wardrobe malfunction

Does Elena Kagan’s ‘Frumpy’ Fashion Make Her Look Gay?

If the New York Times is going to put Elena Kagan in its Styles section, then the Washington Post isn’t going to be left out of wondering aloud whether Kagan is dressing all dykey.

Because the wardrobe of a future Supreme Court justice matters, the Post‘s fashion gal Robin Givhan declares Kagan’s dress “unabashedly conservative.” But don’t attack her for it: “The other men and women who have gone through this process have not been daring in their wardrobe choices either. There hasn’t even been a pair of artful eyeglass frames in recent memory.”

On the plus side, Kagan, while dressing “drab,” is at least trying to look a little bit fem.

But Kagan took the anti-style offensive several steps further. She put on rouge and lipstick for the formal White House announcement of her nomination, but mostly she embraced dowdy as a mark of brainpower. She walked with authority and stood up straight during her visits to the Hill, but once seated and settled during audiences with senators, she didn’t bother maintaining an image of poised perfection. She sat hunched over. She sat with her legs ajar.

Kagan made her debut as a U.S. Supreme Court nominee dressed in a hip-length emerald-green jacket, black underpinnings, sheer black hosiery, sturdy black pumps, a strand of pearls and matching earrings. Her style was tidy and conservative but with a generous sprinkling of frumpiness of the sort that federal Washington can’t resist — at least when in front of a camera’s intruding lens.

But at least she was WEARING HEELS! Pointed ones even, not those dowdy (and, let’s be honest, lesbian giveaway) square-toed awful things.

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