John Salmon spotted what he thought was a gratuitous Sarah Palin comparison in a New York Times article about Caroline Kennedy, which prompted this even more gratuitous comment from me:

Not that it’s a qualification or anything, but at least Caroline has a fair set o’ stems, if not in Sarah’s league.

Yeah, you can see how I mark my ballots. :)

Mr Salmon embraced this concept briefly (sorry, briefs not available):

Selecting women candidates by legs or other critical body parts is fine by me — after all, we’re going to have to look at them a lot, if they win. The only problem is a race between the likes of a Golda Meir and a Margaret Thatcher. I might have to sit that one out.

And then backed away ever so slightly:

Lest I be viewed as a sexist for the above comment, let me say that “The Sarah Rule”, that is to say, evaluating female candidates by their appearance, should only be used to break a tie. If you [have to choose between] two women whose experience, philosophy, etc. are more or less equal, then using TSR may be necessary.

In other words, Kay Bailey Hutchison over either Sandra Bullock or Sheryl Crow. I don’t have a problem with that.

Inasmuch as I’m going to be viewed as a sexist anyway for bringing it up, here’s some evidence to support my earlier premise, as snagged from CNN:

Again, not that it’s a qualification or anything. You’re not going to see me pushing, say, Zooey Deschanel for Congress.

Andrew Crossett’s Celebrity Legs Gallery is one of my oldest bookmarks, for reasons I surely need not explain. The past few weeks, he’s been taking votes for the Best Celebrity Legs of 2008, and to my amusement, pixie-sized Kristen Bell (she’s five-one) got the most. (You tend to expect someone with seemingly-endless gams to take the title, or at least I do.)

Even more amusing, among the next ten, Tina Fey and Sarah Palin wound up right next to each other.

And the late Gloria Grahame was inducted into the Hall of Fame, in case you thought Mr Crossett’s readers might be afflicted by the Tyranny of the New.

Carrie Coppernoll complains in the Oklahoman:

Radio City Rockette and Oklahoma City University graduate Carrie Janell Hamner [gave] a master dance class at her alma mater. I was not invited. Apparently Rockettes need a longer inseam than 20 inches.

Somehow I have the feeling she’s exaggerating just a tad.

A random thought from Lissa:

Women are beautiful. Women are sexy. Women wearing hose — especially with a garter belt, or with a line running down the back — are very sexy. Women in the act of putting hose on = Inherently awkward and not sexy. Somehow this does not seem fair.

“Awkward” and “sexy” are not mutually exclusive. (If they were, you’d be reading a blog called The 55-Year-Old Virgin.)

I will concede that the donning of tights might not be quite so thrilling, but you don’t generally see tights with a garter belt, or with a line running down the back.

Morgan Freeberg has decided that women’s legs are evidence of intelligent design:

You know that thing going around about how bananas are an atheist’s nightmare, because they possess so many attributes all of which seem to be orchestrated toward making them easier to eat? The same is true of the female gam. Designed by an intelligent Higher Power, to be observed and appreciated.

Entered into the record: Exhibit A AK.

I was making a preliminary pass through the logs last night for Monday-morning search-engine fodder, when I happened upon this Yahoo! Answers query:

Does Sarah Palin ever wear nylons or tights?

Of the proffered answers, the one getting the nod was this: “Probably … but you have to get close enough to tell.”

Which seemed reasonable enough, I suppose. I note with some amusement that five Web links were given, two of which came back here, which explains why I saw it.

Then again, I also happened upon a TV Guide interview with Tina Fey, quoted in The Week, in which this was said:

When I first saw her, I didn’t think we looked alike at all. She’s got these super-straight white teeth and she’s got this really even caramel tan. She’s got legs for days.

And, well, we are talking the Land of the Midnight Sun.

Conclusion: If she is wearing them, it’s not to conceal flaws.

It is a measure of how oblivious I have been of late that I’ve paid at least a dozen visits to Tinkerty Tonk since Rachel put in her most recent redesign, and not once did I notice the, um, background image in the header. On a comparative basis, this is right up there with Yogi Bear not spotting a picnic basket.

I am so embarrassed.

A Washington Post reader requests a ruling:

I noticed that Sarah Palin often does not wear nylons/hose, including when she accepted her nomination for vice president. I didn’t notice whether she wore hose for the debate. I also do not wear hose often, even in a professional setting (I’m an attorney). If you don’t have to wear nylons with skirts when you are accepting the nomination for vice president of the United States, when do you?

