"Years ago, I watched an array of law students lingering in a hotel lobby, waiting to be interviewed by visiting firms."

Writes Wendy Kaminer:

The men were completely, conventionally covered by their suits; the women seemed half naked by comparison, in fitted jackets, often showing a little cleavage, and above the knee, or shorter, skirts. Maybe they hoped to benefit from these reveals, but I suspect they were subtly disadvantaged by them. The men were free to focus on their interviews; at least some women were likely to be distracted (however, unconsciously) by concern about their looks and the need to sit and display themselves appropriately. How much skin is just enough? Stilettos, kitten heels, or flats? Hollywood or D.C? These are questions men never have to ask. Will they ever cease to matter to women?

Okay. My bullshit alarm went off. What year was this? In what city did this supposedly happen? I see law students dressed for interviews all the time, and as far as I can tell from my excellent perspective, this problem Kaminer would like us to fret about does not exist. Women law students know how to dress exactly appropriately for interviews.

I'm reacting to the ending of a piece titled "Kagan, Palin, and Lipstick Feminism," which is mainly riff on that Robin Givhan column about the way Elena Kagan dresses. Kaminer begins:

What do Elena Kagan and Sarah Palin have in common?  They each offer complementary cautionary tales about the continuing appeal of an ersatz, "Sex in the City" feminism that rewards beauty and punishes plainness with all the subtlety and compassion of a Playboy centerfold.  Kagan's appearance and fashion sense are mocked or savaged, especially but not exclusively by pundits on the right, following a familiar script.  Hillary Clinton and Janet Napolitano endured similar hazings.  Sarah Palin, to say the least, did not. 

You know, the standards of male and female beauty are different. That isn't wrong. We talk about how everybody looks. And we poke fun at anybody who exercises power. It's not wrong. It's right. It's perfectly fine to talk about the glamorous or dowdy way some female politico dresses. We talk about men's clothes too, even though it's usually a more boring subject because professional men stay within a narrower range of options.

Men are armored by their unrevealing suits; women are expected to expose themselves, with various degrees of discretion. 

Oh, bullshit. Women aren't expected to expose themselves. We don't even have to wear skirts anymore. Hillary gets away with pantsuits and complete coverage. If she chooses to expose herself, we're going to notice, and we will talk about it. But it is true that men are "armored by their unrevealing suits." Here, I talk with Robin Givhan about exactly that (in 2007):

When you go in to give testimony to the police about a murder, when is it a good idea to wear a live baby squirrel in your cleavage?

"At one point she bent over and the squirrel popped out. The woman was not fazed and gently pushed the squirrel back inside her shirt."

When should you testify with a squirrel in your cleavage?
	When you're telling the truth, and you want to be believed.
	When you're lying, and you don't want to be believed.
	When you're telling the truth, and you don't want to be believed.
	When you're lying, and you want to be believed.
pollcode.com free polls

IN THE COMMENTS: Former law student notes the etymology of "testimony." It's from testicles. So you might re-think where to put the baby squirrel. But for us ladies, we know where to put the squirrel, and we don't want to testify anymore. From now on, let's give cleavagery.

"Are her boobs SUPPOSED to look like giant, evil green eyes glaring back at me from her torso?"

"Is she TRYING to make a play on that old chestnut where a guy stares at a girl's cleavage and she coos, 'My eyes are UP HERE'? Or is it just an ugly dress that looks like someone sewed the bodice out of old shoulder pads?"

I think they're supposed to look like big green eyes ... with scowling, bushy, black eyebrows, I must add. There's no other explanation. I realize there's also no explanation for why Katy Perry would wear a dress like that, but ... oh, wait, scroll down...

It's the new Bloggingheads with me and Robin Givhan!

The title of the episode is "Michelle Obama’s Arms" and the topics are:

Remembering George Carlin (04:55)
Does the president have to wear a suit? (09:00)
Michelle Obama’s sleeveless look (08:45)
Cindy McCain’s forcibly informal photo shoot in Vogue (07:39)
In defense of Robin’s early choice to write about Hillary’s cleavage (06:07)
“Sex and the City”: just porn for women? (17:45)

Note that we revisit Robin's look into Hillary's cleavage — which, as I say in the video, has gone down in the history of sexism.

