Reese, I know you're busy, what with one child at home and another on the way, and your new movie, ``Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde,'' out in theaters, but I have a request: From now on, when you make publicity appearances, or when you and Ryan are strolling the Hollywood Hills with your double stroller, if it's sunny out, would you mind carrying a parasol?

You may be wondering why some random woman from Boston - who is not associated with the Parasol Manufacturers of America, I promise - cares what you carry.

Well, here's the deal. I want to carry a parasol. But I'm too chicken. Reese, you're hot right now; so if you could start a trend, I'd really appreciate it. After years of dermatological warnings, I've finally been scared pale, but I don't have the guts to stroll Newbury Street with a dainty sun umbrella perched just so when no one else is doing it.

Yes, I'll stand in a check-out line talking into my cellphone like a jerk, laughing and gesturing into thin air, and I sometimes wear running shoes to work - with a skirt - and I've been known to pair an REI backpack with an evening dress, but at least with those offenses I'm one of many, or at least one of some.

But without the protection of the herd, I fear I'd be ambushed by an operative working for one of the new attack makeover shows sweeping the airwaves.

``OK, Beth,'' the perfectly groomed reporter would shout, as she confiscated my parasol, ``here's what even your best friends won't tell you: You look like an escapee from a PBS period drama from the right shoulder up. It doesn't work with the Nikes.''

But what is it about the parasol that seems so daring? We've got people walking around town with staples in their eyebrows and studs in their tongues, and their hair dyed blue and groomed into peaks, and I'm worried about sticking out with a pretty little umbrella.

And I'm hardly alone. Almost every woman I mentioned my parasol fantasy to said she'd also love to carry one, if only . . .

``I occasionally have seen Asian women with black umbrellas on sunny days - clearly shielding the sun, not just very, very prepared for rain,'' one woman told me. ``And I envy them - particularly as someone of the pale persuasion, who doesn't want my morning Perricone breakfast of poached salmon and honeydew to be undone by errant UVAs.

``But what can we do? It's a bold gesture, to put up an umbrella on a nonrainy day - it has a certain crazy-bag-lady-in-training look to it. I long for a nice, outfit-coordinating parasol, ruffles optional. It's undeniably girly, yet adds a certain piquancy to a business ensemble.

``Bottom line for me?'' she concluded: ``You go first.''

Reese, please.