"[O]nly the color of [Michelle Obama's] dress paid direct homage to China..."

"... red symbolizes good luck and happiness."

And Communism.

"You are the wrong size for this perfect pair of trousers. You have failed."

What womenswear pants "whisper" to the women who try them on.

Womenswear all too often is constructed to make women feel manipulated, shamed or unworthy. Comfort? Often it's an afterthought.... Women... all too often believe they have to alter themselves -- fix themselves -- to fit the clothes.

By contrast:

Men's apparel owns the language of power and authority. The clothes are in service to the man. They are tailored to him -- designed to make him look good and feel comfortable. Men's suits are stitched to be easily altered. Pants are sold unhemmed. The clothes are not finished until the gentleman says they are. Menswear aims to make men feel like they are the masters of their destiny.

"The robes acknowledge that the justices have shed distractions in favor of objectivity, fairness and a common, high-minded purpose."

Opines WaPo fashion critic Robin Givhan:

The law is their religion. That's where they place their faith. Their piousness may be imperfect -- they are human, after all. But true devotion is worth striving for.

The robe helps to ward off hubris and self-importance. Indeed, wouldn't we be perturbed if a justice decided that a little rhinestone trim along the sleeves would be quite nice? Or what if a justice decided that a mink collar would be quite lovely in the winter?

"No mention of Hillary's locks? You're slipping, Althouse!"

Says commenter E.M. Davis, who apparently thinks I do nothing but monitor and comment upon the internet all day long. But thanks for the tip, Eemie, old man. He links to a Daily Mail article titled "Oh Hillary, that hairstyle just doesn't cut it: Mrs Clinton prepares for huge UN meeting with lank locks."

The normally perfect bouffant was gone, to be replaced by what came to be known on Kate Moss at least as the Croydon Facelift.

Well, it's not "normally perfect" and the rest is British gibberish. Britterish.

Mrs Clinton's hair was scraped back and clipped on top of her head, but looked lank and in need of some love and understanding....

It's the clip that is objectionable. You only see it from the side. Maybe it was put in for a frontal photograph, but it looks way too casual (or even trashy) from the side — like showing up in curlers.

With minimal make-up, Mrs Clinton's 63 years came into sharp focus as she moved neatly from urging Pakistan to mend its reputation to an attempt to undermine Mr Ahmadinejad within his own country.

Now, there's a crazy sentence!

But, anyway. About the hair. We all know Hillary is growing her hair longer. Robin Givhan pointed that out a month ago:

Clinton's hair, now creeping toward below-the-shoulders territory, is practically radical for Washington's seasoned female power elite. Good for her....

Cultural pressure to submit to the scissors after a certain age seems rife with an unkind and unspoken subtext that because long locks are a sign of vibrancy and sexiness, it's a social contradiction to see such styles on women who have wrinkles and crow's-feet.

Another popular argument is that long hair drags down the face -- and a face that is showing the effects of gravity should steer clear of anything that might make it look even longer in the tooth.

Throw into the conversation the attitude that long locks are tools of flirtation. They are a handy excuse for a toss of the head; a strand might have to be girlishly flicked out of one's eyes or coyly tucked behind the ear. May a 60-year-old woman flirt?

I think we know what it's about: Sarah Palin. Suddenly, long hair has come to mean power, and there's no need to try to approximate the men anymore. Why ape the men when you can emulate The Divine Sarah?

Was Carly Fiorina, talking about Barbara Boxer's hair, guilty of what Robin Givhan calls "style bullying"?

Givhan writes:

[S]tyle encompasses far more than good looks. In fact, it trumps beauty because it's rooted in deep cultural knowledge and self-confidence. Style is an expression of choices -- a declaration of individuality. And thus, the lack of it is not a matter of poor genetic luck. It is, a particularly judgmental soul could argue, your fault....

