Fashion/Style by Liza Van Horne

On Monday, for the release of the latest waste of wood pulp known as Useless Style, we witnessed several... "interesting" wardrobe choices. Phyllis sauntered around smugly in a dove-gray loose-fitting sleeveless top with a black beaded-and-sequined neckline, worn with a gray, black and white floral print pencil skirt and a shit-eating smirk. I don't know where Phyllis gets off acting like the Sabrina article did anything to personally hurt her in any way, let alone that it gives her any reason for revenge. I also noted that Phyllis appears to have had her hair cut much the same as Sharon's with those steeply-angled shorter bits "framing" her face, if by "framing" you mean "flapping against".

Sharon herself had on a coffee-brown camisole with whisper-thin straps and a bit of ruffled (RUFFLED!) detailing in front, paired with a tonally matching straight skirt of what might have been a sort of stretch-cotton sateen - it was hard to tell, but the fabric had some sheen to it. Her hair has become such dead weight for me that from now on I am simply going to invent hairstyles she might have worn in another dimension and assign them as I see fit. In this case, I am picturing her with lots of soft, loose waves from a big-barrel curling iron, with the front part pulled back from the temples, secured in back just an inch or so higher than her nape, with anything other than a plastic clip. See? How hard would that be?

Karen, though firmly relegated to a doormat at this stage in the game, still has the cutest clothes, as she demonstrated in an adorable gray micro-plaid dress with short, sculpted sleeves and a fetching squared neckline. Her hair was worn uncharacteristically curly and bouncy, and I wasn't wild about it - but with that dress, it looked appropriate. It's really too bad Karen's being backburnered by that morose drip Tyra and her emotional range "that [runs] the gamut", as Dorthy Parker once said of a performance, "from A to B." Readers, it pained me last week when actress Nia Peeples was required to deliver utterly humiliating dialog, as Karen ruefully told Neil that she should have consented to raise Lily's Grain of Rice, since raising the fruit of another woman's loins is deemed a non-stop blessing by the exalted Tyra. Based upon this and other recent developments, I do not think Karen will ever have the chance to serve as anything other than a half-assed prop for Neil and a cautionary tale for "selfish" women who don't care to have children - let alone raise somebody else's. I won't be surprised when Karen suddenly leaves town again. Well, maybe she can leave her work wardrobe behind for Heather; they're about the same size.

Finally, let's get back to the scene in Meh-hee-coe, where Nikki is still regaling us with Act Three of What To Expect When You're Expecting (To Pass out Any Second). Will she be able to free herself of that wide, beaded belt and tug her capris down to her ankles when the sixty-five shots of liquor decide to make an immediate break for it, out the other end? We can only hope! One thing's for sure - the poor gal does not need any more degradation!

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