So I catch sight of this book cover — the book itself is out in November — and my second thought (my first thought, inevitably, is "Hmmm, nice legs") is "What are the chances that this author has Minnesota roots?" The answer, as it turns out, is 100 percent, though there's still one nagging question: Does the spelling of "hot dish" as two words, something one simply does not do in Minnesota, have any particular significance, or is this just some New York publishing weasel's misapplication of the term? (Yeah, I know: buy the darn book.)

Even though they've been legal for two and a half weeks now, I have not felt compelled to run out and get a tattoo; while under certain circumstances they can be attractive — there's a nice little ankh-like design near one ankle on the second-nicest pair of legs I've ever seen — there's still something a trifle off-putting about the whole concept.

Steph Waller, as usual, puts it more aptly:

And on me, regardless of color, it would create the image that the Goodyear Blimp is subletting advertising space.

Young doctors, claims a Miami physician in The New York Times, are dressing inappropriately:

Well, okay. Dr Pamela A Rowland, director of the Office of Professional Development at Dartmouth Medical School, says that it can also affect the outcome of oral exams for board certification:

As a rule, I shy away from That Which Is Medical, and therefore I have little anecdotal evidence to cite here, though I did once (okay, more than once) avail myself of the services of a dentist who seemed to fulfill the Texas Babe stereotype: slender and rangy, moderately-big blonde hair, endless legs. However, it must be pointed out that, at the office anyway, she dressed more like Lubbock than Dallas — no effort to be trendy — and she didn't go out of her way to dazzle you with any of that Dr McLusciousness stuff.

Meanwhile, Lindsay Beyerstein has her doubts:

And indeed, the Times illustration reeks of stockphotohood; I don't know any physicians who look like that, and if I did, the first thing I'd want to know is "Is she in our network?"

This is Caitlin Flanagan, former contributor to The New Yorker (at least, we are so assured), current contributor to The Atlantic, and author of To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006). She is occasionally derided by feminists, as in this Slate piece by Ann Hulbert: "The problem with ["How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement," The Atlantic, March 2004] wasn't just that she ginned up a catfight, though she did, accusing feminists of winning freedom for well-off women at the expense of low-paid domestic workers, also women, who enabled their careers; Flanagan never paused to consider that plenty of feminists have been addressing just that issue, or that men have been arguably the biggest beneficiaries of cheap household labor, since it has let them off the hook at home." None of these things explains why her picture is here, and probably neither will this: for some inscrutable reason, every time Firefox 2.0.0.1 crashes on my home box, this same picture of her, named "write.jpg," automagically appears on my Windows desktop. I figure the image file is stuck in Firefox's clunky download manager somewhere, and I know where it came from, but it was downloaded something like two months ago. If anyone has a better explanation, I'm listening.

Jacqueline Passey declares that yes, there is such a thing as vanity sizing:

Ten years ago she was 18 (I think); do teenagers get their own size scale? Not that anyone eighteen thinks (s)he's a teenager or anything.

Maybe it's time for something other than numbers. Example: In the early 1950s, hosiery manufacturers were trying to distinguish among a line of three or four sizes without using accusative terms like, say, "large." I shuffled through some advertising pieces from this period and happened upon a 1953 ad from Wayne Knitting Mills, who sold stockings under the Belle-Sharmeer brand. They offered four sizes, as follows:

Now obviously there's more description necessary for a dress than for a pair of nylons, but I, for one, would like to be able to go into the store and ask for shirts in, say, "Duff Man," rather than ask where all the 4X Talls are hiding.

It was almost 50 degrees yesterday when I hit the supermarket, historically a below-average temperature for this date, but a veritable heat wave compared to what February has been dealing us so far, so I wasn't too surprised to catch a glimpse of a woman in fishnets over by — well, it wasn't the seafood counter, so I suppose it doesn't matter where she was.

More than once I've mentioned that I just don't get fishnets:

And I was perhaps unduly pleased to hear a similar sentiment from someone who actually has worn them:

Well, that Blanche Devereaux, she could ... um, never mind.

Maxwell Smart, of course, had his shoe phone, but today's wireless world demands something sleeker, especially if you're working the distaff side of the Agency.* Enter ... the CPC Strap.

For just $19.95 for a limited time, you can fasten your very own cell phone to your ankle, which will have two salutary effects:

• People will no longer apologize for looking at your legs;

• If someone dorky asks you to dance, you can always tell him that you're sorry, but you have to take this call.
  

Hey, it could happen. (Couldn't it?)

* There is no "Agency." We just put that in to throw people off.

An urgent plea from Donna:

Don't think of it as an extra three cents per pair; think of it as a contribution to urban aesthetics.

