How to Dress to Get Crushed on by Me

Welcome to How To Dress if You Are a TV or Film Star and You Want Carrie Leilam Love to Crush on You. 

Option 1: Power Professional

(viewing tip: watch on mute to avoid weird slow trance-hop soundtrack)


I know it's kinda gross, cuz she's so "mom." Admittedly, my crush on Claire Huxtable consists at most of a desire to gaze at her by candlelight over a nice dinner at a tablecloth restaurant while I dote on her and refill her wineglass.

Claire dressed in classy current skirt suits for work, mature but never dowdy outfits for family time, and when it was time for a banquet with Cliff she was GLAMOROUS.  Always impeccable but never too uptight.    

(viewing tip: watch on mute to avoid weird ambient house soundtrack, and you get the idea @0:30 if you don't want 9:00 + minutes of hot alpha bitch for some unfathomable reason)


Bette Porter, Power Dyke to end all Power Dykes. *Swoon*  Bette's designer power-suits are as much a part of her character as her controlling personality.  The picture of a Femme Aggresive, she is obviously queer without being a bit masculine.  And a lot of it is her swag but the rest is the outfits: fitted, well tailored, fashion-forward clothes that reference masculinity but only for the sake of turning it on its head with an added feminine detail or a collar open down to there to reveal cleavage. 

Speaking of cleavage, last in this category is Lisa Cuddy of the show House M.D.

Cuddy is sort of the Anti-Bette.  If Lisa Cuddy were a character on the L Word, Bette would seduce her, chop her down and toss her out.  While Cuddy's wardrobe is mostly suits as well, they are always skin-tight pencil-skirt-suits.  The tailoring is generally unsophisticated and basically consists of bust-enhancing darts on waist-length blazers with portrait collars and covered buttons. It might sound like I'm trashing her... and maybe I am a little... cuz she is definitely way closer to the porn version of a power-exec than the writers probably realize admit... and that's exactly what makes her hot.

Option 2: District Attorney

Jill Hennessy as Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaid 

 Angie Harmon as Assistant District Attorney Abbie Carmichael

Both of these ladies wore boring sensible, conservative suits appropriate for their workplace. Now, to be clear, I am not saying that wearing DOJ approved attire is the way to get me to crush on you.  But if you maybe seem really really really gay and you're closeted or in denial and the boring suit seems like just another thing stifling the deep, hot, seething girl-lust you struggle to control every day... that could be hot.  Let's get that tired tweed ensemble off of you and on the floor where it belongs, counselor.

Option 3: Law Enforcement

Speaking of Angie Harmon, she has a new gig, as detective Rizzoli on Rizzoli & Isles.

Rizzoli's signature look is boot-cut slacks belted at the hip, a scoop-neck tshirt or sweater and a blazer with pushed-up or 3/4 length sleeves.  What's interesting about this show is that the relationship between Rizzoli and Isles is super gay, in a celluloid closet kind of way.  You can see for yourself here.

Also, I hate to tell you this, but I cannot in good conscious be remiss in letting you know that Angie Harmon is a right-wing conservative who is campaigning for Palin 2012.  Which makes her casting as the more masculine half of a pseudo-lesbian couple all the more... hot? or excruciatingly depressing? I can't decide.

OK. You had to know this was coming.  Detective Olivia Benson has been the gateway crush for a generation of lesbians.  Is it just me, or are most of these promo shots not super reflective of Olivia's signature look? I think they've femmed her up for picture day.  What I remember is: flat-front trousers, leather blazer, v-neck sweater.  And usually, she's wearing an undershirt, denying us even the little triangle of flesh the neckline would otherwise give us.  Would you look at how she's sitting in that last shot? So. Gay.

23-year-old tomboi Carrie with Mariska Hargitay Olivia Benson.  

Yes she is totally hot in person and has exactly the handshake you would expect. Very firm.

Option 4: You Could Totally Kill Me and That is How I Want to Die

I had posters of Peta Wilson as Le Femme Nikita covering an entire wall of my bedroom my senior year in High School.  She wore only two kinds of outfits: ass-kicking sexified military garb or 90s/Turn-of-the-21st-Century body-con cocktail dresses.  She was the one that introduced me to the "I don't know if want to do her or be her" part of being a homo.  I eventually decided on both.

Michelle Rodriguez in SWAT, The Fast and the Furious, and Girlfight

Ok, I don't want anyone thinking that I think guns are sexy in general. They are not. People use them to kill other people and the fact that we as humans even agree that they should exist anymore is beyond my comprehension.  But fantasy is the language of desire and for pretend, a chick in cargo pants with a firearm is HOT.  So is one in a beater and boxers under baggy pants covered in auto grease, and one who isn't afraid to spar with a dude.

Option 5: I would Funk Wit U IRL

This category is blank. I just want to point out that the type of chick I would crush on fer serious off-screen has never been on television.  Dear television, can we please have a show starring one or more masculine dykes of color with real short hair and pretty smiles?  A chick in a fitted and a White T and some dunks, maybe? Tasha from the L Word and Kima Greggs from The Wire are totes not cutting it.  I'm not saying you have to get actresses that are actually gay (though it couldn't hurt) but how about at least one who is willing to cut her hair instead of punishing it into the horrible butch ponytail that is not even cute on real dykes? PUHLEEEZZE?!?!

Love,

Carrie

P.S. Who is your TV crush?