Who is the mystery First Lady emerging from a snorkeling session in her bikini?
In the beginning, First Ladies were given no dispensation when it came to figuratively swimming in their bathing suits alongside the Presidents. Regardless of their nationally elevated marital status, they were expected to lead their countrywomen by example. So it was no skin for almost a century.
Since ancient times, women enjoyed bathing in pools and mineral springs and, later in time, swimming vigorously out into the ocean, as much as men. It’s just that, like practically everything else in life, they were restricted from readily doing so as their male counterparts on the premise that it was “morally indecent” for them to permit their bare arms or even ankles to be glimpsed publicly or that the “weaker sex” were prone to drowning easily.
George Washington, for example, could slip into the outdoor mineral bath at Berkeley Springs, Virginia stark naked but Martha Washington had to not only wear a muslim gown but one which had metal weights sewn into the bottom hem, to prevent it from rising up when she went into the water. Abigail Adams simultaneously marveled and tsk-tsked at the sight of ankles of Brighton Beach’s brazen British babes flocking the waters in thin muslin that clung to the thighs when wet or blew up a bit in the breeze. When her daughter-in-law Louisa Adams took her 1825 summer vacation as First Lady, she went without the President to join a group of strictly gals for lake boating and bathing in Bordentown, New Jersey, dressed not in just a cumbersome cotton dress, but sunbonnet too.
Just before the Civil War freed the slaves, some liberation came to free women who swam. Despite her reputation for remaining indoors, Jane Pierce actually relished the chance to chill out in the 1850s summers be it spring or shore. Harriet Lane and Mary Lincoln (as a widow) were big on the springs only. By 1869, incumbent First Lady Julia Grant was hitting the Jersey shore and even depicted in her bathing suit by an illustrated newspaper, appearing far thinner and blonder than she really was.
By the turn of the century, young girls were being taught to swim in the ocean. One future President even taught a future First Lady who was not his own wife how to sink or swim by throwing her into the water, as he did his two daughters and four sons. He was Theodore Roosevelt and she was his orphaned niece, Eleanor. Bathing suits were heavy woolen numbers, often still with bloomers but at least the wives and mothers, debs and working girls, sisters and sweethearts could frolic the waves with men.
As the twentieth century progressed, First Ladies seemed to get better at the dog paddles and breast strokes. The only known First Lady who surfed, Nellie Taft, had first gained confidence in the water during a teenage visit to Newport with friends. Following a Jazz Age fad for women, Grace Coolidge spent the summer of 1925 taking her first swimming lessons. Jackie Kennedy became the first First Lady publicly photographed swimming, sending shock waves across the Bible Belt prompted by one “Reverend Ray,” who made the most noise railing against her for being seen in a bathing suit.
When he failed to respond to the rhetorical question of just what it was that he expected her to wear when she went swimming in the water, the coast was finally clear.
First Ladies have been glimpsed in swimsuits shameless ever since.
Martha Washington’s original bathing gown, worn to hot springs in Virginia, had its hem weighed down by metal pieces to prevent it from immodestly rising as she entered the waters; it has been preserved by and is part of the permanent collection at Mount Vernon.
There is no documentation to prove that Abigail Adams went into the ocean but she was titillated at the sight of ladies swimming in muslin and bonnets at Brighton Beach in England, in the late 18th century.
Louisa Adams (superimposed) in an 1820s women’s bathing suit, the sort she would have worn during her all-women’s summer vacations in Bordentown, New Jersey.
Jane Pierce depicted in an 1855 women’s bathing suit.
Always fashion-forward, the young niece and First Lady of her bachelor uncle, President James Buchanan, Harriet Lane hit the hot waters at Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania for her summer vacations and was likely to have worn the “bloomer” bathing suit, popular by 1860 – though still considered scandalous for showing the form of a woman’s legs.
Women taking the waters at the Germany spa where the widowed Mary Lincoln (her superimposed image is front, right) sought treatment. Although she avidly pursued hydrotherapy there is no contemporary description of what type of bathing garb she donned.
An illustration depicting First Lady Julia Grant splashing water as she swam with her family at Long Branch. The drawing was not just the first to illustrate a First Lady in such informal garb, but showed her as far trimmer than she really was.
Cautious about not being photographed or even glimpsed by the public in her swimsuit, the youthful and modest Frances Cleveland enjoyed a dip in the Cape Cod waters near the presidential summer retreat at Buzzard’s Bay; this illustration shows an 1893 woman who looks like the First Lady, using the “beach machine,” which could be wheeled partially into the ocean, permitting women to emerge from the dressing cabana down some stairs and right back up again.
Fearlessly game for trying anything new and adventurous, Nellie Taft couldn’t resist surfing when she first visited Hawaii, during a stop there on her further voyage to the Philippines; she is depicted here, head head superimposed, in the sort of shorter bathing gown becoming acceptable for women to wear by the early 20th century.
A young Florence Harding on the Florida sands in the 1890s, not in the sea.
Grace Coolidge donned her 1920s swimsuit for lessons in the salt water pool at a Swampscott, Massachusetts at a North Shore estate serving as the “Summer White House” in 1925. She learned the famous “Australian crawl” employed by Gertrude Ederle a famed sports figure of the era, who was the first woman to swim the English Channel.