ADDED: Hey! I got to be on the left for this one. That hasn't happened in a while. Happened way back when I diavlogged with Jonah Goldberg. Anyway, let me embed something. I think we talked about sleeves for 5 minutes. Sleeves! Ha ha. Let's see you be interesting about sleeves for 5 minutes.



AND: Here's where we review Hillary's cleavage:

A trace of ass cleavage: obscene in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

I'm sure Abercrombie & Fitch is loving the publicity.

ADDED: Related Flickr group (NSFW).

WaPo columnist overwhelmed with meaninglessness....

... on contemplating the death of Princess Diana. It seems that Anne Applebaum, being English, felt she had to write something about the 10 year anniversary of the death of Diana.

[T]he genuinely bizarre aspect of the all-consuming Dianamania that gripped Britain a decade ago this week is how slight a trace it has left. The royal family is pretty much the same, only quieter...

Nor have there been political repercussions. It didn't take long for Britons to tire of Blair's Diana-like emotionalism (some would say Diana-like manipulativeness).

10 years is not long? Here in America, we're committed in advance to being sick of every President after 8 years. We can't consider putting up with a leader for 10 years even hypothetically.

His sober replacement, Gordon Brown -- a man whose name rarely appears in print without the adjective "dour" -- is already more popular. Brown's government is dominated by technocratic types with furrowed brows and by sensible centrists, such as his plain-jane home secretary, Jacqui Smith: No sign of touchy-feeliness there.

Jacqui Smith! The last time I heard about her, WaPo fashion columnist Robin Givhan was comparing her show of cleavage to Hillary Clinton's -- and finding it "a full-fledged come-on." Now, I don't know what to think of Jacqui Smith -- or the U.K. Is it a place where an exuberant show of cleavage is regarded as staid?

One could argue that Diana's truest legacy is the screaming emotionalism of the British tabloids -- except that it long predates Diana and actually helped create her in the first place....

Ironically, nowhere does Dianamania seem more irrelevant than in the place that was meant to be its shrine. Last summer I happened to find myself at the Diana memorial at Althorp, her family's estate....

There was the original, handwritten version of the speech her brother, Charles, gave at her funeral -- framed behind glass and lit as if it were the Magna Carta.

Visitor numbers are way down from 1997, and no wonder: The whole thing feels rather irrelevant. Human beings naturally try to give deeper meaning to pointless tragedies -- even where no meaning is to be found.

Did the columnist trek to Althorp and feel cold and grouchy, or is it really true that the death of Diana caused a fever, which spiked and died away?

CORRECTION: Applebaum is not British! She did, however, write "Like most Britons, I can remember where I was when the BBC announced...."

"Fashion is bourgeois, girly, unfeminist, conformist, elitist, frivolous, anti-intellectual..."

Unless it's not:

Particularly in academia, where bodies are just carts for hauling around brains, the thrill and social play and complex masquerade of fashion is “very much denigrated,” [said Elaine Showalter, the feminist literary critic and a professor emeritus at Princeton.]. “The academic uniform has some variations,” she said, “but basically is intended to make you look like you’re not paying attention to fashion, and not vain, and not interested in it, God forbid."

But let's get to the meat of this article, written by Guy Trebay for the NYT, the part about Hillary:

[F]ashion is ... often used as a weapon, a club wielded by those who forget that we are saying something about ourselves every time we get dressed — not infrequently things that fail to convey the whole truth.

Why else was Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign moved to attack the fashion critic of The Washington Post for attempting to read the candidate’s clothes? The editorial blitz that followed Senator Clinton’s outraged response to some blameless observations about a slight show of cleavage on the Senate floor was instructive, as was Mrs. Clinton’s summoning up of feminist cant about the sexism of focusing on what a woman wears to the exclusion of her ideas.

For some reason, Trebay declines to name the WaPo fashion critic. (Jealous?) Anyway, of course, it's Robin Givhan. (Here's the Bloggingheads segment where I talk with Robin about the Hillary cleavage to-do.) Back to Trebay:

But clothes are ideas; to use a fashionism — Hello! Scholars like the art historian Anne Hollander have spent decades laying out the way that costume serves to billboard the self. One would have thought that few people understand this truth as well as the woman occasionally known as Hairband Hillary, who, after all, assiduously recast her image from that of demure and wifely second-banana to power-suited policy wonk, dressed to go forth and lead the free world.

