How to dress a moose

Your Sarah Palin makeover begins with a $375 pair of rimless Kazuo Kawasaki glasses, a beehive hairdo and a novelty T-shirt asserting an economic plan sensitive to our current crisis that staves off big government through a bootstraps reliance on personal assets (“I May Be Broke But I’m Not Flat Busted”).

Focusing on the fashion sense of a female candidate while excluding analysis of how male political figures present themselves is flagrantly antifeminist and a suffragette setback.

Whatever! No wonder those of you with women’s studies minors were dateless on Saturday night. Following Justin Timberlake’s Herculean struggle to bring sexy back, Sarah Palin is part of a radical new wave of Republican female-centric pseudo politics that is bringing sexism back, and regressive women-last policies are hotter than ever!

She’s putting the “vice” back into the vice presidency and reminding women that in the Gilligan’s Island breakdown of female archetypes, everyone loves a girl-next-door Maryanne (a sexually castrating Ginger figure is too ominous, while a Mrs. Howell harridan, like senior female Republican senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who brings actual experience, academic rigor and a solid legislative record, lacks heat).

Those of you who slogged through the grunt work of core-curriculum universities and fretted over GPAs were slaves to the lies your mothers told you (a bunch or boring junk like studying hard, graduating early, gaining admittance to challenging post-graduate programs, dropping that first rugged boyfriend because he might hamper your future, putting off kids until you attained a solid career…oh, the list goes on).

Woe to women who never heeded the island beat of steel drums! VILF SayPay is a Girl Gone Wild in Washington and instead of burning her bra, she’s flashing really old conservative codgers and substituting the glass ceiling with a peepshow window guaranteed to please (cue Bob Dole on the beach symbolically clenching a rigid pen in his gimp hand and releasing a statement about McCain’s veep pick, “Thank you, Viagra!”).

Sarah Palin is stirring up the good ol’ days when broads were the instruments of powerful geezers and they liked it! That all-male country club of hard right commentators is finally letting a woman into their smoking lounge (and I mean a gal who hasn’t been smuggled in to explode from a stripper cake).

Men who have been critical of powerful women are enchanted with her naughty librarian look (cut to grainy film of our vice presidential hopeful slowly removing her spectacles, unbuttoning her business-lady blouse and loosening her carefully crafted bun).

At first, Sarah Palin’s appeal to the Lieberman-courting John McCain is confusing considering he met her days before announcing she would be his running mate. However, McCain’s dalliances with a bubbleheaded lobbyist indicate pretty ladies are worth his time and attention. Mitt Romney’s comfort with a stock portfolio might have proved invaluable in the current climate, but it was clear McCain would never team up with a man taller or better-looking than himself.

The clench-toothed maverick demonstrated his little man’s anxiety at being perceived as sexually inferior when he lambasted his wife in front of reporters because she suggested campaigning had been hard on his hairline. Upon being gently nudged for loosing a few strands on the stump, he called Cindy the “C word” (and I don’t mean “Cindy”) before chiding her as a “trollop” and requesting she “trowel” on more make-up. Using that incident as evidence of his shaky masculine identity, it was clear he would never pose on a poster with a tall, tanned Romney and his luxurious silver locks.

Enter sporty Sarah with her gun-totin’, moose-dressin’, college-shiftin’, basketball-dunkin’, baby-makin’ persona. She is the anti-Cindy McCain. The icy pill-popping heiress in couture is superseded by the scrappy picket-fence-toothed mother of five who knows her hockey stats.

Cindy may be the beauty queen, but Miss Congeniality realizes many men hate an over-educated bookworm with frosty good looks and stellar fashion sense. As you continue the Sarah Palin makeover, remember to showcase your pioneering frontiers woman status to shore up your lil’ hero and trump his beer-billionaire babe.

While women of your generation may have felt that early relationships were learning experiences and international travel broadened your scope of the world, some girls settled down with their high school sweethearts and shrugged off European backpacking as elitist existentialism destined to create brainiacs that bum guys out.