[I]t can make others feel terribly old-fashioned and parochial by comparison.... Women -- and men -- use style as a tool of intimidation, self-promotion and belittlement all the time. U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina's off-topic remark about Sen. Barbara Boxer's hair caused quite the explosion when it was captured by a live microphone. Fiorina quipped that Boxer's hair was "so yesterday." Fiorina has said she was quoting a friend, but her tone oozed delight in the observation as she happily repeated it...

Fiorina's words weren't, by any means, vulgar or angry. Indeed, she had the cutting tone of a gossipy girlfriend who knows a thing or two about hair travails. But as she gently fingered her own chic pixie, while relaying an insulting description of Boxer's hair, the polite smile never faded from her face -- until she realized her microphone was on. She bore all the earmarks of a style bully.

Givhan concludes that Fiorina was making an indirect but effective political argument that Boxer is out of step with the times. But let's take a closer look at what was really going on. Rewatch the short clip and think about whether what we are really seeing is a woman "ooz[ing] delight" because she thought her hair was "chic" — a "chic pixie" — and the other woman's hair really was so much worse. Does Fiorina even agree with the friend she quotes? Watch carefully, and keep in mind that Carly Fiorina was only quite recently bald (as a consequence of cancer treatment):



It's a bit hard to tell unless you look for it, but I'm looking after hearing a friend, a cancer survivor who lost her own hair, insist that what we are seeing is a cancer survivor's humorous attitude about hair. I now think that Fiorina stopped in the middle of an anecdote when someone off camera signaled for her to shut up, but that if she had gone on, she would have made a self-effacing/sarcastic wisecrack about her own hair along the lines of: Oh, yes, because my hair is so today, if by "today," you mean not utterly bald.

The gesture she makes at her own hair, just before she clams up, is not, I think, a mean girl's I'm-so-gorgeous primp. It's comic business that would have fit amusingly with the wisecrack that was never cracked. My friend, a woman who, like Fiorina, has recently regrown hair, feels sure she has the ability to recognize a shared dark humor about hair that women who have not gone through the experience don't pick up on. Hair is a big deal to women, and our ears perk up when we hear talk about other women's hair. Givhan explores that with good sensibility, but I think she, like many others, is judging Fiorina without a full understanding of the context.

On the other hand, Fiorina's private psychodrama is a bit beside the point when she's running for the Senate. She's got to get these things right and not give her opponents material to use against her. In that light, it doesn't matter what the explanation is, because she's running for office, and she needs to do that competently.

And speaking of context, this is funny:

"In the photographs of Kagan sitting and chatting in various Capitol Hill offices, she doesn't appear to ever cross her legs."

Robin Givhan, the WaPo fashion critic observes that the Supreme Court nomineee sits "with her legs ajar":

Her posture stands out because for so many women, when they sit, they cross. People tend to mimic each other's body language during a conversation, especially if they're trying to connect with one another. But even when Kagan sits across from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who has her legs crossed at the knees, Kagan keeps both feet planted firmly on the ground. Her body language will not be bullied into conformity.

She does not cross her legs at the ankles either, the way so many older women do.

Yeah, we were taught, strictly, that a woman should cross her legs at the ankles and only at the ankles.

Instead, Kagan sits, in her sensible skirts, with her legs slightly apart, hands draped in her lap. 

Here's the class picture from my kindergarten, around 1957:



Looks like the girl at the far left has Supreme Court potential. And I don't.

***

I've displayed that picture before on the blog, back in 2006. From that post:

I think it's cute that they got nearly all the girls to cross our legs at the ankles, which was considered the only proper way for a female to cross her legs.

***

Does the position of Kagan's legs matter?
	Yes, but only to the extent that aesthetics and style matter.
	Yes, as a clue to how she thinks and feels and thus to how she will decide cases.
	No, the visual aspects of a person are trivia, at best.
	No. If leg position indicated judicial style, she'd pose the way that said whatever was useful.
pollcode.com free polls

"At a state dinner in 1996, low decolletage wasn't merely sexy or daring; it was a political trap for a president known to have a roving eye."