Well, of course she knows, which is why her campaign mobilized against Givhan. (More Bloggingheads about that, if you're up for it.)

"Dolley Madison had a decent rack."

Says Nasty, Brutish & Short in the context of discussing that diavlog that I had with Robin Givhan. (I corrected the spelling of "Dolley" above and in the quote below.)

It's a long episode of Bloggingheads, but it's well worth it. For the record, I thought Hillary wasn't showing too much cleavage. It's just the thought of Hillary showing any cleavage that I have a problem with. It's just too weird, too un-Hillary. It's so much of a departure from what we expect from her that it is disarming. It is pretty unfortunate that the first major female presidential candidate is so unfeminine. She could have been feminine while she was first lady. Then it would have been natural. Dolley Madison had a decent rack, and now there's a whole line of cookies names after her. By today's standards, she showed a lot of cleavage. But Hillary refused to be feminine as first lady, because it just wasn't her. She wanted to be taken seriously, and thought she needed to look like a man to achieve that. Now she's the first woman to have a real shot at the presidency, and she can't take advantage of her feminine wiles. Does she have any? Or because it's Hillary Clinton, are we just too skeptical about being manipulated?

With Hillary, you have to ask whether she's wearing something low-cut because of some political calculation. Is she channeling Eva Peron now? She used to be channeling Eleanor Roosevelt. What gives? Is it just too hard to believe Hillary would do something because it's what she wants to? With Hillary, do we assume there has to be a reason? Hillary and her mind games!

Mind games, manipulation.... maybe she is feminine!!

Well said. And here's Dolley:

"The lines of cleavage penetrated everywhere."

I'm so glad -- I'm glad -- that Ann-Margret appeared in that video -- the second one -- in the previous post, because I love when diverse things happen to fall together. I could make a great paranoid if only I could believe such things happen for a reason and if it scared me. But I think it just happens, and it amuses me. And makes me blog.

You know we've been talking about Hillary and cleavage these last few weeks, and just this morning I was reading William Safire's "On Language" column about the word "cleavage":

Cleavage is a strong but multifaceted old noun that has gained an additional meaning. The Teutonic verb cleave means “to split asunder”; the split hoof of many animals is said to be cloven.

And the devil!

The O.E.D. found cleavage to have made its appearance in 1816 about the mechanical division of crystals “sometimes called cleavage by lapidaries” (cutters of gems, nothing to do with lap-dancing). It also became a metaphor in church controversies: “When differences of religious opinion arose, they split society to its foundation,” noted an 1867 essay on Martin Luther. “The lines of cleavage penetrated everywhere.”

We now turn to its sexual sense.... In the zoologist Ernst Haeckel’s 1875 “History of Creation,” the propagation of the egg cell by repeated self-division was described as “the so-called ‘cleavage of the egg,’ ” which we now know forms blastomeres and changes the single-celled zygote into a multicellular embryo, and which brings us to the recent explosion in the word’s usage....

Eggs!

“There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN-2,” wrote Robin Givhan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion writer for The Washington Post. “It belongs to Senator Hillary Clinton. . . . There wasn’t an unseemly amount of cleavage showing,” the reporter granted, but she found it “a provocation” and “startling to see that small acknowledgment of sexuality and femininity.”

The word was then in political play....

The last time the word got this much publicity was more than a half-century ago....

I did not realize it at the time, but the lapidarian-religious-medical meanings of cleavage had only recently been joined by a new sense of “the cleft between a woman’s breasts as revealed by a low-cut décolletage.” That O.E.D. definition has as its earliest citation a Time magazine article of Aug. 5, 1946: “Low-cut Restoration costumes . . . display too much ‘cleavage’ (Johnson Office trade term for the shadowed depression dividing an actress’s bosom into two distinct sections).” Unless a search engine belches out an earlier usage, that’s a coinage stunner: it was Hollywood that invented the latest sense of cleavage.

