I will grudgingly admit that Sarah ‘Get your zygotes out for the lads’ Palin has done at least one good service for women – she’s made women in glasses publicly sexy, albeit in a weirdly fetishistic, libertarianism-gone-mad sort of a way. “All the better to look down my gunsights at you, my sweet…”
Clothes and accessories are of course political signifiers in a media age and in an election year no candidate’s clothing is chosen without consideration of what it says to the viewers. To wit: ABC News while Hillary was still a contender, with “A Look Back At Hillary’s Year In Pantsuits.” Now that the nation’s eyes are on Palin, it’s all “Are Palin’s Glasses the New Pantsuit?”
Those of us who are a bit nerdy or who are lucky enough to live with a geek already know about glasses being incredibly sexy, thanks very much. But this plain glass in frames thing (which Palin didn’t start btw, it was those bloody engineer-cap wearing, soul-patched hipster wannabes that litter up the place) is pissing me off. I didn’t used to mind being described as geeky. Girl geekdom was an online bulwark against the superficial consumerist tat that passes for women’s print media.
Now I loathe it.The trend mill has already ground up, consumed and discarded most of our stuff (here’s looking at you, Boing Boing) – now the fashionistas want to steal the last advantage of the geek girl over the highlighted, Ugg-booted, orange skinned airhead?
Bastards.
But thankfully fashion is fickle and hipness temporary; this too shall pass. The craze isn’t going to last long. The ‘Sexy Sarah Palin’. and ‘Geek Girl’ joke outfits are already in the stores for Hallow’e’en
Hah! Instant death to hipness. And the upside of glasses reverting to squaredom so fast is that the craze for Palin herself is likely to burn itself out with equal speed, now that the media have actually started fact-checking her lying ass.
Meanwhile we, the actually ocularly challenged women of the world, will continue to look over our sexy glasses at you while you speculate about what naughty ideas we’re having with that misty, faraway look in our eyes.*
[*”Potatoes or pasta?”, since you asked. But you go on with your fantasy if it gets you through the day.]
