So it seems you can take the girl out of the beauty pageant, but you can’t take the beauty pageant out of the girl.

Palin’s clothes came from retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus and Barneys New York, and expenses included nearly US$5,000 for hair and makeup. Maybe this is actually her one-woman economic stimulus plan. Lord knows the retail sector needs it.

Still, many voters must find it unfathomable for Palin, who has been presented as a woman “like us,” to spend that kind of money on clothes in these difficult financial times, to see her speaking so passionately about Joe the Plumber while plumbing campaign coffers for Valentino jackets and pencil skirts. And yet, people are eating it up, tittering on chat sites about Palin’s Kawasaki eyeglass frames and her Naughty Monkey red peep-toe pumps.

Palin’s spokeswoman is saying this is much ado about nothing, that we should be talking about more important issues. But can you imagine the outcry if it were revealed that Hilary Clinton’s rainbow of pantsuits was paid for by campaign contributions? Or if college kids’ US$50 checks to the Biden/Obama campaign were putting those men in US$5,000 custom suits? (Obama’s suits are by Hart Schaffner Marx out of Chicago, and they cost in the US$1,500 range.)

In Palin’s defense, being a woman in the public eye has its own pressures. And it’s unlikely she has been stepping off the campaign trail to lunch at Neimans. Instead, she probably is working with a wardrobe stylist who brings her things to try on and choose from. But the issue of clothing and hair expenses has been a land mine for politicians (John Edwards’ US$400 haircuts), and someone should have been sensitive to that.

You also have to wonder how it feels, as a woman, to have everyone know that you really have been dressed up and trotted out like a beauty queen for the American public to wag tongues at. Caribou Barbie indeed.

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