This inspired me to do some research. Legal research, as chance would have it. Imagine! Me, a law professor, doing legal research. Has the Supreme Court ever used the word "cleavage," and, if so, has it used it in the recent, Hollywood sense of a cloven bosom?

The answer is that the Court has used the word 31 times, beginning in 1913, and 30 of these instances have had nothing to do with human anatomy: "society's racial and ethnic cleavages," "possible cleavage between black and white voters," "the fundamental cleavage which Article I made between apportionment of Representatives among the States and the selection of Representatives within each State," "more or less definite lines of cleavage among the Justices" -- you get the point.

But there is one use of the word stands out, and it's a reference to Ann-Margret:

Nicholson has been running through an average of a dozen women a year but has never managed to meet the right one, the one with the full bosom, the good legs, the properly rounded bottom. More than that, each and every one is a threat to his malehood and peace of mind, until at last, in a bar, he finds Ann-Margret, an aging bachelor girl with striking cleavage and, quite obviously, something of a past. `Why don't we shack up?' she suggests.

That's from a Rehnquist opinion, but Rehnquist did not come up with that prose. He's quoting a Hollis Alpert review of the movie "Carnal Knowledge" (and finding the movie not obscene).

Don't you wish you were there when the Justices watched that movie? Fortunately, that case, Jenkins v. Georgia, came up during the period covered in the Bob Woodward & Scott Armstrong book "The Brethren":

A screen was set up, and several Justices attended the special showing. As the film progressed, there was little of the usual cackling, running commentary or leg slapping.

"I thought we were going to see a dirty movie," Marshall commented at the end of the movie. "The only thing obscene about this movie is that it is obscenely boring," said White. The Chief left early. He told his clerks the camera work and the lighting had been well done. Rehnquist said he liked the music.

I would like to end this post with a nice YouTube clip, but my head is reeling after looking through some of the crazy stuff a search for Ann-Margret turns up. Like this. I think I'm going to go home and act like this. Wait. This is good. And this is blurry and full of bad, but still good.

Now, go research something.

ADDED: Damn! I put the wrong link on "going to go home and at like this." Ruined the joke. Try it now. 

ACTUALLY: I've removed all the those links in the end. They've all gone bad. Some YouTube policing, presumably. I hope you caught them when they were good. 

AND: Links restored.

The new Bloggingheads: Robin Givhan and me!

What can we talk about?

Can we talk about Hillary's cleavage? (10:57)

Color scheming: Gore's earth tones, Hillary's pink (09:06)

Feeling the fury of the Clinton campaign (08:12)

The Business Suit as pinnacle of Western civilization (04:08)

Caught in Jeri Thompson's headlights (05:42)

Michelle Obama and the natural look (05:37)

Crocs, codpieces, and $60 million pants (09:38)

Camille Paglia frames the question well.

"Why was Clinton campaign advisor Ann Lewis (sister of Barney Frank) so addled and strangely superheated by the Washington Post's whimsical meditation on the saggy Hillary cleavage that she instantly turned it into a crass cash come-on?"

I have cleavage! I have cleavage! I have cleavage!

Pelosi's new cleavage reveal seems like a cool idea for defending Hillary Clinton, who recently received a lot of attention for showing cleavage while giving a speech in the Senate.

The solution is easy. It goes like this:



Come on, ladies! We can do it! We can defend Hillary from cruel prying eyes and incisive analysis of the Washington Post fashion columnist!

Well, then, what's the effect of a political argument made while showing cleavage?

Here's a useful article on the way the mind is affected on a subliminal level by things that have nothing to do with what you think you're thinking about:

New studies have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like “dependable” and “support” — all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it.

Psychologists say that “priming” people in this way is not some form of hypnotism, or even subliminal seduction; rather, it’s a demonstration of how everyday sights, smells and sounds can selectively activate goals or motives that people already have.

More fundamentally, the new studies reveal a subconscious brain that is far more active, purposeful and independent than previously known. Goals, whether to eat, mate or devour an iced latte, are like neural software programs that can only be run one at a time, and the unconscious is perfectly capable of running the program it chooses.

Read the whole thing. And wake up to the manipulation that's all around you.

The seeming "trophy wife" is actually running everything...