By now, everyone knows how to get out of a car gracefully without showing your underwear. Maybe. Used to be, the tricky part was getting into the car:

At the time, there presumably weren't any high-slung models, so don't try this with a Ford F-150.

And yes, there are instructions on debarking:

This would seem to imply a bench seat. Interestingly, the illustration accompanying this wisdom seems to be a drawing of a Jaguar E-type, in which case, um, well, you're on your own, sweetheart.

[From "Key to Car Dates" by Kitt Gerard, American Girl, August 1968.]

This is the third of four frames in an animated GIF advertising Schick's Quattro for Women razor, which I spotted today while browsing Popgadget. (That "Energizer" tag might seem odd until you remember that the battery maker acquired Schick and Wilkinson Sword in 2003.) I had to ask myself, "Self, are you that easily distracted by a nice pair of gams?" (Yes.) I suppose it's a good thing they're not taking things too seriously. To make sure they weren't, I wandered over to their Web site and found something called Quattro Lingo, which introduces some new terms into the vernacular. I was most amused by this description: when you "intentionally go without shaving before a date as a way of making yourself behave," you're said to be wearing a "chastity pelt." I have no idea what Dawn Eden thinks of this notion, though I'm sure she'd endorse behaving oneself.

There have been times in recent history when "Ricki Lake is doing a magazine cover in a swimsuit" might have been a cause for alarm in some circles. Still, here she is on Us Weekly wearing a size four.

A couple of things perplex me about this incident. For one thing, there's the cover subheadline "It's a time of self-acceptance right now." Because, of course, you can't possibly accept yourself if you weigh 250 lb. (Disclosure: If I weighed 250 lb, the first good Oklahoma windstorm — you never have to wait very long — would pick me up and drop me somewhere in [fill in name of remote location based on wind direction]. If you don't believe me, ask McGehee.) Besides, the next Administration is busily planning the new Federal Bureau of Body Mass Index Enforcement, so we can probably assume The Artist Formerly Known As Tracy Turnblad is less fearful these days.

Then there's this, from the magazine article:

Which, it is reputed, is actually bad for your health, though I've long suspected that one reason it fell into disfavor in some circles was its tendency to draw attention from random males of the species. Personally, I blame Sharon Stone.

I am a big fan of both shortish skirts and strappy sandals, as I have probably mentioned entirely too often, but I don't quite get this open-at-the-toe hosiery, despite its construction of some "revolutionary Japanese yarn" that's supposed to keep you cool, thereby eliminating the major objection to hosiery in the summertime. A commenter noted: "The end of the stocking never coincides with the shape of your shoe, so you end up looking even dorkier than before," which seems logical to me. Maybe this would make more sense if it were cut off around the ankle, if you happened to own a pair of ankle-strap shoes. Moreover, if we're to believe some of the advertising these days, there are lots of women who will willingly put a lot of leg on display, but please, please don't look at their feet; they're never, ever going to consider wearing something like this. (And a not-so-perfunctory informal survey during this weekend's wandering about between film screenings didn't turn up a single person who really ought to wear it.)

Back in 2004, I had occasion to quote Cynthia Heimel thusly:

Cynthia, meet Lionel Shriver:

Ms Shriver clearly has a neck, and her voice is in no wise shrill. Then again:

(Via Jenny Davidson.)

An informal survey of 2500 women by a British shopping center suggests that after age 28, it's time to toss out the miniskirts.

I am of course distraught at the possibility that someone might actually take this seriously: as Bill Blass is supposed to have said, the legs are generally the last things to go, and I've seen some spectacular stems on fiftysomethings. I continue to believe, however, that every woman has an ideal skirt length, and it's usually not around mid-thigh. (And if it is, you know where to find me.)

And one undergoes this willingly, apparently:

I've heard of this phenomenon before: a woman once told me something to the effect that she needed to shave again within seconds of leaving the bathroom after the first shave.

The closest male equivalent, I suppose, was the six-thirty stubble (five o'clock was obviously too early) sported by Richard Milhous Nixon. And my daughter claimed this past weekend that I seemed unusually clean-shaven, which I was unable to explain satisfactorily.

(This is the second post about women's legs in less than twenty-four hours. Draw your own conclusions.)

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:

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

Addendum, Saturday: The Princess on television!

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

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.)

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.

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

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.

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.)

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:

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.

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:

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:

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:

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

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

And evidently we haven't learned:

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.

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:

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.

"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:

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

(Via Jezebel.)

Update, 11 June: Did someone mention torture?

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.

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:

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

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

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

(Spotted first by Lynn.)

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:

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.

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, shown at right, 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:

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.