"Clinton was hosting a state dinner for Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro. The voluptuous Italian actress Sophia Loren was a guest and she arrived with her magnificent cleavage framed in an ivory evening gown by Giorgio Armani. As she made her way through the receiving line, media observers paid close attention to Clinton's gaze, waiting to see whether it would waver -- even the slightest -- from where it belonged to where it was most emphatically being drawn. Reports indicated that Clinton maintained steely eye contact. But no guest should really put the leader of the free world to such a test of willpower."

So putting her breasts right under President Clinton's eyes was, in Robin Givhan's opinion, a deliberate political trap.

It was so out there when Loren did it. (Photo at the link.) Is it okay to talk about it? Is it okay to talk about the other women who have followed in Loren's bra cups footsteps? Thanks to Robin Givhan for giving me new confidence in straight talk about breasts and politics.

"WaPo Style Writer Declares Kennedy Old-Money Style Only Cool on Liberals."

The Weekly Standard rags on Robin Givhan.

"Bringing up the subject of the current first lady's shorts — indeed even admitting to noticing them — already has people booting up their laptops..."

"... and taking big, gulping swigs of self-righteousness before firing off e-mails and tweets declaring the whole discussion pointless."

Robin Givhan wants to talk about Michelle Obama's shorts. She's a fashion writer, okay? Deal with it!

And fashion is important. ("[C]lothes are part of our broader aesthetic obligation to each other.")

By the way, did you watch the first episode of the new season of "Project Runway"? On — ugh! — Lifetime now, instead of Bravo.

About those angry mobs at the townhall meetings...

They dress like hell.

They are wearing T-shirts, baseball caps, promotional polo shirts and sundresses with bra straps sliding down their arm. They wear fuchsia bandannas and American-flag hankies wrapped around their skulls like sweatbands. A lot of them look as though they could be attending a sporting event and, as it turns out, the congressman is the opposing player they have decided to heckle. If not for the prohibition on signs and banners inside these meetings, one could well expect to see some of these volatile worker bees wearing face paint and foam fingers, albeit the highlighted digit would be one expressing foul displeasure rather than competitive rank or skill level....

Robin Givhan's contempt for reform opponents oozes from the first half of her column, which probably entertains many of her readers, but keep reading. The most interesting thing is the contrast between these people and the member of Congress who shows up in a suit. Why don't these opponents wear suits and thereby project authority?

Would they garner more respect? Would they compel more lawmakers to rethink their positions rather than merely repeat, again and again -- in a voice that has the tone of an impatient kindergarten teacher -- the same core points?

On the other hand, why doesn't the member of Congress dress down?

Washington's power brokers have suited up to underscore their authority and the seriousness of the subject matter. And bully for them. But their attire also says: I am the boss of you.All those howling citizens -- in their T-shirts and ball caps and baggy shorts -- are saying: No, you're not.

The closed-minded confrontational quality of these meetings was understood and fixed in place as the various participants got dressed in the morning.

Now, speaking of suits, Robin Givhan did not do a column on Obama's beer summit with Henry Louis Gates Jr. and James Crowley (and Joe Biden).What's with wearing suits to drink beer at a picnic table, and what did it mean that Obama and Biden had taken their jackets off and Gates and Crowley were left to swelter in the summer heat? This was a topic set up so squarely for Givhan that I'm forced to think that she actively avoided it. Why?

***

Givhan is especially interested in men's suits. I've done 2 Bloggingheads diavlogs with her, and both times — 2 years ago and 1 year ago — she rhapsodized about the man's suit — "The suit is the triumph of civilization":

The new Robin Givhan column is not, as you might expect, about what Gates, Crowley, Obama and Biden wore to the beer fest.

It's about a man's naked ass!