An answer — not necessarily the answer — from one of Mark Steyn’s correspondents:

Palin doesn’t wear pantyhose Mark. That’s one of the reasons the old fems don’t like her — unlike them, she actually has legs good enough to bare.

If I remember correctly, Gloria Steinem, while she indeed doesn’t like Palin, has, or at least had, very nice stems. (She did manage to get herself hired as a Playboy Club “Bunny” to conduct undercover research, after all, and Hef’s minions tend to notice such attributes.)

Incidentally, the WaPo’s Janet Bennett Kelly punted:

I’m not sure I would hold up Sarah Palin as someone whose fashion judgment I’d follow.

(Provoked by Marianne Brennan.)

“Please don’t wear socks in the tanning booth again,” said Jessica of Go Fug Yourself to an unevenly-bronzed Lindsay Lohan.

I was curious about the shoes, and after poking around for almost no time at all — thank you, Shoebunny — I have a positive ID: the Tribute Double-Platform Pump by Yves Saint Laurent.

It towers, or teeters, 4.1 inches, and apparently this isn’t the only variation available: the Shoe Goddess spotted this in a faux-crocodile at Bergdorf’s at the same $795 price. “They will be fabulous paired with suits and dresses,” she says, “and I will wear them with a pencil skirt and a simple shirt.” And no socks, I surmise.

So does the eye, eventually:

And let’s face it, if you had to sit there and listen to Sean Hannity, your mind would wander too.

That’s really the only way I can respond to this startling revelation:

Susan Sarandon has posed semi-naked for a new book.

The 62-year-old actress is pictured lying on her back wearing only fishnet tights and a feather boa in Hollywood Pinups, by Timothy White.

Far be it from me to complain about a Major Babe, even in her sixties, taking her clothes off, but I never did get the hang of fishnets.

Still, I’ll give her props for this observation:

I actually look forward to getting older — it is certainly better than the alternative — when looks should become less of an issue, and when who you are is the point.

Besides, I’m getting to the point where I’m reading Playboy for the articles.

Dawn Eden’s book The Thrill of the Chaste has now been published in Chinese, and it might be instructive to compare the cover art, above, with the cover of the English-language version, which you can see here. Now there’s nothing unusual about changing cover art for specific markets, but this particular example, at first glance, might seem a little sexier than the book’s premise might suggest. (The Spanish-language version, on the other hand, uses the original cover.)

Dawn herself, however, thinks it’s okay:

I do like the chic, Mod stylings of the cover model. The angle is provocative, to be sure, but the opaque tights and medium-height heels (as opposed to stilettos) make it modest by Sex and the City standards. Ultimately, it looks like what is being sold is not so much sex as mystery. It’s perfect for enticing young hipsters to pick up a book that invites them to rethink their idea of what a love relationship should look like.

Given her own previous history as a Mod-come-lately, I had to look at that photo two or three times (at least) to be sure Dawn herself hadn’t posed for that cover. Then again, if she had, I’m reasonably certain she would have said so.

And besides, it’s not like anyone’s asking you to dress like an extra from Little House on the Prairie or anything.

Disclosure: This item is referenced in said book.

I have an actual reader request for a piece about the FitFlop, which, it says here, is “engineered with a multi-density mid-sole that stimulates your muscles more while you’re wearing them.” A lot to ask of a shoe, I suspect, and not everyone is enthusiastic:

A British invention, FitFlops are purported to help work and tone the muscles of the thighs and calves so that women can burn even more calories and reduce the dread fat and cellulite — all for a pittance of $49.95. One reviewer said she found them comfortable, but added that it requires 15 percent energy than ordinary walking and that other wearers have reported discomfort. Other reviewers also reported discomfort, as well as a dismal lack of sandal-sculpted legs. But not only are such diet shoes not likely to give you the legs of a supermodel, they can actually throw you off your stride resulting in lower leg and feet pain.

As can any flip-flop, probably. Far be it from me to complain about the prospect of supermodel legs, but there’s more than a faint hint of hype here. Still, if you wear them and are willing to defend them, now’s your chance.

Apparently Russian cheerleaders — or their fans, perhaps — really go for those fishnets.

Which gives me a chance to recycle this screed from 2003:

I may be quite alone among the world’s skelophiles in this regard, but I have never, ever grasped the appeal of fishnets. I have been fortunate enough over the years to have met a small number of women with incredible legs, and not once have I found myself thinking, “Gee, I wonder what she’d look like if you overlaid a pattern of polygons upon her.”

(Aside: This is probably the only context in which I’ll ever be able to use the term “overlaid”.)