Read this:

[Fred] Thompson's second wife [is] a lawyer and Republican political operative widely believed to have encouraged him to enter the fray. As her husband's de facto campaign manager, [Jeri] Thompson has the greatest hands-on role of any spouse in the presidential campaign, even though she has so far steered well clear of the political hustings.

Despite her political pedigree as a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee, her sway over day-to-day operations is troubling some of her husband's supporters. "I do worry that Jeri is the one really running his campaign," said a Republican in Congress who describes himself as "likely" to support Mr Thompson. "She's smart, but that could be a recurring problem."

A campaign aide, also speaking anonymously, told The Washington Post that Mrs Thompson decided everything from the content of direct mailings to the date for her husband to make his official declaration, now expected at the end of the summer. "You name it - anything," said the aide.

If you go read the whole article, you'll see an amazing proportion of it is about Jeri Thompson's breasts! There are even a few paragraphs on the subject of Hillary Clinton's recently exposed cleavage. This is a great demonstration of the power of breasts. Here's this woman who is apparently behind the entire candidacy and campaign for one of the frontrunners and people can barely start talking about her without getting derailed onto the subject of her breasts. Talk about caught in the headlights! The dazzling glare is disabling. Focus people. Who is this woman? What is she doing? And does she have a plan to become President too?

"I hope that there was considerable controversy in your newsroom over the decision to run a story posing as a 'fashion' piece..."

Hillary shows cleavage. WaPo readers show disapproval that fashion and politics columnist Robin Givhan wrote about it.

From Letter 1:

...Robin Givhan wrote, without irony, that looking at Clinton's breasts felt voyeuristic and that her small, "not unseemly" amount of cleavage is the equivalent of a man's unzipped fly, as if Clinton deserved the sexualized attention thanks to a shameful social faux pas....

When I am at work, as a young woman often surrounded by older men, I want my mind to be on display and my body to be relatively invisible....

Presumably, then, she doesn't wear low-cut tops! Or is she insisting that the world be magically transformed so that women can wear anything and no one will talk about what they are wearing or even think about their bodies? If that transformation were possible, would we want it?

Letter 2:

What's next? An article on viewing men's crotches generally or seeing a difference when they are watching her speak?

There should, of course, be corresponding writing about men's clothing and any sexual messages it may communicate. I note that male Senators wear such extremely conventional clothing that it's very hard to find anything sexual about it or, in fact, much of anything interesting to say about it.

The first two letters are trying to work the theory that you wouldn't treat men with such disrespect, but both letter writers fumble with the problem that there is no equivalent thing that a man would do. Both resort to referring to a predicament that might happen without intentionality. An open fly and a noticeable erection are scarcely parallel to a woman's chosen low-cut top. If the Post had published an article about menstrual blood stains on a female politician's skirt, the first 2 letter writers would have a good point.

But Givhan herself brought up the subject of a man's open fly:

The cleavage... is an exceptional kind of flourish. After all, it's not a matter of what she's wearing but rather what's being revealed. It's tempting to say that the cleavage stirs the same kind of discomfort that might be churned up after spotting Rudy Giuliani with his shirt unbuttoned just a smidge too far. No one wants to see that. But really, it was more like catching a man with his fly unzipped. Just look away!

She goes on to speak of a female politician in Britain who showed much more cleavage and to deal with the way showing just a little cleavage creates ambiguity about whether it was intended. ("With Clinton, there was the sense that you were catching a surreptitious glimpse at something private. You were intruding -- being a voyeur.") Givhan is analyzing the complex gesture of showing but only showing a little: The possibility that it is unintentional or not meant to imply sexuality makes the viewer uncomfortable. This is a sly political joke: Clinton is "tentative" and "noncommittal" in "matters of style."

Letter 3:

Robin Givhan's attempts to turn Hillary Clinton's choice of a scoop-necked shirt on a hot day in the District into social commentary failed miserably. Givhan crossed the line by suggesting that the shirt revealed Clinton's changing comfort level with her sexuality....

The "hot day" explanation is quite silly. The Capitol building clearly must be air-conditioned to the point where all the men are comfortable in suits and in no danger of sweating, so there is no way the low-cut top was serving an important summertime physical need. In any case, Clinton was wearing a jacket too. How desperately hot could she have been? Is cleavage some special heat vent?

