The XX Factor: What women really think.

Is Your Sense of Whimsy M.I.A.?

I missed out on the Grammys live, so when I read Marjorie's post on M.I.A.'s polka dot outfit, I figured it would be a fashion disaster of Lil' Kim proportions. But looking at the photos of the Sri Lankan star, it seems that her frock was more Bjork than Beyonce, which is to say: whimsical and slightly ridiculous, but certainly not worth any gaspy pearl clutching. Her fashion has always been silly, and this over-the-top outfit is no exception.

M.I.A.'s pregnancy peekaboo actually seems to be very similar in spirit to the "gross-out girls" Meghan blogged about last week. Just as my old colleagues at Jezebel and writers like Miranda Purves are debunking notions of feminine delicateness, M.I.A. is showing the world that a woman who's just shy of the delivery table can rock out on stage in a peekaboo getup. Like everything else, though, it's all about execution. I can say for the Jezebels that when they write their most graphic pieces, the aim is not just to potentially inform, but also to make the reader laugh. Which is why Wetlands is such a failure. I read it last month, and when it wasn't actively turning my stomach from its exponentially disgusting descriptions, it was turning my stomach with its aggressively artless prose.

At Last

Thanks to Dahlia for just forwarding around a clip of Beyoncé singing "At Last" as the first couple had their first dance at the Inaugural Ball last night. First of all: Wow. What a fantastic performance of a great song, even more beautifully delivered than when Beyoncé belted it in character as Etta James in the recent Cadillac Records. But second: Did it strike anyone else how perfectly chosen the song was for that moment, for our moment as a nation? As Beyoncé stood there, not onstage but as a member of the audience, looking the first couple in the eyes and singing directly to them, it was as if her words could have come from all of us: At last. The slow-motion nightmare of the Bush years is over. The longest campaign since Caesar divided Gaul has finally come to an end. And the centuries of racial discrimination that have been our greatest shame—well, let's not get ahead of ourselves yet, but something significant has started to shift there, too. At last.

On a less metaphorical level, "At Last" is as romantic as love songs get, and the sight of the handsome first couple alone on a stage, she in a long white gown and he in a tux, smiling at each other with embarrassed but genuine happiness, couldn't help but evoke the first dance at a wedding. Of course, it's after the wedding that things get real, and given the state of the world right now, our honeymoon with the Obamas is likely to be even shorter than most. But for that moment at least (and you could tell from her performance that Beyoncé felt this too) our lonely days were over, our hearts were wrapped in clover, and life was like a song.

The Inauguration from the Red States

While you in D.C. worry about what the temporary influx of celebrities into your city, the rest of us can only look on with envy. Stuck in Dallas, I might as well be in Siberia as far as the inauguration is concerned. Actually, it's the bizarro inauguration here. While the rest of the world will be getting rid of George W. Bush as of tomorrow, he is coming to Dallas to stay. Permanently. His new home is just a few miles from my apartment, SMU (where the Bush Library will also reside), and the President George Bush Turnpike. Here, there's no escaping the guy. (Can't we vote him off the island?) It was thus heartening this weekend to happen into a Bed, Bath, and Beyond and discover an unexpectedly huge display, right as you walked in, of Obama inaugural memorabilia. For a second, I thought I'd fallen into a worm hole and popped up, along with Hanna and Beyoncé, at Tyson's Corner. One expects to find such displays on the mall in D.C., but at a strip mall in historically right-wing Dallas? The only thing I could liken it to was the nationwide outpouring of kitsch that greeted Lady Di and Charles' wedding. (I was in England that summer and still have a campy Charles and Diana ashtray from that trip.) Indeed, such trinkets may inadvertently turn out to be the first installment of Obama's stimulus package. As Tina Brown noted in The Diana Chronicles: "In the 184 days between the February engagement and the July wedding, $800 million of royal wedding souvenirs overflowed in the red, white and blue windows of British stores." Obama, of course, is a democratically elected royal and hasn't had as much time to work with. But in my current mood of patriotic fervor, it was admittedly all I could do to resist the symbolism of buying—in Dallas, no less—a plate with Obama's image and the words "Change Has Come!"

Washington Cool Watch? Say It Ain't So.

Hanna, I agree with you that the prospect of a celebrified D.C. is deeply distressing. One of the things I've always loved most about Washington is its distinct lack of cool: only place I've ever lived where one can walk the corridors of a large office building—or the aisles of a newsroom—and find not a single woman wearing makeup. Also the only place I've ever lived where dinner parties start at 7 and end at 9, sharp. Such a relief, really, if one is trying to get other things done.