... his beautifully muscled shoulders -- light glinting off his sturdy tush -- poised to break through the water like an elegant and potent torpedo. The rip in his skintight black suit runs from the middle of his back all the way down to the bottom of his bottom. The tear exposes a significant portion of [Ricky] Berens's backside anatomy. Suffice it to say that the rear end of a championship swimmer is a magnificent example of how glorious the human body can be. In an era when so many of this country's backsides have gone wide, flat and flabby from too much couch-sitting and cupcake-eating, the Berens buttocks were a visual rebuke of Americans' deep-fried bad habits.

His ass is rebuking us!

It's not enough to say that his ass is sturdy, poised, elegant, potent, and glorious. Givhan must also say that our ass is not.

Connecting Carrie Prejean, Elizabeth Edwards, and Wanda Sykes — 3 women of the moment.

It's the essayist's challenge. Can Robin Givhan meet it? The common theme she detects is: appearance and expression inconsistent with our stereotype.

Prejean took a conservative stance. And in the cultural field guide, she is not what a conservative woman who puts her Christianity out there for public consumption is supposed to look like.

She was not buttoned up. She did not look like an escapee from "Jesus Camp." Prejean looked like someone who enjoys a good cosmo.

Prejean's words landed like a sucker punch on many who thought they knew what the opponents of same-sex marriage look like.

She was gorgeous and conservative. What a shock!

[Elizabeth Edwards] has been subject to an inordinate amount of tsk-tsking for failing to articulate the perfunctory speech about the baby's innocence and how everyone needs to do what's in the child's best interest...

[T]his woman with the soft Southern accent and the maternal air has essentially said that the baby is not her concern. That is not the expected response from a woman whose figure is devoid of sharp lines and who always seems to be dressed for a parent-teacher conference.

Ha ha. EE is fat. Make no mistake: Givhan called her fat. "Figure devoid of sharp lines" — tee hee — use that on your female enemies. Anyway... so... get it? Pudgy, unglammed women who dare not to be squishy inside — shocking!

But how was Wanda Sykes out of character? Here's where the essayist's challenge kicks into advanced mode:

Sykes, a petite black woman with a sassy mouth, had gotten pointed, political and a tad bit angry. It was as if everyone expected her to leave her opinions with the Secret Service and just dish out jovial, but mush-mouthed, commentary about being beleaguered and put-upon.

Sykes is known for her sharp tongue. She's more Bill Maher than Bill Cosby. But there's an assumption that white male comics will speak their mind and risk being offensive to get the laugh. (When Stephen Colbert performed two years ago, the press knew he'd offend some in the audience, they just didn't realize it would be them.) If Maher had made the same comments, the audience probably would have been thankful that he didn't say anything really appalling. With Sykes, it was more like: Shame on her.

Eh. I'm not seeing how Sykes deviated from what we'd expect from her. Givhan merely observes that she didn't modify herself for the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

The essayist's task is not achieved. The parallelism is missing. The Sykes story is not about appearance and unexpected expression. Sykes was exactly Sykes, and she didn't rein it in.

"From everyday people to fashion insiders, everyone wants to know which designer Michelle Obama is wearing."

From the headline to that slideshow to every sentence of the Robin Givhan narrative, everything seemed not quite honest.

What's the point of writing about fashion if you can't say cutting, critical things? WaPo moved Givhan from New York to Washington where she was assigned to write about Michelle and Barack. Sad!

Susan Boyle needs a makeover, not "an 'Extreme Makeover,' but rather the Tim Gunn or What Not to Wear' version."

Says Robin Givhan:

Those are the kind of transformations in which the recipients spend a little time figuring out precisely why they've been squeamish about trying to achieve their personal best. Just before her triumphant performance on "Britain's Got Talent," Boyle said she wanted to be a professional singer, but no one had ever given her the chance. It was a reasonable comment, but it also had the ring of passivity to it. What held Boyle back for so long?...

The tale of Susan Boyle will not be complete until the shy spinster blossoms. Those who have been entranced by her story so far should let Boyle's fairy godmother finish her work.

