Esquire's Ridiculous "Who is She?" Mystery

For the past 4 months Esquire -- to which I am an otherwise mostly happy longtime subscriber, barring fashion advice and the vapid John Mayer's inexplicably recurring music column -- has been revealing "The Sexiest Woman Alive" (TSWA) body part by body part, in centerfold fashion, in its pages. First the feet, then shins, then knee, and this month the well-covered ass. Breast will appear in the September issue, and the face will be revealed in October.

Last year Esquire named Angelina Jolie TSWA, and the magazine very capably managed to reveal her entire body all at once.

But this year's TSWA, cutting up the woman into several appendages, an approach one critic says turns the so-called winner into "not a woman, [but] a collection of chicken parts," is inherently flawed.

There's no need to call on John Stuart Mill or Betty Friedan here. Esquire's sectionalizing of its sexiest woman is offensive not because it robs women of the whole of their identities, though it does this quite well; rather, I find TSWA abhorrent because it robs the magazine reader of the opportunity to gaze at a purportedly beautiful woman in her entirety.

There is nothing sexy about a two-dimensional shin in and of itself. Robbed of context, this shin is in fact wholly unsexy. Even a photo of a breast, without knowing to whom it is attached, does not titilate. (Alright: maybe a little, but only a little.)

And I'm (of course) not buying Esquire's claim that it cannot reveal TSWA all at once because she is "so unimaginably beautiful." That's a gimmick, pure and simple. (Which is neither what I want nor expect from a magazine with great writers like Tom Chiarella and Tom Junod.) What makes TSWA even worse, though, is how poorly executed the gimmick happens to be.

The magazine directs readers to cast their vote for the pre-ordained TSWA at its website. Once at the site, Esquire presents visitors with a list of two-dozen or so choices, most of which can instantly be tossed by anyone with half a brain.

Uma Thurman -- This is Esquire 2005, not Italian Vogue 1991.
Charlize Theron -- Monster.
Halle Berry -- Monster's Ball.
Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Katie Holmes -- Mimi Rogers wasn't available?
Keira Knightley, Jennifer Connelly, Kate Bosworth, Eva Longoria -- It's sexy to eat, not sexy not to.
Kirsten Dunst, Jennifer Aniston, Jessica Simpson, Cameron Diaz -- Not. Sexy. At. All.
Selma (sic) Hayek -- I assume Esquire would have spelled her name correctly if she was the winner.

As we move down the list, there are some fine choices, including last year's winner Jolie (who's no less sexy today than a year ago), Jessica Alba, Monica Bellucci, Elisha Cuthbert, and (my favorite) Scarlett Johansson.

According to one of a series of mostly useless clues offered by Esquire (She's not a member of the Supreme Court), TSWA "is one degree from Kevin Bacon." Only one of the choices, according to the Oracle of Bacon at the University of Virginia, has been in a movie with Bacon: the aforementioned (and already disqualified) Theron.

What gives? I have no idea. TSWA isn't my half-baked "mystery".

Alas, the tragically mediocre Jessica Biel (formerly of Aaron Spelling's WB godfest 7th Heaven) is the odds-on favorite -- both in Esquire's unscientific online poll and at message boards devoted to discussing this sort of thing -- to be named TSWA. Apparently talent is not sexy, but lack of it is.

Which makes not only Biel but the editors of this Esquire feature very, very sexy indeed.