Eleanor Roosevelt smiling in her bathing suit, after a swim.
Eleanor Roosevelt learning how to dive at the family pool.
After the White House years, Eleanor Roosevelt still loved swimming in her pool at Val-Kill, her Hudson River Valley home. (FDRL)
Mrs. Roosevelt’s bathing suit has been preserved by the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.
The closest that Bess Truman permitted herself to be photographed wearing a bathing suit was this pair of beach pants, still modestly kept at a matronly hemline. She is seen here with her daughter Margaret fishing in Key West, Florida. (Truman Library)
Mamie Eisenhower off the waters of San Marino, Italy, 1929. (Mrs. Ike)
Ike and Mamie Eisenhower in their beachwear during a visit to Sea Island.
It was too cold on the beached of Normandy for Mamie Eisenhower – or anyone else – to don a swimsuit; here the former First Lady sits on a sand dune and meets the French press, during a break in her husband’s taped interview with Walter Cronkite marching the end of World War II.
A screenshot of Jackie Kennedy submerging into the sea at Cape Cod in her Lilly Pulitzer one-piece. (JFKL)
The nation knew it had a new sort of First Lady when it saw Jackie Kennedy water-skiing with astronaut John Glenn in Nantucket Sound, July of 1962. A newsreel video of the duo’s performance is right below.
While swimming in Ravello, Italy, First Lady Jackie Kennedy turns a wary smile to photographers shouting out requests that she model her swimsuit.
The images snapped of Jackie Kennedy during her 1962 summer vacation on the Amalfi Coast, Italy that generated controversy in the American Bible Belt.
In Italy, Jackie Kennedy was snapped in different bathing suit – showing more skin than First Ladies ever had, exciting admirers and scandalizing others.
Jackie Kennedy during her Italian summer in a sort of Wilma Flintstone bathing suit.
A snap of Jackie Kennedy Onassis climbing the ladder from the sea onto the yacht of her second husband.
Jackie Onassis takes a dip in the Scorpios lagoon with her brother-in-law Stas Radziwill. (Corbis)
By the late 60s technology advances amped the power of telephotos lenses to take even color shots, as this one of Jackie Onassis practicing yoga at the Skorpios beach cabana proved. (Life)
Two of the numerous scandalous nude pictures snapped of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in Greece by paparazzo Garritano; the former First Lady was unashamed about being snapped naked and even autographed a poster-size version of one of the pictures for her friend, artist Andy Warhol.
Lady Bird Johnson enjoying some summer lunch poolside at Camp David with son-in-law Pat Nugent.
In her bathing cap, a relaxed Lady Bird Johnson enjoys her dip in the LBJ Ranch pool.
A screenshot from home movies shows Lady Bird Johnson floating in an Austin., Texas lake. She said she loved doing this and looking up at the sky.
Julie Nixon Eisenhower and her mother Pat Nixon were snapped as they strolled along the beach at Miami.
Standing at center, Pat Ryan spending a day at an Orange County, California beach with friends.
Captured by a telephoto lens in a blurry image, Pat Nixon in swimsuit laying out in the sun, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Betty Ford, in what appears to be a mod mid-century bathing suit, smiles for a snapshot during a family vacation in Hawaii.
Rosalynn Carter swimming – unexpectedly after being tossed from a watercraft.
As a young actress the future Nancy Reagan cut a fine figure in a publicity still.
Nancy Reagan enjoyed a dip in the Pacific during an Hawaiian vacation.
Nancy Reagan, drying off from her swim, waves to photographers.
Barbara Bush strolled the beach with her husband during a post-1988 election trip to Florida with her husband, but stayed out of the ocean.
Barbara Bush as a young woman at the beach.
Barbara Bush with her daughter Doro poolside in the mid-Sixties; she later recalled that every time she went swimming her dyed hair “turned green” from the chlorine. She later just let it go natural and white. (H. Bush Presidential Library)
Like Mrs. Truman, Barbara Bush kept on the other side of the water while fishing, seen here in Cancun, Mexico. (H Bush Presidential Library)
Like her husband (see the President, Swimsuit Edition article), former First Lady Barbara Bush didn’t mind staying out of the pool, even if others went in.
Hillary Clinton was snapped dancing with the President in their bathing suits.
Hillary Clinton in her bathing suit during a walk along the shoreline at Martha’s Vineyard.
Although she hosted a 2006 White House pool party, Laura Bush remained dry.
Michelle Obama in Hawaii.
Michelle Obama with friends and family at the beach in Hawaii.
And that mystery First Lady in her blue-plaid bikini, rubber white bathing cap and black snorkeling mask?
Just who is that?
It is none other than Lady Bird Johnson, posing here against a palm tree, and enjoying just a day being a regular human spent frolicking in the water.
Categories: First Ladies, The Adamses, The Bushes, The Kennedys, The LBJs, The Pierces, The Reagans, The Roosevelts, The Washingtons
Ha! I guessed rightly so but solely on the agedness of the photograph…
Which was one that? 🙂
Whoops – I don’t mean to encourage a spoiler….I got what you guessed…..pretty good then.
Hurrah for Jackie!