Why all the fuss over a first lady's bare arms?

NEW YORK — The Right to Bare Arms. Sleevegate. Up in Arms. The Upper Body Stimulus Plan.

If nothing else, the hullabaloo over Michelle Obama's occasionally sleeveless attire, which reached a fever pitch this month, has unleashed a torrent of clever puns from headline writers — the better to distract us from that economic news we'd rather not be hearing.

Never before, surely, has a set of bare arms launched so much discussion than in the weeks since Mrs. Obama appeared sleeveless at her husband's speech to Congress in chilly February. Certainly not in equally chilly January 1963, when Jacqueline Kennedy wore one of her many sleeveless outfits to her own husband's State of the Union address.

Why, then, so much attention to Michelle Obama's well-toned biceps — well, and triceps and delts — 46 years later? Just about everyone in the worlds of fashion, media, politics and fitness has a theory on this pressing question for the body politic.

MRS. OBAMA'S ARMS SIGNIFY STRENGTH: "Let's face it," wrote New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, one of this theory's chief proponents. "The only bracing symbol of American strength right now is the image of Michelle Obama's sculpted biceps." In a recent column, she went on to imagine that Mrs. Obama "could easily wind up and punch out Rush Limbaugh, Bernie Madoff and all the corporate creeps who ripped off America."

Not a vivid enough image for you? Try Bonnie Fuller, the former celebrity editor, who blogged that "those arms ... look powerful enough to wrap around a distressed nation and lift it up."

MRS. OBAMA'S ARMS SIGNIFY DISCIPLINE: To others, the arms serve as an example of a woman who has the self-esteem, willpower and diligence to keep herself in shape.

"Here's a woman who's balancing family and other issues like the rest of us, and she's creating the time to be strong," says Mikki Taylor, beauty and cover director for Essence magazine. "She's setting a great example by signaling she gets up every day to work out."

And fashion critic Robin Givhan sees not only discipline in those arms, but a signal of individual liberty. "Those arms represent personal time," she wrote in The New Yorker magazine. "They are evidence of a forty-five-year-old woman's refusal to give up every free moment" to her husband, kids, and other demands.

MRS. OBAMA'S ARMS SIGNIFY YOUTH: One fashion editor thinks we focus on Mrs. Obama's arms because they show us that we can keep age at bay, with enough effort.