Hanging on to a goateed separationist like First Dude Todd the Bod means equating his minor accomplishments with world-changing headlines so that he can feel he still wears the pants in the relationship. Sarah Palin took the stage as the first female Republican vice presidential candidate, but made sure to give a shout out to Todd’s awesome snow machine racing!

You also don’t want to thwart a third-world leader with a chubby. Palin’s cringe-inducing meeting with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari totally explains why reading Helene Cixous in college kept you from becoming an international political powerhouse. He called her gorgeous and said, “Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you!” Then he leaned in for a hug as she smiled warmly and thanked him.

Imagine your faux pas in her situation. “Well, President Zardari, what I find crazy is the concept that in your country a rape victim can be charged with having an extramarital affair and stoned to death under Islamic law. As gorgeous as one tries to be, 100 lashes or being pelted with rocks can get in the way of a gal’s skin care routine. Before you envelop me in your arms, can we set up a Pakistani women’s conference to address this humanitarian travesty?”

Talk about a pee-pee shriveler!

The most provocative dynamic in your Palin rise to power is an initial allegiance to members of the old boy network, enchanting septuagenarians with regular-gal charm, then vampirizing their knowledge and status before leaving their bloodless corpses on the campaign trail. If that ain’t witchcraft…

The final concession in your transformation is to forgo any allegiance to the sisterhood and espouse the politics of yesteryear (cut to a shot of a Pit Bull with lipstick holding a sign that reads “No means maybe and keep the baby!”)

The Palin platform is kickin’ it Carrie Nation style! Ignorant of economic issues and foreign policy, she excels in culture war regulations. She is on record as being resistant to reproductive rights even in the case of rape and incest, supportive of abstinence-only education (How’s that workin’ for you, Bristol?), suspect about global warming, informed by a creationist book-banning consciousness, cool with the aerial shooting of bears and wolves, and against gay-friendly legislation, even though some of her “best friends are gay” (and bitter queens in her coterie are clearly exacting revenge in the subtlest shades by refusing to school her on those tacky Naughty Monkey brand shoes she’s been strutting around in).

A recently released video showing Palin in a Christ-like pose as several holy men lay hands upon her was the most shocking footage of any recent campaign. Madman pastor Muthee (famous for identifying and antagonizing a local witch he deemed responsible for blights and traffic accidents) called upon Jesus to funnel funds into Palin’s campaign (Is it OK to pray for a cash advance?) He also asked the son of God to protect her from witchcraft. Is there no man alive who can intuit the supernatural succubus in his midst?

Spray your beehive into submission. This is half the battle. Now put on your Kawasaki spectacles. USA Today reports the frames are titanium “and mounted via a screwless tension system” (not unlike feminists!). The square panels of glass frame the windows to your soul. Here’s hoping the glare of the international spotlight reflects so brightly that no one can tell there is nothing behind them.

TRIED: To spice up your love life, try wearing “I Voted” stickers as pasties!

TRUE: The Palin Puff is an adorable modification on the beehive that looks appropriate for both work and play. It is achieved by teasing the crown, sweeping and pinning the sides into a French twist, letting bangs fall loose, and spraying the entire look into submission with a gallon of hairspray (It’s a good thing Palin’s environmental policies are lax enough to avoid daily hypocrisy in completing this ozone-depleting look). The style is a successful compromise between a bridesmaid updo and the big hair ’80s peak of Palin’s pageant days.

TIRED: In the midst of drama queen motions to suspend his campaign and threaten the debates (presumably because he didn’t have a THING to wear!), John McCain spent $5,583.43 having his makeup professionally applied. Any man who’s mastered drag can tell him that a $9.50 tube of medium-toned bronzer suffices. Economics!

TRENDY: The only way to get rid of those last few unwanted pounds is to cast your ballot.