Word: shapelessness
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While Wurtzel's plaint is heartfelt, it isn't more than that. The book is all shapeless feeling. Wurtzel complains that predatory Joey Buttafuoco, not Amy Fisher, should be in jail. She wishes Hillary Clinton were President. She thinks Glenn Close's character in Fatal Attraction was misunderstood: the woman was just true to her feelings (never mind that many women sleep with married men but don't start boiling pets...
This glow is only half hidden under her shapeless clothes, half disguised by her boisterous enthusiasm for baseball, half explained by her relationship with an ego-flattening mom (Lauren Bacall, dripping comic venom in award-winning doses). In short, the fine feathers of a star we all know to be a strong, smart and sexy woman keep peeking through her ugly-duckling getup. This spoils whatever suspense this story might hold, and most of its humorous potential too. Unacknowledged vanity is ever the enemy of comedy. And, come to think of it, of romance as well...
...really is. Second Hand Roses have been part of her act, part of her calculations, for over 30 years, during which time we have learned that sooner or later the guy is going to respond to her inner light." This glow is only half hidden under her shapeless clothes, half disguised by her boisterous enthusiasm for baseball, half explained by her relationship with an ego-flattening mom (Lauren Bacall, dripping comic venom in award-winning doses). "In short," notes Schickel, "the fine feathers of a star we all know to be a strong, smart and sexy woman keep peeking through...
While there may be mild irony in an upscale department store peddling a look that is based in part on thrift-store chic, fashion has long fed on pop-culture events for inspiration. Diane Keaton's shapeless slouch gear in Annie Hall and Jennifer Beals' off-the-shoulder Flashdance sweat shirts both set looks that lasted for months on the streets. Bloomingdale's plays the game, selling 500 yellow trench coats a la Dick Tracy in 1990. On the other hand, the store's executives weren't quite quick enough to lock in Alicia Silverstone and last year's Clueless...
...implacable Soviet Union seemed to be on the offensive, and the worry was powerful enough to encourage John Kennedy to run for President warning of America's shrinking prestige in the world. Later, presidential chronicler Theodore White would write that "1960 was a year of national concern--but vague, shapeless, unsettling, undefinable national concern...