I have a hunch, though, that this won't last. Sooner or later, Obama and his entourage are going to get very, very busy: They, too, will have to wake up early in the morning to get the legislation passed, and there won't be any more late-night parties or mink coats on the Metro. Also, I watched that celebrity concert (on TV, alas) and thought it looked distinctly less than fun: cold, crowded, and something flat and forced about the whole thing. It's nice that Beyoncé sang "America the Beautiful"—when was the last time you can remember the pop-music aristocracy sounding misty-eyed and patriotic?—but I suspect there might have been more dancing in the aisles if she had sung "Naughty Girl." Won't be long before she heads back to L.A. or NYC, I predict, along with the rest of them.  

Washington Cool Watch, Item 2

Last night's party gossip deepened the "I live in L.A. now" feeling. Someone had spotted Jay-Z and Beyoncé shopping at the Pentagon City Mall. Someone else saw Stevie Wonder at Mazza Gallery.

On second thought, though, L.A. is not the correct analogy. Those are two generic malls. They are the kinds of places I go when I need a new pair of running shoes or maybe some luggage. I mean, I realize that D.C. has no equivalent of Fifth Avenue, or Melrose. But the fact that somebody told Jay-Z to go to a suburban mall for reliable bling makes me feel like I live in Peoria.

Clearly, this celebrity influx is making me anxious. A few people last night thought it might be temporary, but somehow I don't think so. I think they will be visiting a lot more often now that we have the Ur-Celebrity in the White House. Note to Washington: The Power and the Glitter are closer than ever. Must work out new dynamic with Hollywood. 

Why We Believed the Obama Bling Thing

Sometimes I feel like I am the last sane person to insist on not believing the worst about everyone. I never believed Sarah Palin thought Africa was a country or faked her pregnancy to cover up Bristol's. I don't believe our economic crisis can be blamed on greedy jobless people who signed onto mortgages they knew they wouldn't be able to afford. I don't even believe it can be blamed entirely on evil rich bankers like Dick Fuld and Joseph Cassano or their evil deregulation-happy allies in the federal government. I don't believe Angelina Jolie is an evil tyrant who forces Brad Pitt to fill a vial with his own plasma and promise to adopt three more impoverished children every time she finds a text from Jen on his iPhone. And so yeah, I did not believe Michelle Obama demanded—in the grand tradition of … well, at least two neglected spouses of high-achieving but invariably tragically flawed black men I can think of (if Sasha Fierce counts as Jay-Z's wife)—a $30,000 blood diamond in exchange for her campaign trail toil.

It's not that I necessarily want believe the best about people. It's just that there is obviously a lot more money in making people look like assholes. Sometimes they truly are assholes, of course. The other night I was watching the (seriously highbrow) competition reality program Stylista in the company of one of its two "judges," Elle editor Anne Slowey. Again and again, I found myself glancing over at her wide-eyed, pleading for her to assure us of the contestants: They can't truly be this despicable, right? Ha! Wrong. They were indeed just that horrible and more! Because they'd learned how existence works from reality shows!

Most people behave badly—or vulgarly, or selfishly, or materialistically—because they believe they must, that that is how it is, that it's a cruel world out there and they've got to get what's theirs, etc. I'm entirely too constitutionally lazy to have ever adopted this philosophy myself, but I'm always gratified when someone more motivated than me recognizes it to be a lot more trouble than it's worth. Which brings me back to Michelle Obama, or more specifically an anecdote I read once about her brother Craig:

Her brother would have the same epiphany while working on Wall Street. He had earned an MBA from the University of Chicago and gone to work first for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and then as a partner in a boutique investment firm. For a while, he enjoyed his wealth, then realized that the job wasn't making him happy.

"I'm so embarrassed to admit it," Craig told a New York Times sports reporter in 2007. "I had a Porsche 944 Turbo. I had a BMW station wagon. Who gets a BMW station wagon? It's the dumbest car in the world. Why would you buy a $75,000 station wagon?" Concluding that "I've got all this stuff, and it hasn't made my life any better," Craig, in his late 30s, left investment banking for a job he loves: coaching basketball.

Now, I don't want to entirely condemn buying useless crap. I am not trying to start the Great Depression here. I'm just pointing out that there are more affirming ways of going about one's life than, say, stampeding to the front of the Black Friday line to get the cool new thing, especially if it's just because you assume that everyone else is doing the same thing, too.