Yeah. The idea of keeping her in her original state is sentimental and selfish. Is she supposed to bolster your self esteem? One of her attributes is that she's never been kissed. (She's 47.) Should she retain her virginity along with her bushy eyebrows so that TV viewers can feel warm and squishy?

***

Here's an article about Stacy London of "What Not to Wear." She's Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar with degrees in 20th-century philosophy and German literature, and she's been skinny (90 pounds) and fat (180) — so presumably she's knows what she's talking about when she tells less-than-perfect women to cast aside their slovenly comfy clothes and show off their curves.

The point of the show, she says, is to help people "find perfection in their imperfection." That means helping them really see the image they're projecting to the world -- which can be painful. "You have to see it clearly," London argues, "so you know what you're working with, what to emphasize, what to camouflage." Helping makeover subjects see themselves that clearly sometimes requires tough talk. "People think we're being mean," she says. "But we're helping take down barriers."

The subject of Michelle Obama's bare arms is so important...

... that Robin Givhan must hop over into The New Yorker:

They are not outlandishly sinewy Madonnaesque limbs. Obama’s athletic arms are achievable—in between the kids’ soccer practice, the executive suite, and the grocery store. Those arms represent personal time. They are evidence of a forty-five-year-old woman’s refusal to give up every free moment in service to husband, kids, and all the nagging distractions that could have filled her days and left her tuning in to “Oprah,” trying to figure out how she’d lost herself along the way. The arms imply vanity and power: two things that make many women uncomfortable and yet are fundamental to self-confidence.

What articulate arms!

articulate

SYLLABICATION: ar·tic·u·late
PRONUNCIATION: är-tky-lt

ADJECTIVE: 1. Endowed with the power of speech. 2. Composed of distinct, meaningful syllables or words, as human speech. 3. Expressing oneself easily in clear and effective language: an articulate speaker. 4. Characterized by the use of clear, expressive language: an articulate essay. 5. Anatomy Consisting of sections united by joints; jointed.

I meant definition #5.

What Berlusconi and Ahmadinejad said about the Obama victory.

The L.A. Times reports:

Berlusconi, who has a history of controversial remarks, said the relative youth of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, 43, and Obama, 47, should make it easier for Moscow and Washington to work together.

Then, smiling, he said through an interpreter, "I told the president that [Obama] has everything needed in order to reach deals with him: He's young, handsome and even tanned."...

Berlusconi, 72, later defended the remark, calling it "a great compliment. . . . If they have the vice of not having a sense of humor, worse for them"....

Berlusconi said the remark was meant to be "cute" and he lashed out at those who disagreed, calling them "imbeciles, of which there are too many."

Berlusconi is getting a lot of criticism in Italy. He's embarrassing. In America, do we care about "tan" jokes? I note that the WaPo fashion columnist Robin Givhan wrote, about Michelle Obama: "[T]he implied message is unmistakable: I am neither subversive nor threatening. I am not some scary 'other.' I am Camelot with a tan." Givhan is herself African American, which gives her more leeway, and she's imagining someone else's implied statement.

Stepping back from the focus on calling a black person "tanned," we should see that Berlusconi was making a sexual joke. To say Obama can make deals because "He's young, handsome and even tanned" is to say that he can be seductive, and Berlusconi was picturing a "deal" between Obama and Medvedev. Medvedev, who was standing right there -- and not reacting -- looks like this:



So, you get the picture of what Berlusconi thinks is "cute." (How do you say "cute" in Italian?)

As for Ahmadinejad, who is decidedly not cute:

“I congratulate you for attracting the majority of votes in the election,” Mr. Ahmadinejad wrote in his message, an Iranian news agency, ISNA, reported. “As you know, opportunities that are bestowed upon humans are short lived,” he wrote, adding that he hoped Mr. Obama would make the most of the opportunity....

