I couldn’t sleep at all last night! Tossing and turning and thinking about the great issue of the day: Michelle Obama sleeveless. So much debate and analysis, applause and shock … but as the historian of First Ladies Carl Sferrazza Anthony has blogged on The Huffington Post, Mamie Eisenhower, Bess Truman and Nancy Reagan all went sleeveless in the White House decades ago, so wake up and smell the perfume, America!

Click here to see a slideshow of the First Lady baring arms.

Meanwhile, here’s what I think is the big news. Concerning Mrs. Obama’s decision to wear Michael Kors’s black crepe jersey, sleeveless, racer-back gown (about $3,000 retail) in her first official White House portrait, this is where Sleevegate gets interesting.

It’s all about Jackie Kennedy.

It’s all about Jackie not just generally — Jackie and her Social Secretary, Letitia Baldrige, and all the ladies in their set wore sleeveless in their White House years — but specifically.

Jackie, seated, wearing red, is sleeveless in her official White House photograph. (In her official White House painting by Aaron Shikler, she wears long-sleeved yellow chiffon.) To date, Mrs. Obama’s decision to wear the sleeveless Michael Kors dress is the biggest hint she has given to indicate that, indeed, she is thinking about Jackie Kennedy when it comes to creating her role as the new First Lady.

Remember how many comparisons were drawn between Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Obama prior to the Inauguration? Quite rightly, in order to establish her own identity and platform, Mrs. Obama kept her distance from being compared to Jackie — until this portrait. At least that’s the conclusion I have come to.

Asked by an interviewer earlier this winter how much Jackie might influence Mrs. Obama’s style, White House Social Secretary Desirée Rogers answered: “It is definitely an inspiration for us because we hear people talk about it all the time. We would be remiss not to study those years carefully, not in order to duplicate them but to be inspired by them.”

Sleeveless was very Jackie then, and very Michelle now. Sleeveless is the ultimate status symbol. Yes, because it shows muscle and suggests power, the ability to defend as well as protect and embrace, but ultimately it is this: the status of sleeveless is: YOUTH.

Click here to see a slideshow of the First Lady baring arms.