(Spotted first by Lynn.)

Princess Sparkle Pony has pointed out several times that Reuters seems to be fond of gratuitous photos of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s legs.

I was wavering a bit, but no more:

Here’s the proffered caption:

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice casts her shadow as she arrives to a group picture after a conference of international donors in Berlin, June 24, 2008. Berlin says the one-day donors conference is an important step on the path to a two-state agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, a goal the two sides pledged to pursue at a conference in the U.S. city of Annapolis last November.

You can’t get much more gratuitous than that. (I’m gonna miss Condi, really I am.)

In the late 1960s, one of our high-school classes was semi-regularly packed off to see classic films at the old Garden Theater, and one of the films I saw was Brigadoon, an Alan Jay Lerner musical put together by MGM’s famed Arthur Freed unit.

The trick about the town of Brigadoon, you may remember, is that it’s not always there: the enchantment that preserves it does so by bringing it to life only once every hundred years, thereby making sure it’s not influenced by contemporary evils. Which means that when Tommy Albright (Gene Kelly) falls hard for one of the town girls, he’s faced with the sort of choice you wouldn’t give Hobson: either he stays with her, thereby giving up his life in this world, or he returns to New York and never gets another shot. I remember yelling at the screen: “You fool! Go back to her!” (I saw the greatest minds of my generation garner detentions for just such breaches of conduct.)

This was my first exposure to Tula Ellice Finklea, known to the rest of the world as Cyd Charisse. At the time, I didn’t know that she’d been primarily a dancer; once I got a chance to see more of her work, I discovered that she’d been one of the all-time greats. As an actress, she was respectable if not noteworthy, and I’d noticed early on that her Russian accent in Silk Stockings was largely indistinguishable from her Scottish burr in Brigadoon. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

(Aside: Allow me to recommend the scene in Silk Stockings where she replaces her coarse Communist unmentionables with Parisian finery: the ratio of sheer eroticism to volume of actual exposed flesh is among the highest in motion-picture history.)

I was, admittedly, a serious skirtwatcher before I saw Cyd doing her stuff, but if I hadn’t been, she’d have surely converted me. And she had plenty of time to do it, too: right up until today, when her heart finally gave out. She was eighty-six.

“Some man somewhere will take you, baby,” claimed Joe Tex, “skinny legs and all.”

Of course, that was in 1967, and we’d already seen Twiggy. Before that, well, there was this:

Leg falsies for gals with unshapely gams are now being made by Mrs. Dorothy Funk of Burbank, Calif. (Blushing, girls?) Moulded from customer’s legs they are concealed by special rubber and nylon stockings.

Today, you’re more likely to see the shin feigned.

(Via Jezebel.)

Update, 11 June: Did someone mention torture?

Okay, it doesn’t look that much like a 1911, but Karl Lagerfeld, who designed this thing for Chanel, named it for Miami Vice and debuted it on South Beach, is presumably more concerned with long legs than with small arms. I suppose this makes more sense than, say, Rose McGowan having an M4 Carbine for a prosthetic leg, but not much more: the number of women I know who might actually be tempted to wear this can be counted on the fingers of no hands, even if Chanel were giving them away, which they aren’t. The Manolo observes:

Normally, the Manolo would be tempted to read some greater societal message into the appearance of such overtly gangsta bling shoes on the runway, but it is clear from everything the Manolo has read that they are here only because his Malignant Karlness thought they were cool.

And if you had a real gun in your shoe, a lot of people, not just fashionistas, would find themselves making a mad dash for, you should pardon the expression, the powder room.

Addendum: Well, somebody liked them.

This is Gwyneth Paltrow, as she appeared at the UK premiere of Iron Man, and her outfit is problematic, says Style Spy:

Now, that is one short dress. (It’s Balmain, by the way.) It’s absolutely gorgeous, but it is shorty-short-short. On one hand — would you look at those stems and tell me that if you had them you wouldn’t parade around with them exposed every dingdong chance you got? It would be hard not to. I do not have an issue with the fashionable-ness of the dress or of the “questionable” appropriateness of a woman of Ms. Paltrow’s “advanced age” wearing it. (You can practically hear me rolling my eyes, right? But it’s true — I read dozens of comments on celebrity blogs scolding her for being too old to wear such dresses. I’m all for age-appropriate dressing, I think we know, but Ms. Paltrow? Is a methuselan 35. It’s not like Judi Dench strapped herself into a Rudi Gernreich, for pete’s sake.) My quibble is this: How on earth does she sit down in that thing without making a spectacle of herself??? She is going to a movie premiere after all, and at some point I think there is a reasonable expectation that she will sit down to view said movie. Does a personal assistant magically appear at that moment to throw a lovely Hermes shawl over her lap? Do they synchronize the dimming of the lights in the theater with Ms. Paltrow’s approach to her seat? Not to mention (and I’ve said this before) the Ick Factor. Put me in a dress that short (and really, you should not) and you’d find me at said movie theater several hours in advance, steam-cleaning my assigned seat to my own specifications. Not to mention climbing into whatever chauffeured vehicle was conveying me to the event with a bottle of Lysol and a sponge.

