COULD THERE BE A HE-AUSTEN? I ask the question, at Ladyblog. (I also talk more about archetypes and Project Runway.)

AS TERRIBLE AS AN ARMY WITH BANNERS: You know, it's kind of amazing to look at this week's Project Runway and ask, "What does this show think a bride should be--or, at least, symbolize?" What does it mean to be a bride?

My take: Leanne's dress makes the bride a force of nature. She is carried forward by the tide. It's an amazing, innovative dress whose ultimate symbology is nonetheless completely traditional--maybe even more gendered than I would want it to be!--and its impact comes from that symbology.

It's perfect. And it's intensely conservative. It is the PoMoCon of dresses!

Kenley's dress comes close in its awesomeness. It also draws from nature (swans--not that I would ever want to be a swan's bride!). It also seeks that place where a woman is analogized to the animal world at precisely the moment when she's exercising a sacred choice. I question Kenley's ability to translate that insight into a beautiful dress, but her insight is absolutely real, and makes her dress unquestionably the second-best of the challenge.

Korto got that woman = curves. She got that woman = abundance. Seriously, so much of the history of fashion can be summarized in those two equations!

But she made her model look lumpy. Curves in "all the right places" are sexy, whether the curves are from an hourglass figure or from pregnancy. Curves somewhere else fall into the Uncanny Valley of femininity: not masculine enough to have the sexiness of a chick in a suit or a motorcycle jacket, but feminine in all the wrong places. Korto created a wedding dress for The Twilight Zone.

Jerrell, whom I love (his Olympics costume was so amazingly perfect that I thought this equally costumey-but-plausible-denial!-we're-not-costumey challenge would really let him shine), hid the woman under layers of soiled sheets and jeweled frippery. Both aesthetic choices are basically the definition of wrong for a wedding.

I don't always agree with the judges. But here, I really think the Leanne-Kenley-Korto-I'm sorry! order was about right.

[eta: Oops! Of course, the judges picked Kenley over Leanne. I can't agree with that from what I can tell from photos, but yeah, I do think both of them did well.]

I don't want to be your tiger
'Cause tigers play too rough;
I don't want to be your lion
'Cause lions ain't the kind you love enough;
I just wanna be
Your blogwatch bear...

Project Rungay: Wow. OK, assuming they're right about how it looks when it's moving (my television has taken a vow of telebacy), Leanne's wedding clothes are pretty amazing. You all know that I am for the most part a Korto fan (really a Jay fan--he changed the way I think about color--and a bit of a Laura Bennett fan) but wow, she was janked this week, except for the predictable but pretty bodice on the bridesmaid's dress. Leanne by contrast never produces awful stuff, but her "noodles" are consistently unpretty and fussy to my eyes. They're wonton-wrapperish. They're... I'm not sure I want to go here on the blog, but they're labial. It's not what I want out of, like, a blouse.

But in this challenge she shone. It's a silhouette I'm usually completely "meh" about--poofy and then not poofy underneath, meh--but not this time. Even from the PRG photos I can see a wavelike motion, and imagining it, I get almost a Japanimation feel, that anime-influenced thing where the hair and dresses wave and flow--think the unicorn's/Lady Amalthea's movements in The Last Unicorn, or (don't judge me!) Jean Grey's hair in the opening credits to X-Men: Evolution. Lovely. Just lovely.

Kenley's clothes were fine. Yes, it looks like the Alexander McQueen dress, and he did it so much better--the shaky, gauzy uneven underhem rather than Kenley's symmetrical whipped-cream Dairy Queen skirt; the furry feathers, rather than Kenley's more costumey feathery feathers (costumey is OK for a wedding, but Kenley didn't take this far enough past a regional production of Swan Lake); the amazing shoes and headdress, which of course Kenley couldn't've gotten; the more hardcore, hoopskirty silhouette, although I might have to retract that criticism if I see Kenley's dress in action. But really what she made was fine. The bridesmaid's dress was boring but pretty.

In completely different news, Ta-Nehisi Coates has had a lot of amazing posts recently. Not that this is unusual. I'm just noting that if you're not reading him every day, you should be. McCain for Mob Rule 2008; Sympathy for the Weathermen; Obama's new chapter in the book on black masculinity, and its dangers; Appalachia vs. TV (this post might not be what you expect); I just think his instincts are really, really good.

We disagree on a lot of things. But go read his blog, because it's awesome.

KENLEY IS THE MARK MILLAR OF FASHION. She critiques (as much by her persona as by her designs) in a way that really should be interesting, and which other people have made interesting, and yet her own work just comes off as ridiculously "I'm fifteen and so edgy." (I haven't seen her design for tonight, though--this is based on previous weeks plus Bryant Park.) The critique is so desperately needed that even a bad version can briefly seem refreshing... but it sours quickly.

Sorry, CSB. I wasn't expecting to say this, but after spoiling myself for the Bryant Park collections at Project Rungay... Korto's the only one I really love.

EROS AND EDUCATION: I know this is ridiculously late, but I've been distracted and all August humid-hazy in the brain. Here are some clarifying comments I made to X. Trapnel of Books Do Furnish a Room, about our brief dust-up. (Me, him, me.)

1) "I totally agree [that it's still possible for people with radically divergent premises and even languages/definitions to pursue truth together], and I'm sorry this particular approach to meta-discussion didn't highlight that agreement. BUT--and this is why so much philosophy goes so wrong--good debate on morals & politics (I still prefer 'virtue' as the word for this stuff) can only take place when there's a rich context of story and persona. If I want to talk about marriage (to use the easiest example to hand) I need to talk about the Song of Songs, not just more abstract nouns, and I need to create some sense of my persona in your mind.

"That's necessary b/c persuasion is leadership. We need to create some kind of relationship in order for you to understand what I'm saying. Huckabee (or the rhetorical strategy I'm calling 'Huckabee'!) fails here b/c he basically rejects any attempt to create a relationship with people who don't already share his conclusions. That's ridiculous, it's retreat, just the opposite of leadership.

"This is why a) good philosophical dialogues are superior to good philosophical treatises, and b) just about all of the work that has to be done to 'resurrect' virtue-talk must be done at the level of culture, not politics as such. (So Huckabee/'Huckabee' was already quite handicapped.)"

2) "I think we disagree on what aesthetics is, and where its limits are. Possibly I can clarify by saying that I'm talking about aesthetics as a philosophy of love, not a philosophy of taste? [edit: Should be, not solely as a philosophy of taste.] I mean, I disagree with you about 'de gustibus' anyway, but I think you can keep believing that and still end up on my side here."

[note: Of course it's possible to dispute taste! The guys at Project Rungay do it all the time, and often convince one another or their readers.]

[and here I say that leadership is not only about showing people something new to love, but also about revealing the secret identity of the beloved for whom they're already longing:] "I'm very OK with showing people how their own longings (aesthetic!) are answered by my worldview."