While girls and women continue to be judged for their appearance above every other personal trait and achievement it is right and proper, I think, that they be given help with this.

If like me, you believe that for some people, including some women, HOW THEY LOOK SAYS NOTHING ABOUT THEM, then why should they be judged on it when they don't even care? Appearnce does not equal self expression or even self revelation for many, many people.

However, not caring about how you look is completely different from not caring how others perceive you, and that's where life can get really difficult. So many people believe, as seems to do the author of this article, that there is something intrinsic about the way you look. But let me tell you, some girls are just born beautiful and stay that way, all trhough adolescence. I remember reading a story about Gwyneth Paltrow at high school, where she and another girl were standing in front of some locker room mirrors, and Gwyneth said, about her own reflection, 'what a babe'.

Why should other girls, not so naturally blessed, not have access to some help of their own?

I think Michelle OBama would have been perfectly entitled to a stylist and I would recommend anyone else should get one, too, if they feel they are being judged for something over which tehy feel they have very little control.

'Personal style'. Jeez. For some people, including women, this has nothing to do with how they look or what they wear. It's the way they complete their homework, it's the way they write, it's the way they think, it's the way they compete.

It's time to unpack this idea that women and girls ARE how they look. And that therefore they must 'own' how they look, somehow. By outsourcing some of the component parts in looking a certain way it will hopefully become less a signifier of 'how you really are'.

Thanks. They've left such a bad taste in my mouth over the years that, apart from a few extreme cases so extreme I complained to Salon and they were taken down, I generally ignore them. But that's not necessarily the right thing to do. And when I get depressed and start ruminating on All That Is Depressing (really bad idea to do this) little crazy points like this come up and if no one has rejected or taken on the crazy in question I get depressed about that, as well. Even though I didn't do it either, myself. So - I just wanted to say, thanks. It's important to keep calling these people on their ... well, it's not craziness. The state I get into when depressed is crazy. This is more intentional. More wicked. It's ... well, it's lying.

... the minute I read that line about Bush combing books for parallels to his administration.

Everyone knows Bush doesn't read. Just one look at his face tells you that much.