Give boot to celebs enticing us into faux pas
By Beth Teitell

Thursday, August 4, 2005

With all due respect to children, young aspiring athletes aren't the only ones who need positive role models. So while we're putting the screws to steroid-popping baseball players, why not nudge celebrities into using their clout more responsibly?

I'm speaking as one of a legion of fashion victims who, after looking at gorgeous stars wearing haute absurdities, start to covet items I have no business even thinking of owning or wearing: hair extensions, $1,000 handbags, tube tops.

At the moment? Not only am I walking around in sunglasses so large I look like I'm recovering from eye surgery (thanks Mary Kate and other undersized celebs in oversized eyewear), but recently I've started lusting after cowboy boots. And I want to wear them in the summer, like Sienna and Kate do.

But I don't want hot feet. Do stars have better personal-cooling and heating systems than we do? They must, because the same people who insist they're comfortable wearing leather in 80-degree weather also breeze around in flip-flops when it's snowing. Is there some celebrity discomfort-immunity gene?

Unless Congress passes an anti-impulse-purchase act ASAP, I know I'll be shopping for cowboy boots by the weekend, even though my personal fashion guru has warned me against it.

``There's a lot of opportunity for mistake,'' she said when I mentioned my lust for a pair of crochet-trimmed cowboy boots featured in InStyle's August ``trend watch.'' (I should probably stop reading things like that.) ``You can't wear a skirt that's too long. You can't tuck your pants in. You could make some major mistakes.''

She herself wants boots, she added, but she's holding off, hoping for strength until the trend passes. ``Every time I looked at them in my closet I'd be reminded of the person I'm not,'' she said. ``Tall, outdoorsy, thin. On the other hand, no one would see my fat ankles.'' She paused for a moment, recalling Sandra Bullock's boots in ``Hope Floats.''

``That movie was sappy,'' she said, ``but even so . . .''

Her words of caution fell on deaf ears. I could already see myself in the boots, stretched out on a gingham picnic blanket, a blade of grass between my teeth, or perhaps an overpriced glass of wine between my lips.

My only hope is to look at that recent picture of a very pregnant and disheveled Britney Spears walking in the boots of the moment, looking ghastly. Maybe I'll get it framed.