Arakawa... and that unitard!

Despite spending most of the day separated from my beloved internet, I stayed off all the news sites and even blogs and my own comments sections because I did not want to have the results of the women's skating competition ruined for me. But then I was so worn out from a long day, which included 3+ hours of driving and 5 hours in the immune enclave of The Federalist Society, that I kept nodding off during the skating and just wishing it would end already. Once I saw Sasha Cohen fall on her ass, I crashed and slept through the night. This morning, I watched Cohen and the rest on TiVo.

Congratulations to Shizuka Arakawa, who did what's gotten really hard to do under the new system of scoring: not fall on her ass.

When Sasha Cohen finished skating, one of the announcers said something like, "Other girls skate to 'Romeo and Juliet,' Sasha is Juliet." And a million people must have made wisecracks along the lines of: you remember the part in the play when Juliet falls on her ass.

The announcers say some of the most awkward things. For example, when Kimmie Meissner was skating, they started raving about how long her arms were and said, "Other skaters would give their eye teeth for those long arms." So I'm picturing young women with missing teeth and ultra-long arms. You don't want that!

But let's discuss the costumes! It was one thing for Irina Slutskaya to fall on her ass and not win -- or even equal the on-ass-falling Cohen, but quite another for the pantie end of her garish red and black skating dress to ride all the way up into the crack of her ass until it looked like a thong. And she still had to spin with one big leg clutched in the straight upright position and skate backward with the skirt fluttering up and the ass coming straight at us at high speed.

I praised Slutskaya for wearing a unitard for her short program, but, as we discussed in the comments, it was not a pretty enough unitard. The lower end of it flared out into mannish pantlegs, losing the leotard effect, and the top was too enclosed. A commenter apty compared the outfit to a wetsuit.

But last night, one of the skaters had an exemplary unitard. Sorry, I've forgotten her name, and I'd like to find a picture. It was black leotard with some nice red swirly, glittery decoration, with a lot of illusion fabric used to make it look very naked at the top and all down one side of the torso. This is the unitard that must lead us into the future of ladies' skating fashion!

ADDED: The photo of the unitard that will lead us: