Reese Witherspoon

I am strangely attracted to this.



The hair is sassy. The shoes are random enough to be interesting but not so much that they repel me with the rest of it. Yes, it's short, but but obscenely so -- and frankly, it's nice to see Reese having a bit of fun with the fact that she's got really insanely awesome quad muscles right now, given that she trends toward the prim a bit.

And I don't even hate the dress. It's kind of cool. But I do have to acknowledge that it ALSO could pass as a class craft project she and Ava worked on using old streamers, or the uniform of a new superhero tasked exclusively with protecting the secret recipes of Wrigley's Spearmint and Doublemint chewing gums, and preventing kids from sticking their nasty old masticated wads under tables. The image of Reese angrily supervising a bunch of ten-year olds as they chip away at hardened gum pellets underneath their desks is basically the only thing keeping me from getting on board.

First, I tried addressing Kate Winslet and Reese Witherspoon's dresses separately, since they're not exactly identical, but I kept wanting to say similar things about them. Both gowns have in common the concept of a basic idea embellished with black overlays, and both of them have me firmly on the fence. Which is not a comfortable place to be. Too many splinters. So while Intern George fetches some iodine and the tweezers, let's first take a look at Kate's choice:



I really like the bluish-gunmetal color. But with the hair and what she appears to imagine is her regal bearing, it all just seems a bit OLD to me. Or rather, mature. Like she is planning to get together with Carolina Herrera and Princess Anne after the Oscars for a brandy. The other issue is that neckline. The pleating over her left boob is lovely, but there is something funky happening under the shoulder strap -- almost like there is a shoulder pad stuck in there acting as a nipple shield. And finally, the front overlay feels a bit randomly glued to the waistband. Adding up those elements and the fact that the back is black satin, it's just... a lot. Kind of like a valentine made by a very depressed fourth-grader, who is pretty sure that the little red-headed girl is never going to like him if he can't even kick a football without landing flat on his back. I wanted Kate Winslet to embrace being young and hot, as opposed to taking the whole Greatest Actress Of Her Generation thing so seriously that she's aging herself into some kind of Tinseltown monarch.

And then there's Reese:

Up until about two seconds ago, I was going to make this a Fug or Fab post. But then -- I don't know if it was the Jell-O cup I ate, the Cool Whip I put on top (I am apparently a slave to what Bob tells me during the product-placement scenes on The Biggest Loser), or the doorjamb I smacked my forehead into because I was so hopped up on chemical sweeteners that I forgot how to turn the corner into my hallway -- all of a sudden I decided that I really don't much care for what Miss Witherspoon is wearing:

Reese is a tiny, tiny person, which I can say with certainty based on first-hand experience with reading her IMDb page. She's under 5'2". So not only is this a lot more look than she usually sports, but it's REALLY a lot of look on her, full-stop. It's just sort of... messy and distracting, and  cumbersome, and hell-bent on shoving her boobs into her armpits. The pattern on her chest reminds me of Alec Baldwin's crazy downy chest hair back when he had his shirt off all the time on Saturday Night Live and you would think to yourself, "Wait, why is Alec wearing a sweater under his shirt... oh, WAIT" -- although maybe that's the lemon-lime Jell-O talking? -- and I wouldn't be shocked at all if in ten seconds, she leaves to go perform a stirring castanets version of "Ave Maria" at a flamenco dancer's funeral. Which could be sort of fun, except for the mourning and the tragedy and all that. In fact, I have some big plastic maracas for my Wii; maybe she wants some accompaniment. We could go on tour. Jake Gyllenhaal could be our roadie, since I clearly need someone to set up the Wii, and once someone invents Accordion Hero we'd be completely unstoppable. UNSTOPPABLE.

In general, I don't have much of a beef with the high-waisted skirt. They're romantic in that 1940s I'm Meeting My Soldier Boyfriend Under the Clock At Grand Central For One Last Kiss kind of way, and who doesn't love that? As a bonus, they give you that Long Legged thing that high-waisted pants do, without the accompanying Potentially Weird Crotch Issues. However, there's high-waisted skirt, and then there's this:

AKA, Regular Skirt You Just Hoisted Up Nearly to Your Pits.

I'm pretty sure this cover is supposed to be sultry, or something, but instead Reese Witherspoon looks bored. And a little depressed.