“People in the world expect war-oriented policies, occupation, bullying, deception and intimidation of nations and imposing discriminatory policies on them and international affairs, which have evoked hatred toward American leaders, to be replaced by ones advocating justice, respect for human rights, friendship and noninterference in other countries’ affairs"...

Short lived, eh?

ADDED: Italy is in a tizzy:

Many Italian newspapers gave the comment nearly as much front-page attention as Mr. Obama’s victory itself. The journalist Curzio Maltese wrote in the center-left La Repubblica that “bookmakers wouldn’t even take bets” on how long it would take for Mr. Berlusconi to let slip another of his famous gaffes. “Mr. Berlusconi never fails to live up to our worst expectations.”

Mr. Maltese added that just when Mr. Obama’s victory was “inspiring billions of people” to consider “democracy, the most extraordinary triumph of humanity after centuries of bloodshed and intolerance,” Mr. Berlusconi instead contributed “a miserable, vulgar and racist remark, for which he didn’t even have the courage to take responsibility or the dignity to apologize.”

A billionaire populist, Mr. Berlusconi excels at deflating such lofty talk. He said that his remark had been “a compliment” and that his critics lacked irony. “If you want to get a degree in idiocy, I won’t stop you,” La Repubblica quoted him as saying. “I say whatever I think.”

"There's something about the Olsens that makes them seem like trinkets...."

Robin Givhan on the Olsen twins:

Ashley Olsen... appeared on "Good Morning America" and spoke with Diane Sawyer. The morning host insisted that they stand next to each other so the audience could take note of just how teeny-tiny the millionaire author is compared with the statuesque journalist. We couldn't help but wonder: Would Sawyer have been so inclined to treat the equally diminutive actress Jada Pinkett Smith or former labor secretary Robert Reich like a Travelocity gnome?...

Assembling [their new] book took more than a year and was daunting, one of them said. It might have been Mary-Kate. But it could just as easily could have been Ashley. It was impossible to tell them apart....

As individuals, they do not seem fully realized. As adults, they are a blur. When we see Ashley solo in the middle of a cocktail party, we wonder: Where is her other half? What is she doing? And who left this child alone in a room crowded with adults?

Soooo.... wow... twins are freaky....

I mean, I thought Givhan was critical of Diane Sawyer, but then, she just went on infantalizing and dehumanizing them.

Hey, big news: Twins are human. Short people are human.

The Givhan of HuffPo is pretty sure her Women's Studies professor vomits whenever she sees Sarah Palin.

Karin Tanabe, who seems to be the Givhan of HuffPo -- which is nothing like the Mull of Kintyre -- takes a 2-week old Robin Givhan column -- which she quotes but doesn't link to -- and trashes of Sarah Palin's style.

Because it wasn't enough for Givhan to credit Palin with showing that "a woman can step onto the national political stage without having to manipulate her wardrobe into some torturous costume calibrated to make her look authoritative but not threatening, feminine but not sexy, serious but not dour."

Palin must be mocked.

Tanabe writes:

The point is, Sarah Palin and her hockey mom's, grandpa's and second cousins, don't want her to be authoritative.

It's funny when the Givhan of HuffPo falls prey to the grocer's apostrophe, is it not? Modeling haughtiness, she takes a pratfall.

Her bad highlights and her layers of puffy bangs scream "don't mind me, I've been filing my nails in a log cabin for the last decade and didn't know the bouffant was now reserved for burlesque dancers and women who think Vogue is a devilish jig invented by Madonna (cue giggle)." I'm pretty sure my college feminist literature professor is vomiting every time she sees bouffant Barbie. Don't worry Professor Hart, I am too.

Is that that what Women's Studies teaches these days -- inane snobbery? And when did throwing up become the preferred form of elite expression?

Spewing.

What the women wore on the convention stages.