Letter 4:

Most disturbing... was the misogynistic tone Givhan took, most notably with her comment, "No one wants to see that . . . Just look away!" It really should come as no surprise that women tend to have breasts. With breasts come cleavage. They are part of the female body...

This is a rhetorical move I've seen before. Talking about how a woman has chosen to highlight her breasts is portrayed as an objection to the woman's having breasts at all. And one is called misogynistic. But good Lord! What a misreading! Givhan's "Just look away!" didn't express her distaste for breasts. The next paragraph expresses enthusiasm for the British home secretary with the lavish display of cleavage! "Just look away" was Givhan's impression of what Hillary seemed to be saying with the "tentative" cleavage.

Letter 5:

I can't decide what horrifies me more: that The Post, which I have often touted for its intelligent reporting, would publish such a sexist, dated article, or even worse, that the author was echoing a common viewpoint still prevalent in society.

As a mother and a professional analyst for the government, I have always believed that my colleagues have respected my work, my mind and my opinions, not whether my cleavage was showing. I dress as I believe all women should: with the ability to choose clothes that represent who they are, be they feminine, nurturing, intelligent, sexy or fashionable. But I do so with the hope that clothes represent my style -- not how much skin is exposed.

So women should wear clothes that "represent who they are," but it's wrong to analyze this self expression? Your "clothes represent [your] style -- not how much skin is exposed"? What does that mean? The style of your clothes obviously includes the way it covers some parts and not others. Once you concede that clothes express the inner self, it follows that we should try to understand the meaning of the clothing worn by a person who seeks political power. Why would you censor this valuable line of inquiry?

"Clinton's low-cut shirt simply reflected a few centimeters of sartorial miscalculation..."

WaPo columnist Ruth Marcus tries to put WaPo columnist Robin Givhan in her place:

[Hillary Clinton was] dissected by Post fashion critic Robin Givhan for showing cleavage: "It was startling to see that small acknowledgment of sexuality and femininity peeking out of the conservative -- aesthetically speaking -- environment of Congress." Givhan contrasted Clinton's decolletage with the more abundant display by Jacqui Smith, the new British home secretary, and her complaint seemed to be that Clinton was showing too little, too unassertively.

Might I suggest that sometimes a V-neck top is only a V-neck top? As a person of cleavage, I'd guess that Clinton's low-cut shirt simply reflected a few centimeters of sartorial miscalculation, not a deliberate fashion statement.

Breasts may be an advantage in certain settings; the Senate floor isn't one of them. If you're giving a speech on higher education, as Clinton was, you don't want Ted Stevens thinking about -- and you certainly don't want to think about Ted Stevens thinking about -- your cleavage.

Marcus is clear that cleavage distracts viewers into sexual thinking and that a politician giving a serious speech should not reveal it. On that firm foundation, she builds the argument that Clinton bumbled. It was mistake. A miscalculation from a woman who is continually called calculating? A very wealthy woman who must have people helping her dress? I think women -- unless they are inept or don't care what people think -- know how much of their breasts are showing! The suggestion that Hillary Clinton of all people did not know is beyond absurd.

So let's go back to Marcus's firm foundation -- that cleavage distracts viewers into sexual thinking and that a politician giving a serious speech should not reveal it -- and build something else. Hillary Clinton deliberately crossed a well-understood line, because she'd calculated that it was in her interest to do so. As Marcus notes, Clinton had just received criticism from Elizabeth Edwards for being insufficiently womanly. Hillary wanted to prod us -- subtly, with a small and deniable amount of cleavage -- to think of her as more feminine.

Now let's examine the issue raised by Givhan that the problem was showing too little cleavage. Here's how Givhan's column ends:

Not so long ago, Jacqui Smith, the new British home secretary, spoke before the House of Commons showing far more cleavage than Clinton. If Clinton's was a teasing display, then Smith's was a full-fledged come-on. But somehow it wasn't as unnerving. Perhaps that's because Smith's cleavage seemed to be presented so forthrightly. Smith's fitted jacket and her dramatic necklace combined to draw the eye directly to her bosom. There they were . . . all part of a bold, confident style package.

