Virtual Reality: Fashion and Politics Activate!

When I quit my job this past June I had to quit surfing Bergdorf’s and Neiman’s web sites. I couldn’t trust myself not to just say “fuck it” and purchase the next great pair of shoes or coat I ran across. So when I decided to try and virtually spend $150,000 on clothes, shoes, makeup and jewelry, I thought I’d found the best of all worlds: indulge both my political and fashion manias.

This is hard! What’s wrong with me? I’m even being generous in understanding the amount and type of clothing that Sarah Palin needs!

Dear Helen can be dismissive, but she’s wrong. There is no way to dress a Vice Presidential candidate in $300 or less. You probably can’t even do it for less than $30,000. While I may be incredibly dismissive of Sarah Palin as a Vice President/possible President, I am incredibly understanding of what it means to be a woman on the national stage.

First off, she’s a woman. We all saw what happened to Hillary starting way back in 1992 when her hair, clothes, mannerisms, cooking was picked apart rabidly. In the Democratic primary, it was less so—because she’s such a known commodity—but it still happened. Ms. Palin was only going to get more picked apart because she’s new to the game. Plus, her appeal to men is based in part on her attractiveness so that has to be maintained as well. So she needs the clothes, hair, and makeup to keep her pretty and appear professional.

And the campaign trail is brutal. Multiple appearances a day, traveling by auto or plane across multiple locations throughout the day. She needs to have enough clothes to get through multiple appearances a day. As any woman knows, a cheap skirt looks like a wrinkled piece of rag after sitting in a car or on an airplane for 30 minutes, much less crisscrossing a state or several in one day. One outfit a day isn’t going to cut it. She probably has ten of those black pencil skirts (probably two or three per day as the rest get cycled through dry cleaning) and goes through at least two of those jackets per day. If she’s in a place like Florida, she’s going to go through three or four per day to avoid stinking up her rallies in that heat. Can you imagine what US or OK magazine would do to this woman if she showed sweat stains or creased front wrinkled skirts?

Not only does she need multiple skirts/pants of the same type, they need to be of good quality craftsmanship and material. A cheap JC Penney’s skirt isn’t going to last long under this type of wear. Better constructed fabrics—which cost significantly more—are needed in order to last out a week, much less months of this type of wear.

And to keep her from looking too repetitive (which would also get picked apart), she’ll need about 5 skirtsuits and/or pantsuits. She’s primarily a skirt lady, so I’m focusing the bulk of my shopping on that.

Shoes, so near and dear to my heart. And my feet. When I worked I usually wore heels. Not because it was required (I worked in the tech industry) but because I like to. So I know what it’s like to be in heels day after day. And if you’re going to wear high heels on the campaign trail, you need some serious shoes to get through it. Screw the Naughty Monkeys. Those won’t cut it. You need Choo’s, Blahnik’s, Louboutin’s, Alexander McQueen’s. You need what I call the six hour 3-inch heel. If anyone scoffs that it doesn’t make a difference, you’ve never put these babies on your feet. I have a great pair of Nine West heels that’ll keep my on my feet about 2 hours, but I can go eight hours in a pair of Manolo’s.

In short, I get her needing some seriously expensive shoes.

And she’s going to need some dressier, though professional, evening outfits for fancier and more intimate dinners. And she’ll definitely need at least four inaugural ball gowns if they win, though I certainly hope those haven’t been pre-purchased.

So all that plus accessories, under garments (hope those aren’t being donated to charity), makeup, hair pieces, handbags? It’ll be interesting whether even I can rack up that kind of bill. But I’ll give it an honest try.

So yeah, overall, I get that Sarah Palin needs good clothes. That doesn’t keep me from laughing at the pickle they’ve put themselves in. What they should have done was find a few Joe Designers struggling in this economy and chose them to design a Sarah Palin look. Then they could have been both populist and fashionable. But they didn’t, they went the easy designer route and created so much enjoyment for people like me.

Time to go shopping! If I’m feeling creative, I’ll showcase the collection.

Oh Boy, Abortion

OK, the Palin/Couric Roe v. Wade clip (didn't feel like looking for the link alone so this includes the SLOG's commentary) was finally released and it’s even more embarrassing than I was expecting. Not only can she not cite a single case other than Roe v. Wade that she disagrees with, she somehow disagrees with Roe v. Wade while still stating that there is a Constitutional right to privacy (the cornerstone of Roe v. Wade). What, she doesn’t disagree with Lawrence v. Texas*?

Or going beyond the right to privacy issue to another Supreme Court case she might disagree with? Say Kelo v. New London**?

You know what, I didn’t have to Google or Wikipedia either of those. I just remember them. 'Cause I actually do read all of them. Once again, I’m more qualified than Sarah Palin.