But maybe that’s just me….

I will say only that horrifying as it may sound, there is such a thing as too short a dress, and that a Google Image search for “judi dench in a rudi gernreich” produced no results.

If I close my eyes and think of Ann Miller, I see a big smile and glorious gams.

Well, she never did much to advance the technology of the smile, but she did come up with one innovation for the legs:

TCM aired a 1997 interview yesterday [Private Screenings, hosted by Robert Osborne] in which she discussed her long career. Among the highlights: She invented pantyhose. Miller complained to a hosiery maker that she had to have her silk stockings sewn to her dress and undergarments for every costume change. If she got a run in her stockings, they’d have to rip everything apart and sew on a new one. “Why can’t we have what ballet dancers have but with silk stockings?”

It wasn’t until 1953 that anyone decided to produce mass quantities of the new garment, and only in 1959 was a finished product available, from North Carolina-based Glen Raven Mills. But pantyhose really didn’t catch on until the rise, as it were, of the miniskirt; the exposure of stocking tops was subsequently deemed unsightly.

The sheer stuff is out of fashion these days, though textures and colors are coming back into vogue (and into Vogue). If I see any this spring, I’ll remember to think of Ann Miller. It won’t be any trouble, believe me.

You do, young lady, if you care anything about the nation’s economy:

Although there are scoffers, the hemline theory of market fluctuation has always been remarkably accurate. In the twenties and sixties skirts were high, and so was the economy. In the thirties and forties, as women tripped over their dresses, the market was in the tank, and the economy sputtered in slow motion.

Miniskirts and short shorts were all the rage in 1987. The designers then decided that short skirts were ridiculous and we had Black Monday.

And evidently we haven’t learned:

This year long dresses are all over Milan, Paris, New York and London. Mid-calf skirts and floor skimmers are definitely the trend. And short shorts are far and few between.

This won’t necessarily actually work, of course — correlation and causation have only a passing acquaintance with one another — but it couldn’t hurt, could it? Besides, our leading hysterics scienticians say it’s supposed to be hot this summer.

Dawn Eden, at the beginning of Chapter 10 of her best-seller The Thrill of the Chaste, quotes this noted shoe authority regarding Sex and the City:

[T]he former HBO series did have some impact on popular culture, to the extent that it’s had some small but measurable effect on women’s shoes, pushing them a notch or two in the direction of sheer frivolity.

Perhaps I spoke too soon, or maybe I have trouble counting notches, because Sarah Jessica Parker, during a New York shoot for the film version of Sex and the City, was spotted wearing these extremely strange boots, possibly clogs with a pituitary problem, footwear for which no one apparently has a kind word. (And no one seems to be able to identify them, either; not even Shoewawa’s famed Ugly Shoes list turned up a reference, and I paged through literally scores of boots at Zappos. The things I go through for you people.) Admittedly, it’s hard to disagree with Jess Cartner-Morley’s assessment of the genre:

[E]very piece I read raving about ankle boots ended with a caveat along the lines of “ankle boots look brilliant on us beautiful people, because they contrast so winningly with our adorable, pipe-cleaner legs, but they look freaking hideous on disgusting size 12 weirdos who need liposuction”.

SJP might actually qualify on the “pipe-cleaner legs” bit, and normally I’d forgive her this sort of lapse in judgment — by my reckoning, she’s still got some goodwill left over from L.A. Story — but you should see the dress she was wearing at the time: it’s like Björk after a transporter accident.

Oh, I must retract: somebody has kind words for these boots. At the Sun, Bizarre columnist (now that’s a title) Gordon Smart says:

The Biz secretary told me: “If a fella buys me those shoes I’ll marry him no matter who he is.”

I despair.

In the absence of information to the contrary, I blame Patricia Field.

What we have here is a pair of classic Manolo Blahnik pumps, apparently deployed without a whole lot of concern for their longevity.

