THE FASHION ATROCITIES OF SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS

I feel almost bad publishing this after the great Democratic victory last night, but…oh well. 

It takes quite a lot of offenses for me to intensely dislike someone I haven’t met to the point of going out of my way to verbally pistol-whip them without pity, empathy or restraint, but Arkansas Governor-cum-Trump White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been ideologically shitting the bed since she first landed like a punch in the public eye, and she deserves it.  Her existence causes me great pain, as I consider her to be a bigot, a zealot, a traitor to the country and the female species, and an insulting harridan to reporters. For her white Christian Nationalist politics alone, I would like to see her thrown around like a piece of luggage by teenage baboons.

I’ve been silent on the topic of Huckabee Sanders all this time because I consider most of the GOP to be too boring to be visible, fashionwise - but lately she’s been goose-stepping into my neck of the woods — which is to say, she has been making some truly hair-raising excursions into the world of gubernatorial fashion — which means she is begging for for me to drag her to clown town. 

To be perfectly clear:  I am not being lookist, despite the fact that her expression is so sour and admonishing, she usually has a face like a concrete fist.  I believe that the facial ugly grew on her like a thick beard while she was sucking at her job as White House Press Secretary under Donald Trump, and she lied constantly. Her mouth wrapped around this hideously shameful lie-puking with ease, since her natural case of political rabies had already rotted her moral compass into a grease stain and made her facial affect permanently glacier-hard and hyper-defensive.  The one thing I ever liked about her: nobody could accuse her of trying too hard to be likable. 

But her fashion trespasses of late have been on my radar— which means I am now obliged to retro-actively beat her down for the worst outfits she has ever worn in her career. 

Fashion Atrocity #1:

Daddy’s Little Murder Monkey 

 The World’s Most Precious Toddler in a Tiara became Press Secretary, back in that dystopic Trump administration. It was a dress for a 4 year old girl, that announced that women were infants again. If you’ve ever been in the White House Press Corps (like I have), you knew that the briefing was always worthless as news, but now it was going to get extra worthless, because this chick was not an adult. She had NEVER EVER said no to “Daddy”, (not just Mike Huckabee, but the whole psychological construct of patriarchal Daddyness),and wasn’t about to in her adult life. Besides, truthlessness was just where she seemed to thrive. 

Fashion Atrocity #2:

Pearls and sequins clash aside: when you already come dangerously close to being perceived as an iguana, it is ill-advised to wear ponchos made of greenish tile.  

There was a popular conspiracy theory going around during the Bush administration that, due to the GOP’s compassion-free social viewpoints and general .01% economic heartlessness and group thuggery, that key Republicans were actually not human, but “reptilian” aliens in human skin suits.  This puzzling, piñata-like garment suggested that Ms. Huckabee Sanders was power-eating baby gophers in-between press briefings and not hiding it well. It’s unforgivable, even if she was being the Letter A on disco Sesame Street. 

Fashion Atrocity #3:  

Remember, clothing is psychology unmasked. 

Baby Girl, this is what happens when you attempt to appear ‘dignified yet feminine’ -  you fail at both.  When attempting to conceal your woman-hating, reptilian nature, it is advisable not to wear something that when you squint resembles a military bivouac, thus revealing your true hawkish, murderous essence and looking like an iguana all over again.  Being somewhat shapeless myself, I am all for a muumuu, but this look suggests that Huckabee Sanders is trying to conceal a CIA black site somewhere dark.  Break camp and run, boys. 

Fashion Atrocity #4 

Brussel Sprouts?  A petri-dish full of rubella? Was she coughed on by Shrek? Been outside the refrigerator too long? As a print it is far too bacterial, I don’t care how Christian you’re pretending to be.  And this is the real thought-crime behind this sartorial slap-in-the-eyeballs: the sisterwifey Christian patriarchy and Lawrence Welkian slutlessness of this ensemble telegraphs exactly how much she’s willing to sell out women’s sexuality — i.e., she sold her own out to a bunch of old men, and so should you. 

Fashion Atrocity #5

My friend Patrick Cox made me aware of this dynamite hayride of an outfit with the following message: 

“ Even the lady with the price tag on her hat in Hee Haw looked better than she does when she makes official appearances.  If she’s pandering to the genuine Ozark Mountain hillbillies, it’s a clumsy pander and looks more like parody.  Has she no subtlety at all?  And are there that many hillbilly votes out there?  The fuck is she thinking? … She’s just so un-natural she’s like the bug’s skin suit in Men in Black.”  

She’s starting to twitch at the poker table. She’s got more power over her own image, and she has more fashion tells now.  Someone in her camp is giving her permission to make grave fashion errors. 

Reading the semiotics of this dress:  It first suggests a Wendy’s Drive-Thru, and this was probably intentional.  She’s attempting dress signalling.  Princess Diana used to do it the right way:  when she visited Japan, she would wear a white dress with red polka dots to honor their flag.  

Huckabee Sanders, conversely, is stooping to conquer.  

She’s gone hella country. 

She relates to the picnickers, people with Grandmas,  Little Debbie cakes and KFC.  She’s got boots on!  Watch out! She might pose next to the Iowa State Butter Cow, or a NASCAR.  If she gets any racier, she might could ride the electric horse one of these nights after she’s had a few. Why, she might just lose her panties in a limousine. Or dance on top of the Dukes of Hazzard car and its confederate flag roof.

It’s that clunky Republican way of revealing how much they hate poor people:  when they think they’re dressing “relatably” with them.  It’s not the attempt to relate: it’s the contempt it reveals. 

I read an article today that said that people are now so accustomed to the expert screencrafting that’s been happening on cable over the years that we the people now demand narrative satisfaction to the storyline of each public figure. 

For Sarah Huckabee Sanders to prove she has anything like the common touch, she is going to have to reveal her tribal lower back tattoo, or show a history of venereal disease, or a gambling addiction, or a Class 3 Felony. She will have to disappear with the drummer of Cheap Trick for a week. All this time in the public eye, she has done nothing yet, nothing, to reveal or humanize herself — and in doing so she reveals everything. All she represents is the hierarchy for which she stands: forever below men. 

All that said, she looked quite pretty in red the other night.  The Ozempic seems to have worked wonders.  Now that she has more self-esteem, we can only hope she’ll develop a more positive personality. A governor, after all, should be a mammal.

Cintraw@gmail.com

All photographs taken from the internets.