubbed the White House "The Pink Palace" for eight years, until the Kennedys came along to undo all of Mamie's Pepto décor.

9. As a lady of the Victorian Era, it would have been strange if Julia Grant had worn anything but the elaborately decorated dresses and gowns of the era. But she preferred her outfits so dripping with beads, embroidery, lace and ribbons that she was once described as looking like a couch.

10. Finally, my favorite that I can't seem to find corroboration for anywhere. Maybe you helpful _flossers will remember this event. Apparently, the First Lady Who Said No unwittingly exposed the entire world to her lingerie when she wore black underwear with a white dress. Even if this isn't so, Nancy Reagan did set tongues wagging when she wore an inaugural gown worth a reported $25,000, and continued to wear extravagantly expensive clothing throughout her tenure as FLOTUS. She always denied spending extraordinary sums on her attire, saying that to spend the amount the press said she spent, she'd have to be wearing sable underwear.

Are there any First Lady fashion faux pas that immediately come to mind for you? Share them in the comments! This seems hideous to me today, but I do have to remember that this photo was taken during the era of Blossom and funky headwear:

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