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• Tuesday, November 18, 2008 03:14 AM

  An article on the gluteus maximus is so inspiring, particularly when this anatomical area of fat and muscle is more "maximus" in some than others

  Erin Aubry Kaplan has ignored the famous rear-end of Marilyn Monroe because she's got carried away with her own thesis. Yes, Monroe was an actress and this bummer essay is supposed to be about First Ladies, with predictible raking over the coals about Jackie Bouvier-Kennedy-Onassis but no mention at all about Mamie Eisenhower, surely an American fashion icon/totem in her day. Ms. Kaplan's crowing about the wonders of the black arse (an ass is a donkey) is extemely discriminatory as she could be responsible for pushing the mingy-arsed ones to the cosmetic surgery for implants and tightening, of course, as wobbly is woeful.

  Bountiful buttocks being the topic on which Ms. Kaplan has chosen to write, it's a pity that she confined herself to the female of the species. Nevertheless, I believe in literary licence. Does she think that Michelle Obama has cabriole legs, in the style of Queen Anne furnitur, or was it only Hillary Clinton's legs that were up for a giggle during that unforgettable Primary?

  As regards her wishes for Michelle's hair, surely she knows that America's first self-made millionaire was a black woman called CJ Walker who made her fortune from selling straighteners for kinky hair ("Anything Goes: A Biography of the Roaring Twenties" by Lucy Moore). That was also the era of the great blues singer, Bessie Smith. I don't suppose anyone was interested in getting lyrical about Bessie's gable-end. It was her talent that mattered.

  —maureenodonnell Read maureenodonnell's other letters
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