Robin Givhan observes the fashions of various political women:

It is not sexist to have noticed that Sen. Hillary Clinton delivered her convention speech dressed in head-to-toe mango. Only an obstinately unaware person would have ignored this question: Senator, why are you dressed like a tropical fruit? One assumes it was to ensure an eye-catching photo for the history books and to underscore her "sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits" legacy.

But what about the potential first ladies?

The first lady serves as a reflection of her husband's administration and of womanhood, and one suspects that when there is a first gentleman, he will bear the burden of epitomizing an ideal of manhood and will be forced to wrestle with accusations that he is too much of a metrosexual, a dandy, a he-man or a wimp. Almost certainly, we will obsess about his ties.

When Cindy McCain made her first appearance at the Republican National Convention, she was wearing a buttercup-yellow shirt dress with a flipped-up collar by Seventh Avenue designer Oscar de la Renta. As is the current fashion, the dress looked as though the designer had found some inspiration in the early 1960s world of "Mad Men." It was feminine, reserved and lovely. Ballpark price for a de la Renta dress: $3,000.

I loved that dress. It is the most distinctive thing any political woman has worn this year. I read some bitching on the liberal blogs about how her outfit cost $300,000, but nearly all of that was the cost of some diamond jewelry. It wasn't a $300,000 dress. But you know, that dress was historically beautiful. And I suppose it's worth $300,000 now. The "off-the-shoulder, ink-blue velvet dinner dress that the Princess of Wales wore when she danced at the White House with John Travolta sold for $222,500" in 1997 (before the princess died).

De la Renta also designed the inaugural gowns worn by Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush and that cream-colored suit Laura Bush wore when she stood next to Cindy McCain at the convention, Givhan notes, pronouncing the Republicans "status quo." Meanwhile, when Michelle joined Barack Obama on the stage, she was "wearing a raspberry, lavender and black print silk dress by American designer Thakoon Panichgul," who is not a heavily established designer:

The dress, with its slim bodice and A-line skirt, came from his 2009 resort collection... [T]he Thakoon dress... was too informal and failed to reflect the significance of the occasion. And with that fabric belt hanging down the back, it resembled a child's special-occasion frock rather than something suitable for a sophisticated 44-year-old. The flats reinforced the tea-party aesthetic

Oops. So we want change... but what kind of change? A change might be for the worse. There's a reason why the status quo is status quo.

"Phelps's exceptionally long and hairless torso seems to go on and on until the photo is abruptly, thankfully cropped."

"Instinctively, you know your eyes shouldn't slide any lower, but all warning signs have been waxed away."

Robin Givhan scrutinizes "the supremely unflattering Sports Illustrated cover" of Michael Phelps. What's so bad about it? Click over. First impression: He's wearing a weird spangly halter top. Second: Oh... those are his medals. Ha ha. Third: Get those crappy Chinese tapestries off him and let me see the torso.

Givhan compares the Phelps photo to the iconic Mark Spitz photo, where the medals hung on chains that remind Givhan of a whole 70s picture:

Spitz's medals are hanging from thin metal chains, a detail that gives the photo a kind of 1970s cool. You could imagine him in some fern bar wearing those medals with a pair of bell-bottoms and a polyester shirt with a collar the size of elephant ears. The photograph captures a particular '70s sexy aesthetic a la Burt Reynolds in the Playgirl centerfold.

And all the gay guys in Greenwich Village back then! (I lived there 1976-1981.)

Givhan also frets about Phelps's lack of "the kind of pumped up, six-pack Hollywood torso typically found on the cover of Men's Fitness and that has come to define today's sexy man." She calls the Phelps torso "a 1970s torso" and says: "To understand its power, it needs to be seen in action barreling through the water like a torpedo."

As long as we're developing our understanding, why don't we look at those Men's Fitness models and rethink whether they represent power? Their muscles come not from doing something admirable and powerful, but from doing what they've figured out will make them look like that. Shouldn't function underlie power? Their function is to model. Phelps's body is what real power looks like.