Few of us (one hopes) expect serious political discourse from a magazine whose editor decries the color schemes of the terrorist alerts, where "fuzzy logic" refers to a mix of purple mink inserts in a Gucci jacket and "escape plans" are about taking tea at chic Laduree in Paris. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the early feminist writer, worried about women becoming "the slaves of fashion, lifting their skirts, exhibiting their legs, powdering their noses." She could never have imagined what's currently in vogue (or Vogue). She complained about "nudes in the streetcar with knee and thigh in full evidence," but what would she make of "hot shorts" for Kerry or protest panties with x-rated anti-Bush slogans?
Getting out the Beautiful Women vote is supposed to be a nonpartisan exercise, but there's a decidedly blue-state cast to the endeavor. "Everyone I know reads the New York Times and listens to NPR," says Heather Lurie, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Riveters in Colorado who's out to change minds in the red-state majorities. She wants to enlist women from the Junior League, women who "are educated and have incredible spending power." Some of the other groups for getting out the women's vote have names like "Pilates Against Bush," or "Running in Heels," and sip sour apple martinis called "Bushtinis.
If any of the beautiful people plan to vote for the president, they usually keep their secret to themselves. Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and Talk magazine who writes a column now for The Washington Post, tells of a fashionable party of beautiful people in New York where the host handed out ballots and announced the winner at the end. "The surprise in that gathering was not the 133 votes cast for Sen. Kerry but the 20 for President Bush," she writes. "Eyes narrowed and swiveled among the guests seated at the long trestle tables as a surreptitious hunt went on for the secret saboteurs."
Maybe those 20 remembered how George W. declared war against terror after the World Trade Center came tumbling down, and just maybe they think he'd make a better commander in chief than John Kerry in a war that, whoever wins, will go on, and on. Maybe they think voting is more than a fashion statement.