With Clinton, there was the sense that you were catching a surreptitious glimpse at something private. You were intruding -- being a voyeur. Showing cleavage is a request to be engaged in a particular way. It doesn't necessarily mean that a woman is asking to be objectified, but it does suggest a certain confidence and physical ease. It means that a woman is content being perceived as a sexual person in addition to being seen as someone who is intelligent, authoritative, witty and whatever else might define her personality. It also means that she feels that all those other characteristics are so apparent and undeniable, that they will not be overshadowed.

To display cleavage in a setting that does not involve cocktails and hors d'oeuvres is a provocation. It requires that a woman be utterly at ease in her skin, coolly confident about her appearance, unflinching about her sense of style. Any hint of ambivalence makes everyone uncomfortable. And in matters of style, Clinton is as noncommittal as ever.

So both Marcus and Givhan find fault. One sees mistake, and the other sees tentativeness. I see a deliberate, controlled gesture that was exactly what she wanted to do, what she thought would be advantageous. Why must a fashion expression -- or a political expression -- be forthright? Givhan uses words like "teasing" and "surreptitious," but I'm thinking: subtle, deniable, diplomatic.

But I do love Givhan's idea that the most advanced woman would be so confident about her image as a competent professional that she'd forthrightly use clothing to express her sexuality. If she does this in a profession setting though, she will be surrounded by men in suits who have no way to present themselves more sexily. What's the male equivalent of the Jacqui Smith style? Can Joe Biden wear a codpiece?

Women have much more freedom than men do. Along with this benefit of more freedom comes more room for personal expression. We can adjust what we wear to express as little as possible. A female politician can wear a dark "Dress For Success" suit if she wants, and then, like the men, she's not saying much. But if she does more, we shouldn't say oh, that's nothing, as Marcus would like. We should talk about it!

Clinton...

.... flaunts cleavage.

Or are you going to say that "flaunts" is too active a verb? She has cleavage. Just happens to have it. Just happens to wear a top that happens to be low enough that you can see it if you happen to have eyes. Just happens to wear it to the Senate floor to give a speech about the cost of education. Are you going to say that we ought to be giving attention to the content of that speech and not to the presentation of the woman who would be President?

ADDED: Link address tweaked to provide photos.

AND: Some more attention for the linked column. Hot Air: "Whatever. I don’t want to hear about Sen. Clinton’s cleavage. I just don’t. And if HRC were a Republican, she’d undoubtedly be getting the Jeri Thompson or Wendy Vitter treatment. But she’s a Democrat, so we get hack poetry paying homage to her boobs." Gawker: "Thanks, Robin! Now if we can just get a little ass-crackery from Obama, we'll be able to make our decision on who to support!"

MORE:

"You really have to use your breast power responsibly."

I've said it before (somewhere here): Women know what their breasts look like in their clothes. It doesn't just happen. "Breast power" is real. We can pretend we don't know, but we do. That doesn't mean we have great judgment about how to use it. So let's see an attempt at devising some rules:

What looks sexy for a night out on the town may not be appropriate in the workplace. In fact, [Elisabeth] Squires said cleavage should never make an appearance in the office.

Even in the summer at the law school when there's almost no one around?

"It's way too big of a distraction for men and women," she said. "If cleavage isn't in your job description, don't put it in."...

Squires suggested that women also keep things respectable at family events, like a kids' soccer game....

Night is prime time to bring out breasts, but Squires suggested women treat their cleavage as part of their outfit -- not a focal point.

"You can certainly be a bit more daring," she said. "This presumably is adult time, and cleavage is powerful. This is the time to use it. But they should be part of your whole look."

Okay, so night time is the "prime time." Clearly, there are other times. What are they? Hanging about cafés in the summertime? Catching a light lunch with a former President? We need to know.

I've already gotten Amanda Marcotte to show up once in the comments today. I'm trying to see if I can make her come back.

I found this article via Instapundit.

Fashion focuses eyes on women's chests.

Upper chests, that is. It's all about the clavicle, the clavicle that you've etched out through hardcore exercise and stringent dieting.



Because what could be sexier that a woman who is shockingly, graphically demonstrating how thoroughly she has excluded all pleasure from her life?

