House of Eratosthenes

Regular readers of this blog — which (all together, now) Nobody Actually Reads Anyway! — know that we have been investigating this prevailing sensibility that there is something hideously wrong with nice-looking females showing skin…or with observant and sentient gentlemen noticing.

We have found this to be a particularly craven and cowardly taboo. Nobody seems to want to come out and say there are bad consequences involved in this. I’m not referring, here, to “T-back” thongs and other articles likely to give the gals peculiar and painful sunburns. I’m talking standard summertime apparel. G-rated stuff. Bare cleavage…bellies…thighs and calves…shoulders…backs.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this. Even if it is an attention-getting device, there’s nothing wrong with it. And we, here, are more than just a little bit fascinated with people who think there is something wrong with it. They seem so sure of themselves, right up until they’re invited to fill in the details.

Our comments, here, are confined strictly to the scantily-clad ladies who’ve sailed on past their eighteenth birthdays, or whatever passes for the age of majority. We do have our own puritanical streaks with regard to specimens not yet ripe — we pass by a high school every morning on the way to work, and we’ve taken our fair share of double-takes at sophomore gals traipsing in to their morning studies with the entire leg exposed to the late autumn air. Entire. And, as healthy a libido as we’ve shown throughout our 42 years on the planet, nevertheless, there is nothing licentious about our whiplash. We’re somewhat revolted. A fifteen-year-old girl wearing Daisy Dukes before eight in the morning in the last week before Thanksgiving, that’s a WHISKEY…TANGO…FOXTROT if ever there was one. Just not right.

Leggy Once the maiden is old enough to vote, though, we’re all on board. We figure, if you’re old enough to marry whoever you want to, if the contracts that pass under your pen are legally binding — if you see a skirt at The Gap that ends six inches above the knee instead of three, then you just go right ahead. Especially if you look good in it. We are, after all, a straight male with a healthy libido. And we’ve always been a leg man.

Anyway, this taboo. I said it is craven and cowardly. I don’t mean that as a criticism. It is a comment regarding what makes it fascinating to us. Learning the least little detail about it, is very much like nailing jello to a tree. Nobody stands up for this rule; nobody stakes their reputation on it; nobody voices it on behalf of a third party, and nobody dares to actually draw a line anywhere. So it’s really hard to get some definition to what exactly is being prohibited here, save for the thirty-thousand-foot idea that female humans should not make it easy for strangers to guess what their bodies look like. Hey…that sounds kinda like the Taliban.

All of which is a rambling preamble.

A preamble to John Hawkins’ reply to the author of an e-mail, one “Andrew Bell.” The subject is, among other things, the leggy Sarah Palin, fresh off of giving an interview with a turkey being slaughtered in the background, daring to show some thigh in, of all places…

…wait for it…

…a hotel swimming pool area. That hussy!

Mr. Bell, I suppose, represents many others…I don’t know that for sure, but I don’t doubt it either. He would like John Hawkins to let him know, regarding Hawkins’ other site Conservative Grapevine,

I believe I read in one of your pieces on Right Wing News that you are a Christian. Is that true? If so, then why does it look like you post bikini pictures on Conservative Grapevine as well as RWN? e.g., Sarah Palin at the pool.

Do you think that it’s OK to do that as a Christian?

As a Christian? What in the WORLD…Christ was a prophet who lived two thousand years ago around the land surrounding the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Y’know, I can’t bet a large amount of money on this, but I got a feeling He might’ve seen some thigh.

So this is a Christian thing, this taboo, you say Mister Bell? Wow. Now we’re getting somewhere! If you could somehow find some support for that, that right there might be enough to make me an atheist. Or convert to something else, anyway.

Palin Poolside I’d like to know how this works, exactly. What does being religious have to do with forcing ladies with nice-looking legs, like Sarah Palin, to cover ’em up? Womens’ legs are evidence of intelligent design, the way I see it. 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.

Christians have a problem with women wearing shorts? My goodness. I learn something new every single day.

Well, someone does have a problem. There are a couple comments by the Celebuzz link that is the source of the pictures, that are, shall we say…not terribly well thought out. Just a few. Also, there’s a poll in which, as of this writing, five percent of the respondents think Gov. Palin is being a floozy. And the tabloids are eating this up, because somewhere out there is someone who will find this useful. Useful to show others.

Sarah Palin seems to have a lot of this stuff swirling around her, like she’s a gravity well for it. By that I mean, things that are proxy-offensive — getting the cackles up in second-parties, who are getting offended on behalf of someone else. I have not yet met anyone who is personally offended by the fact that Alaska’s Governor owns a tanning bed, for example, and I’ve become knowledgeable of very, very few people who are personally offended that her campaign-clothes cost $150k. The people who are making the noise about these things, seem to be trying to provoke others. And consistently failing at it.

So what’ve we got here. She wears shorts by the pool and has a fantastic looking pair of legs, which she keeps tan with the help of a tanning bed she bought with her own money. She wore, but will not keep, some expensive clothes (I really have no idea how much loot McCain’s, Obama’s or Biden’s clothes cost, and I don’t think you know either). She gave an interview in front of a turkey butchering turkeys.

And then there’s all the bullshit…she banned books, Trig Palin is not her kid, she shoots wolves from helicopters, she doesn’t know what the Bush Doctrine is or where Africa is.

They say her fifteen minutes of fame is just about up.

I really don’t see how such a thing is possible. The urgency factor that is involved in certain people stirring up stupid-rage toward her, is just so high. High as in — not a comparative, but a superlative. Do not mistake my intended meaning, here, for something synonymous with “a notch or two above average” because that is not what I mean at all. I mean…shattering records. I’ve never, in my lifetime, seen anything like this. Not even toward our lame-duck President.

We get bored with people when we don’t care about ’em anymore. And somewhere, someone, be they numerous or be they just plain loud…cares an awful lot about Ms. Palin.

Now, I want to see Sarah Palin wearing shorts with an animal being killed behind her. In fact, make sure she’s wearing $150,000 shorts. Blood spattering everywhere. That would make my day.

As I remember it from my Christian training in my youth, Christians dislike short skirts, plunging necklines, etc. because they encourage lust, one of the seven deadly sins.
- Morenuancedthanyou | 11/23/2008 @ 18:29
Yeah, well I seem to recall something else about how temptation is to be resisted and not eliminated, because it will always be all around us.
- mkfreeberg | 11/23/2008 @ 19:04
And here I thought Christians had all died out because of the nudity and sex taboos. How can there still be so many of them?
- Tom The Impaler | 11/24/2008 @ 03:59
How can there still be so many of them?

Easy. They went with temptation, rather than resisting it. I rather like that road, myself. 😉
- Buck | 11/24/2008 @ 13:50
Morenuanced has it right. The rest of you in the comments don’t seem to quite have a grasp on it, including Morgan. It really bothers me when I hear people prattling on about how Christians supposedly hate sex, when the fact of the matter is that it’s a beautiful thing that’s simply supposed to be kept between a man and his wife, rather than spilling all over the place like it is today.

That said, indeed (and I say this as a Christian), I happen to think that the female body is the absolute pinnacle, the magnum opus, of God’s entire universe of Creation…at least of that part which we’ve seen so far…and probably anywhere else in the cosmos. It is so because it was designed that way, and we’re designed to find it appealing. Were it not so, the human race would have died out long ago.
- cylarz | 11/25/2008 @ 02:00
Second what cylarz said. There’s cheesecake, and then there’s becoming a diabetic.
- wch | 11/25/2008 @ 17:39

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