[Photo: Splash News]

Reese looks way more like the cover-line cautionary tale of the girl who got caught red-handed in the boss's drawers, and no, not the ones on his desk. Or perhaps the young girl who nailed the septagenarian and is trying to say, "Listen, if I were after his money, this sweater would be a damn MINK WRAP." She does NOT look, tragically, look like a woman with any kind of new passion -- unless, say, it's a passion for staring blankly into middle distance, reading Beowulf in 24-hour spurts, or making a steak every day and then forcing herself to stare at it without ever bringing it to her lips.

Or maybe she's just upset because she lost a sizable bet to Jake Gyllenhaal that Marie Claire would pull together only 350 hot spring looks this year. It'll be okay, though, Reese -- if Jake's that attuned to the mag, then you could still win out, as he'll surely he'll flip through that poorly titled article being pimped just above the masthead, called "What Makes Men Propose." Because nothing is sexier or more strong and independent than trying to understand what to do to MAKE your man propose, right? So cheer up, and let's socially regress together!

Britney Spears could learn a thing or forty from Ms. Reese Witherspoon. And not just about how to wield talent, or how to be a loving and attentive mother in Hollywood.

No, she could learn something very specific about The Bounceback: how to rise above a pending divorce without needing to run around town caked in hangover sweat, changing your hair color every four hours but leaving no doubt as to which curtain color matches the carpet because you can't resist airing out all your bits.

Reese Witherspoon kept a low profile until her divorce news died down in favor of stories like, "Britney and Paris: Lovers, Fighters, or Both?" and "Hollywood Nose Jobs: Name That Septum."

And then she showed up on the awards circuit in a series of understated but glam cocktail dresses that show off how toned and trim she is, looking as if she doesn't have a care in the world. She also refrained from shoving her tongue into the mouth, ear, or other assorted oriface of the first guy who looks like her ex/looks like he smells like her ex, or even the second guy she met who fit that criteria. Indeed, she appears to be taking it all in stride and putting bedhopping at a relatively low priority. Whether that's true or not is all her own private business, but the point is, she's done a bang-up job of putting up a public facade of normalcy and class.

However, I will say this: She'd better not drop any more weight, because Reese is getting to that familiar point where she is too skinny for her chin.

See? It's just very... chinny. Which is an incredibly eloquent observation, I know. But her face just needs to carry a little bit more weight to avoid the ol' wicked-witch chin.

So here's my solution: Britney and Reese should become best buds. Reese can teach Britney how to dress, how to behave herself, how to rise above a split gracefully and without providing five tomes' worth of custody-case evidence in favor of her rat-pig ex, how to dial it down a few notches and be photographed taking her kids to the beach or to a playdate or shopping, and how to stop overprocessing her hair; Britney can repay the favor by teaching Reese how to eat enough Cheetos that she takes the edge off her chin. Ms. Spears would thusly up her social profile and her personal hygiene, and Reese comes out of it all looking like a Nobel Prize eligible humanitarian with a face that's got just the right amount of softness.

Everybody wins!

Oh, but Reese: Careful with the cocktail dresses at the Oscars. They were fine for the first two bashes of the season, but don't get stuck in a rut here, okay?

After that flap at the Globes about her ugly "vintage" dress and how Kirsten Dunst wore it first in 2003, Reese Witherspoon clearly decided to play it safe at the SAG Awards, opting for an extremely ill-fitting modified apron that nobody -- BUT NOBODY -- would have been caught dead in before. "Take THAT, y'all!" the saggy, unflattering bodice is drawling at us. To which we say, yes indeed, she certainly showed us.

People often ask us, "Hey, fug bitches, name someone you think dresses well!" And after we try and close off the hate valves that are so often jammed open in our little tar-ugly hearts, the answer we spit out usually involves the words "Reese" and "Witherspoon."

Alas:

She's a very pretty girl, if pointy is your thing (personally, I add her to my list of women -- Heidi Klum and Catherine Zeta-Jones among them -- who should be pregnant all the time), and she is one of the few women last night who wore lipstick that wasn't a) nude, or b) the exact color translation of the itching and burning sensations experienced by the streetwalker who last wore that shade.

However, I really, really don't care for the dress. It looks worse than homemade, like a cheap old-school slip she tried to convert into a wearable garment. Whatever that swatch of silver material is, it certainly shouldn't be hitting her mid-breast, and the sequins she bought at Michael's -- and let little Ava sew onto her dress as practice for the Girl Scouts of America merit badges she will inevitably win in a few years -- were a horrific idea.

As for the accessory on her arm, it needs to stop veering between "pretentious, sneering, miserable asshat" and "hyperactive wife-pawing 'family man'." Perhaps a shower would be a nice place to try and start his stabilization.