The Junior Senators From New York

~ Laura

Robin Gihvan’s article on Hillary’s cleavage almost brought me out of my blog vacation last week. Yesterday, I flipped on CNN to hear another story on this topic with commentary from some chick from Feministing. We love to talk about boobs in the blogosphere. (Perhaps we should call it the boobosphere?) I was pleased to see that this topic hasn’t died yet, so I can get my shot at Hillary’s ta-tas.

Tatas

My take on the whole cleavage controversy is that is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with giving the girls a little air. However, Hillary needs a better bra. Honey, you need an underwire and a little padding.  Pear-shaped girls need to be evened out. We’re not talking silicone, just a good Victoria’s Secret number. You want the girls up front and center. Say hello to the junior senators from New York, baby.

Published by Laura

4 thoughts on “The Junior Senators From New York”

  1. I don’t like this post. Or, I don’t like Givhan. Two angles of attack: 1. Hillary’s breasts are the wrong thing to be thinking about in trying to decide whether she should be President (nor Jeri Thompson’s in thinking whether Fred should be). 2. Hillary is doing about the best she can in dealing with life progression as a woman in public life; it’s a bad issue which makes me squeamish. And by the way, Robin Givhan is a jerk.
    So I will start with 2. Here’s a succession of life stages: ingenue, babe, handsome, well preserved. And, of course, you can slip off the ridge at any time to frump/babushka. Now, there is Sophia Loren, who as near as I can tell has been stuck on ‘babe’ for the last 54 years, but in general time passes and you progress. Women generally welcome going from ingenue to babe, none of the other progressions is desired. Our Nicaraguan babysitter is interested in English idioms, and we were discussing ‘mutton dressed as lamb’, and I said ‘Madonna’ and she got it immediately. It’s a bad deal – we all like to think life progresses towards the positive – but it’s the only deal on offer. Laura – I’m going to guess, from your tone in the post, that you are still in ‘babe’. Nice, enjoy it. I am 57, my wife is 53 – she and her/our age-mates are generally trying to hold on to ‘handsome’, with some modicum of dignity. Women do less well in the professions where you have to keep making the sale (law, real estate, POLITICS, etc) if they slip to ‘frump’ than if they manage to hold onto ‘handsome.’ Some manage it, of course – Golda Meir, Madeleine Albright. But in general… Medicine, engineering, podiatry, accounting are more hospitable to ‘frump.’ Handsome is a fine line, you dress carefully. You can slide into undignified (Helen Chenoweth-Hage!) And Hillary has been dressing carefully and holding onto handsome pretty well.
    I think that’s her best strategy: not to have her appearance be an issue, but to be age-appropriate handsome as much as possible. It is pretty dreadful that there’s even anything to talk about here, but there is, and she’s doing well with it. Now, Robin Givhan: she seems to me a political writer wannabee who is stuck in Style. She has been trying to score points by writing about John Roberts’ children’s clothes at his confirmation hearings, Cheney showing up at an outside – cold! – ceremony in Europe in a parka while others wore suits. She seems to me to exemplify a lot of what is wrong with newspapers today, empty snark when there are real issues. On the other hand, she got a Pulitzer for it in 2006 – Wikipedia: “Robin Givhan (born 1965) is the fashion editor for The Washington Post. She won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. The Prize gave the rationale for her award as follows: “Awarded to Robin Givhan of The Washington Post for her witty, closely observed essays that transform fashion criticism into cultural criticism.” The chattering classes tended to love her when it was righties at whom she was sneering instead of Saint Hillary, this latest has gotten her a lot of criticism. So maybe I am an old fuddy-duddy for disapproving of fashion criticism trying to rise above itself, to what I think of as significant.
    Now, onward to 1. I earlier put up on this blog a quote from Brad Delong, who worked on HillaryCare, about her then lack of political skills (http://11d.typepad.com/blog/2007/02/identity_politi.html) he said “…Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given.” The blogger Mean Mr Mustard said that sometime she would be caught on video shrieking at a hotel maid, and that would end her candidacy.
    Maybe Hillary is better now – reports on her tenure as Senator are pretty good, though it’s a different job. Her deportment’s been flawless so far: smooth and polite with everyone, at least when there are cameras around. But those are the right questions, along with, well, how shall we fix the health care problem and what do to about Iranian attempts to get The Bomb, not her breasts.

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  2. A well deserved scold. Yes, but sometimes it is fun to try to find some humor and light in the grossness that is politics these days. This post may have gone past the funny point, but hey it’s the internet and I’ve written a couple thousand posts in the past couple years. Some, if not most, are going to go too far.
    I’m not sure that I ever fell into the category of babe. It’s only recently that I’ve really learned how to operate a hair dryer correctly and I spent way too long in the grunge phase wearing baggy jeans and combat boots.
    As someone who was irrationally happy that the fish guy in the supermarket called me “miss” today, I understand the indignities of growing older.
    No, fashion is certainly not as important as policy, but I do think we can talk about both. Maybe we haven’t done it enough on this blog in the past few months. Time crunch issues on my end. But I do like talking about both. I like nice shoes and the New Republic. Sometimes I think about dividing this blog in half, because I’m not sure that I am successful in bringing shoes and the kid stories and policy together. Maybe I’ll do that this fall.
    We’ve been talking about Hillary a lot at home. I’ll have to do a post about her. I think she’s got it locked up now.

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  3. Appearance is not a problem for a woman candidate only – folks who have it in for Edwards regularly refer to him as Silky Pony, and the video of Edwards tending his hair while looking at a compact has been damaging. Bush 43 is the only example of the shorter Presidential candidate winning in years. I disapprove of appearance being a factor, but, well, me disapproving plus 65 cents will get you a cup of coffee someplace real cheap.
    Does Hillary have it locked up? Probably, but here’s an argument against: latest Dem numbers are Hillary 45 Obama 25 Edwards 14. Edwards has sunk like a stone. The lefties I know who had been thinking Edwards was just swell seem to prefer Obama to Hillary. If 45 is something of a top for Hillary, and it stops being perceived as a three-person race, then Obama could harvest the anyone-but-Hill vote. It’s a stretch.

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