The fact is, I’m done arguing about abortion and Roe v. Wade. Let ‘em overturn it if that will shut this debate down. Let the economics of abortion take over and show what will really happen. And if the pro-lifers haven’t thought through what will happen, here’s the logical progression.

Certain states will rush to enact laws keeping abortion legal. Others will rush in the opposite direction. Women who live in the pro-choice states will continue to have access to safe and legal abortions. Women who live in the anti-choice states will have more babies. Except for those women in the anti-choice states who will cross state or country lines to have safe and legal abortions elsewhere. So the only people having more babies (who would otherwise have had an abortion) will be the poor, teenage, unwed mothers. Thereby increasing the number of disadvantaged children born. Prior to Roe v. Wade, abortions existed. Hell, if Cleopatra was sticking stones up her uterus as a birth control method, you know abortion existed as well. I bet there were quite a few witches burned for abortion potions they boiled toiled and got in trouble for.

Now, if you’ve read Freakanomics, then you know the theory. If you haven’t, I’ll recap it briefly. The crime rate in this country started going down just as the children who would have been born if it were not for Roe v. Wade would have reached the age of becoming criminals. Harsh. Yes. But the facts and stats do make for an interesting and compelling argument. Crime rates continue to go down as abortion remains legal. That’s because the type of people who are most likely to become criminals weren’t born. I realize that goes against the culture of life thing, but again, the facts and stats really bear the argument out. If that is in fact true (and the authors of Freakanomics debunk any other theory by the numbers), then anti-choice states will have increases in crime, the welfare rolls, poverty.

These states will also be less able to attract certain businesses. Particularly high-tech businesses. We techies are generally a socially liberal lot. Microsoft would never open offices in a state that outlawed abortion. Not because Bill Gates or Steve Balmer is themselves pro-life or pro-choice, but because the type of person they want to employ is generally socially liberal. And given that the majority of Democratic voters are the higher educated, companies would have a hard time attracting these people to a socially conservative state. There’s a reason they’ve stayed in Washington.

So in short, pro-choice states would increase in prosperity while anti-choice states would increase in crime and poverty. Eventually, the well-off people would leave those states because it’s not desirable to live around crime and poverty.

This is an ugly way to talk about abortion. We all want to avoid this side of the topic. We want it to be about the supremacy of the woman’s freedom or the rights of the unborn. But at the end of the day, it’s all about economics, even in as distasteful topic as abortion.

Regardless of your stance on abortion, I cannot imagine that anyone couldn’t come up with one or two Supreme Court cases to discuss in the context of this interview. Nor can I imagine that anyone who is morally or constitutionally opposed to abortion would state that there is a Constitutional right to privacy, but that it doesn’t apply to a woman’s body (but apparently does to boys’ butts, see below).

Also, how can you be for a culture of life and also support the death penalty? Particularly since so many innocent people have been found to be on death row (or already killed)? How does that play into a culture of life?

Sarah Palin makes no sense whatsoever.

*That’s the one that said it was ok for guys to butt fuck and was also based on the Constitutional right to privacy that Palin says exists, but doesn’t apply to my uterus. Guess it applies to boys’ butts. Damn sexism is alive and well! Boys’ butts get Constitutional protection but my naughty bits don’t?

**For a true conservative, this one should really have stuck in her craw. This is the one that said it was ok for the guberment—via eminent domain—to take away property from an individual and give it to another individual who could make more money off it.

Alpha Bitches

I wonder if Palin thought she would have it easy with Katie Couric. Couric's got a reputation (deserved or not since I don't really watch her) for being a soft and fuzzy type, and I wonder if Sarah thought she would get a female bonding type of interview rather than the tough one that Couric admirably delivered.

If Palin thought that, she don't know women. There was no way in hell Katie was going to let herself appear to be anything softer than a hard-edged news person out for the details. Couric's own reputation was at stake over this interview and if she'd lobbed softballs at Palin (like Hannity did), Couric would have been accused of going easy on Palin 'cause she's a woman. I don't think Katie was unfair at all to Palin, the questions she asked were for getting the details. It was Palin's fault she was unprepared for such a detailed interview and Palin's fault if she thought Couric would be at anything but the top of her game. This is female competition at its core, and Palin didn't suit up.

McCain and Palin just really don't get women.

Thank You for Tanning?

Taken from the Slog.

I find this quite ironically amusing:

Sarah Palin brought one unusual accessory to the Alaska Governor’s mansion after moving in last year: A tanning bed…

Palin had the apparatus installed in the mansion in Juneau, and a spokesman for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, Roger Wetherell, confirmed the account to Politico.

“She paid for it with her own money,” Wetherell said in an email.

We have to pay more than the usual attention to Palin as a potential VP not only given McCain's age, but also his health history. As in melanoma cancer. And this woman uses a tanning bed? That's just ironic.