Toned shoppers who want to show off their self-discipline in the face of dessert are choosing dresses with a low, but not plunging neckline, a look that is transforming the area above the breasts into an unlikely new subject for women to obsess over....

Why the new emphasis on a body part most women — and more men — have paid little attention to in the past? Credit a swing of the fashion pendulum, and a malaise over “Girls Gone Wild” style.

Yes, we're bored with breasts now. Haven't you heard? We've had enough of "Girls Gone Wild." We want "Girls Gone Abstemious."

[The clavicle is] an area whose prominence is unlikely to be enhanced surgically (at least for now).

Come on, you slacker plastic surgeons. Get on this, now. Where are my clavicle implants? Figure out how to add bony-looking bumps all over the body. You've been limiting yourself to cheekbones and chins for too long.

This region has been emphasized by the skinny celebrity acolytes of the stylist Rachel Zoe, including Nicole Richie and Keira Knightley. Their ubiquitous deep V-neck tops show off sometimes skeletal frames, and other actresses have taken their cue and sized down as well, to the point that the Internet teems with fashion and celebrity bloggers and message board posters carping about protruding A-list clavicles.

Talk about me, blog about me, say what you like but talk about me. How frighteningly must I cause my bones to protrude to get you to talk about me? Blog about me, dammit!

Courtney E. Martin, the author of “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body” (Free Press, 2007), said that many of the girls and women she interviewed for her book “talked about how far their collarbone stuck out” with pride, as an indicator of their skinniness.

Ms. Martin contends that a generation of young women raised after Title IX and the women’s movement pursue slender figures with the same rigor as they pursue admission to an Ivy League university.

Title IX?! See what happens when you make women competitive? They're just choosing their sport, the extreme sport of thinning.

When Jessica Braff, who works at an advertising agency in New York, lost 15 pounds in her freshmen year of college, the first thing she noticed was that her clavicles were more pronounced.

“I loved it,” she said. She continues to wear clothes that show off her collarbones, which she calls the “easiest and least controversial expression of a kind of sex appeal.”

Yes, it's a kind of sex appeal. The kind that says there is not the slightest thing luscious or sybaritic about me.

On the pro-clavicle side, the most interesting voice is Consuelo Castiglioni, a fashion designer:

[Her] label, Marni, incorporates chest-baring necklines into tops and dresses. The brand has long been a favorite of women seeking clothing that isn’t expressly made to attract men, including skirts with bustles and tops that flare out to obscure any semblance of a waist.

“I think it is clear from my designs that deep cleavages, tight silhouettes, visible tummies or behinds are not part of my aesthetic,” Ms. Castiglioni said in an e-mail message. “What I try to express is elegance and femininity and a more cerebral, hidden sensuality.”

Don't you see? It's intellectual.

Halloween costumes for females...

... none of whom seem to want to indulge in the freedom to be ugly and horrifying anymore. Every single damned costume is about looking even sexier than ever:

A theme was emerging. And it wasn’t Halloween. Since when did Halloween costumes become marital aids? The hobo has turned into the Hillbilly Honey. The traditional vampire is now the Mistress of Darkness. I have nothing against playing erotic dress-up, or even mass-market fetishism. I’d just prefer it didn’t converge with a family holiday (and wasn’t sold next to the dryer sheets). If you want to play cheerleader at home, go team. But trick-or-treating with your children in anything featuring latex and cleavage seems like a little too much trick....

I noticed that on the outside of every package was a photo of a woman modeling not only the costume, but teetering heels and bras of the push-up variety. The First Lady costume was not, as one might expect, a red business suit, but a pink crepe mini-dress. At least it had the matching pillbox hat. The angel was dubbed “heaven’s hottie.” Even the witch had a slit up her tattered skirt.

My girls were confused. “Where are the monsters?” they asked. “Where are the superheroes?” I pointed weakly to Wonder Woman and her thigh-high boots. “She’s pretty,” said my 4-year-old. Before adding, “You can see her breasts.

It's pretty lame that young women feel they must use Halloween as another day in the endless pursuit of male love, but why are the guys free to amuse themselves in more manifold ways? Perhaps because women think that it's sexy for a guy to be funny. But I wonder what the men would wear if they -- like the women -- thought overwhelmingly about looking sexually appealing to women?