Courtesy of Princess Sparkle Pony, this is the original caption to that wire-service photo:

Picture shows the shoes of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as she crosses her legs following her key-note speech at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss Alpine resort town of Davos January 23, 2008. Rice offered Iran normal ties if it drops nuclear plans. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth (SWITZERLAND)

Now I always thought she was partial to Ferragamo. Not that I pay the slightest bit of attention to the Secretary’s legs, of course.

Well, not literally mine, but still: remember when the legs were the last things to go?

(Via Fark.)

Understatement of the decade:

In a study that confirms what many of us have long suspected, scientists have shown that men find long legs attractive.

Elsewhere, researchers have determined that rocks have low buoyancy, and the temperature on ski slopes tends to be low.

I do have some niggling doubts about this statement, though:

Faced with the choice of two women of the same height, but with different leg length, they will tend to plump for the one with the longer legs.

However, in the unlikely event that I am ever faced with the choice of two women of the same height — or, for that matter, two women of any height — I will observe, and report back.

(Suggested by Fits.)

At least once a week someone wanders in here trying to find out how tall Ann Coulter is. I’ve never had the opportunity to find out for myself, obviously; Andrea Harris, having spotted her in a bookstore, reported that Ms C isn’t all that tall.

The police department of Palm Beach, however, has now assured us that she’s five-ten and 115 lb, which supports my thesis that she might benefit from a visit to Krispy Kreme. (If she’s in the area, I’ll buy.)

Fabian Basabe interviews Ann Coulter, and let’s face it, this isn’t going to be some hard-hitting political commentary. Sample:

Basabe: We have both had our troubles with The New York Observer. They called you “the Republican Michael Moore,” and “Rush Limbaugh in a miniskirt.” Don’t you think your legs are much better than Rush or Moore’s?

Coulter: Don’t knock Rush Limbaugh’s legs — they’re better than Hillary’s.

I’ll, um, take her word for it.

What’s weird about that is that the Observer, according to Basabe, felt the need to compare Coulter to a couple of fairly hefty guys, and if there’s one thing Coulter isn’t, it’s bulky.

Well, that and the fact that the photo accompanying the article didn’t show any legs at all, Coulter’s or anyone else’s.

I have never quite made up my mind about toe cleavage: like its upstairs cousin, it hints at further delights, but I always wonder if maybe she’s wearing the wrong size, or wrong style, shoe. This particular shoe is a design by Christian Louboutin, who usually doesn’t push the envelope too much, but geez, Chris, if you’d cut this vamp any lower you’d have a sandal, fercryingoutloud. I suppose it would be fairer to see this shoe in context — Shoebunny, from whom I pilfered this thumbnail (!), has more pictures — and I figure that maybe the overall intent is to make legs look longer, not that Sarah Michelle Gellar, who’s wearing the shoes in the picture, needs any help in that regard. Ultimately, I suppose, this is more ammunition for the folks who think toe cleavage is some sort of freak show, and I suspect you’ll never get Miriam into a pair of these.

The Daily Mail, in a bit of classic Daily Mail feigned outrage:

In olden days a glimpse of a newsreader’s stocking was looked on as something shocking. But now, it seems, almost anything goes — at least as far as Emily Maitlis is concerned.

The glamorous presenter decided to liven up proceedings during a televised trailer for the BBC’s 10pm news. Perched casually on the edge of her circular desk, her stilettos dangling above the studio floor, the 36-year-old blonde swung one toned leg over the other.

Although she was wearing a relatively demure navy skirt-suit, Miss Maitlis’s flash of shapely calf caused a stir among more conservative viewers who saw the 9pm trailer on Monday.

Which, if nothing else, demonstrates that England is way behind on this cultural phenomenon: here in the States, we’re already in the Post-Couric Era. And considering what can be seen on a regular basis on our Spanish-language channels, I suspect the Brits doth protest too much. (Personal favorite: Ana Patricia Candiani on Telemundo.)

(Via Fark.)

John Hawkins of Right Wing News has put out his regular list of Favorite 40 Bloggers, and it’s about what you’d expect, given Hawkins’ conservative bent and eye for the ladies/drooling fanboy tendencies [choose one]. The American Princess finished five spots above Atlas Shrugs, about which the Princess herself comments:

We think that this is clear and convincing proof that all those bikini shots people keep asking us for will not increase traffic one iota, because it means you can still get beat by a pair of legs and a cynical bent.

I await with (barely) bated breath a comment from Dennis the Peasant.

Addendum, Saturday: The Princess on television!