"Does this dress make me look guilty?"

Anna Sorokin, the fake heiress accused of being a society scammer, was found guilty. There is an Instagram account devoted to her style in court. Our chief fashion critic @VVFriedman explains why courtroom fashion actually matters.

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 2, 2019

The linked article isn't just about Sorokin but about various celebrities making questionable courtroom fashion choices. Excerpt:

And in 2011, during her trial for felony grand theft in Los Angeles, Lindsay Lohan garnered more attention for what she wore on her way to court — very short, clingy dresses, often in white or beige — than for the reasons she was in court, which may not have helped with her legal troubles, but made a different kind of case for her own fame in the public eye. “She walks into court like a movie star,” the lawyer Gloria Allred told The Times during the trial. “Apparently she hopes to be one.”

Ms. Allred also said then that her own general approach was to advise clients to dress for court as though they were dressing for church.

Some people get attention, some grab attention, and some — these are the ones you need to look out for — garner attention. It's not enough for them to have the attention right there in the moment. They need to amass it — to pile it up as if in a storehouse or granary.

ADDED: My all-time favorite celebrity courtroom look was Anna Nicole:



She won — in the Supreme Court, on a jurisdiction issue — and then she died and then she lost.

AND: To my eye, the look Anna Sorokin conjures up is the persecuted innocent:

"Sexually assaulted in full view of millions, the 18-year-old boy really has no option but to treat it as a joke."

I just happened to land on this post from a mere 5 years ago:

Look at the photograph of the hulking Jenny McCarthy grabbing Justin Bieber by the throat and suctioning the back of his neck:

"Wow. I feel violated right now," he said, laughing.

"I did grab his butt," McCarthy said backstage. "I couldn't help it. He was just so delicious. So little. I wanted to tear his head off and eat it."

Imagine the sexes reversed. If you can. McCarthy is more than twice Bieber's age. She's 40. But, oh, she's trying so hard to project sexuality....

I said "stop molesting teenagers. That's not funny, even if circumstances require Bieber to pretend that it is." Here's the photograph:

[PHOTO REMOVED]

 
How did I happen upon that? I was searching my archive for "men's project," after seeing a link at at Instapundit to the Campus Reform piece "The University of Wisconsin-Madison has confirmed that it has disbanded its 'Men’s Project,' a program designed to teach 'men-identified students' about the harms caused by traditional notions of masculinity."

The McCarthy molestation post had the word "men's" ("She first posed for the men’s mag at 21, which helped launch her career as a sexy doofus") and "project" ("She's 40. But, oh, she's trying so hard to project sexuality").

Anyway, the UW "Men's Project." I must have paid attention to that, since it involves my school and topics I care about, but I can't find an old post. My question is whether the Men's Project was as heavy-handed and demeaning as Campus Reform makes it sound.

IN THE COMMENTS: CJ said points to this "SNL" routine with Tina Fey as a teacher fantasizing about sex with her student, played by Justin Bieber. This is from April 2010:

[VIDEO REMOVED]

 
CJ's comment is "I remember watching this when it aired and saying to my fiancee at the time - 'God this skit could've been so much funnier but they're obviously scared of sexualizing Bieber too much - but that's the whole point of the sketch!'"

I think that sketch is great. Pitch perfect, right down to the "I'm going to go call Gloria Allred." It's prescient... about a future that still isn't quite here, the point when #MeToo extends to men accusing women.

Ah, wait, CJ comes back:

Not to spam the comment thread, but I wanted to explain the sketch more - the premise is that Bieber is super cute and even adult women are attracted to him so Tina Fey starts sexualizing him and imagining her life with him as her boyfriend (and lover, it's heavily implied). It's something you could never do with an underage girl, even in jest, and I think SNL knows that. But they wanted to seize on how cute Bieber is and make a sketch about it, but they stopped before it got actually sexual and therefore it's not that funny, just kind of weird.

I don't know if SNL expected the audience to "get it" and take what Tina Fey is doing a step further on our own, and thus it'd be funny because we know what the writers *wanted* to say even though they couldn't say such things on TV about an underage boy, or if they legitimately wanted to stop the joke before it got actually sexual, in which case it's really not all that funny.

"Roy Moore accuser admits altering yearbook entry."

Why is she admitting this now?

[Beverly Young] Nelson will hold a news conference Friday at which her lawyer, Gloria Allred, said expert evidence would be presented that it was Moore’s signature.

“We’re going to present evidence that we think is important on the issue whether Roy Moore signed the yearbook,” Allred told ABC News.

It sounds like they went out and got their own expert — after refusing to use some neutral entity in a safeguarded process — and that person couldn't verify the whole thing. So they're admitting that part of it is fake, and they want us to accept that expert's view that the other part is real.

"Women are not a footnote to history.... We value women who allege they have been the victims of injustice."

"It takes a great deal of courage to sue the most powerful man on the planet."

Wait. Is this all Trump was talking about?

Or is there some other thing, withheld? This is completely stupid and amounts to nothing. (Trump offering to give $5 million to charity if Obama releases his birth certificate, college records, and passport application.) I can't believe this clown is given attention for that, and I wonder if this is all he had all along or if the rumored story about cocaine dealing or divorce were in the works and, when the rumor smoked out too much negativity, Trump cooked up this new nonsense.

Trump's teaser was "I have something very, very big concerning the President of the United States." "Have" suggested some item of evidence damaging to Obama, but if you look closely at the words now, you can see he might always only have meant what we're hearing now. He has something concerning the President. Not something on the President.

What idiocy! What a waste of time!

MEANWHILE: Gloria Allred is still at large.

"If I could turn back time, I would have not chosen Gloria Allred as my lawyer."

Regret about choice of lawyer expressed in Cher lyrics.

Via Instapundit, who notes that the client Debrahlee Lorenzana learned what was always mind-crushingly obvious, that Gloria Allred is in it to get attention for herself.

But then, so was Lorenzano. It takes one to know one is not always true. Look at the photo at the first link. Was Lorenzano fired because of her looks or because she declined to dress in a manner appropriate to the business in which she was employed?