Ann Romney bird shirt, Ann Romney wears $990 shirt?, Ann Romney, wife of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney turned heads when she did an interview on CBS's "Early Show." After her appearance there was a lot of buzz over the reported $990 designer shirt she was wearing. Some critics made fun of the shirt while others questioned her fashion sense. Mitt and Ann Romney appeared on CBS's This Morning to talk about Barack Obama, Osama bin Laden, and a slew of other political things. Sharp eyes over at The Cut noticed that Ann was wearing a bird-printed t-shirt by Reed Krakoff.
Naturally, we had to get the scoop on the price. According to a saleswoman at Krakoff's Madison Avenue store, the silk tee costs $990.That is one seriously overpriced top! Let's just hope she wears it more than onceOr as another fashion blogger put it…
Seriously, it looks like there is an animal diving into her armpit. There is a face on her chest. A face!
We all knew the Romneys were capable of unspeakable crimes against dogs, but who knew Ann could commit such a crime against fashion? Hopefully, no fish were harmed — or tied to a roof — in the making of that shirt.
As for the outrageous price tag, that's a bit more defensible. When your family has a personal fortune of over $250 million and your husband rakes in tens of millions each year for doing absolutely nothing, $1000 isn't much to spend on a silk shirt. We should just be happy it wasn't a sweater vest.
As a candidate for First Lady Of The United States, Ann Romney has it tough. The current FLOTUS, Michelle Obama, has sky-high approval ratings and a signature style -- prints, flats, brooches -- beloved by the fashion world.

Ann, we've argued, needs to up the glamour quotient and give us fashion fans a sense of her personal style. And today, she did just that.

So what does Ann Romney Style look like? What can we expect from this potential FLOTUS? Flashy bird shirts, apparently. Today Mitt and his wife appeared on CBS's "Early Show" to show Charlie Rose how "wild and crazy" Mittens really is. But what she succeeded in showing is how wild and crazy her style is with her bright Reed Krakoff Spring 2012 top. Seriously, it looks like there is an animal diving into her armpit. There is a face on her chest. A face!

The reported price tag on the top: $990.

Love it? Hate it? Either way, we're pretty excited -- if this is the kind of style we can expect from Ann over the next six months then we're pretty thrilled.
olumnist S.E. Cupp argues that Ann Romney's decision to "marry up" makes her an excellent role model who is "uniquely qualified to talk about the most important economic issue that real women confront: How am I going to support myself and my future family?" Her argument is this: Ann was smart enough to land a rich boyfriend early on, at her private high school, and keep him — a premeditated act, obviously, because she knew that she would have to work if she didn't snag a wealthy guy — and she deserves more praise for this than she does for getting an education because, "by marrying wealthy, Ann made a truly empowering decision that allowed her the freedom to do whatever she wanted." Also, it's hypocritical of Democrats to challenge Ann's knowledge of working women's issues because:

if Democrats insist that women need Obama to take care of them, then why shouldn't women also feel compelled to consider how their future husbands will take care of them? What's the difference between the feminists' political marriage to Obama and Ann's marriage to Mitt? Both choices are predicated on who will be the better provider.

Ann Romney did not exactly grow up on the wrong side of the tracks. Her dad was the president of a company that made maritime machinery, and he made enough for their family to reside in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, one of American's wealthiest suburbs, and send Ann to a posh private school. Not all women have the luxury of meeting a future multimillionaire at a high school dance! Ann Romney married rich, but she was also born rich. Also, Democrats : Obama is not the same as Wife : Husband or Man : Woman. Women literally need Obama because he has the power to veto laws that affect their reproductive rights.

It's true that marriage is a partnership, not just a celebration of love, and plenty (most?) of people, whether they're male or female, wouldn't object to marrying rich. But Cupp apparently lives in a fantasy world where women are incapable of being financially independent — or interested in working along with or instead of raising a family — and men are incapable of being poor slackers. "The feminists may wish otherwise, but little girls want stability and security, not state-sponsored welfare," Cupp writes. "For choosing a life partner who could give her that, Ann Romney is a great role model."

It's just dumb to argue that feminists want women to rely on welfare — obviously a lady's only other option if she can't golddig, right? — but for those who don't have the luxury of marrying rich, there's the soon-to-be-introduced Woman's Option to Raise Kids (WORK) Act, which will allow mothers with children ages 3 and under to stay at home with their children and continue receiving benefits. Rep. Pete Stark of California told the Huffington Post that the bill was inspired by Mitt's declaration soon after the Hilary Rosen fiasco that "All moms are working moms":

"Mitt Romney was for forcing mothers into the workforce before he decided that 'all moms are working moms,'" Stark told The Huffington Post. "I think we should take Mr. Romney at his most recent word and change our federal laws to recognize the importance and legitimacy of raising young children. That's why I'm introducing the WORK Act to provide low-income parents the option of staying home to raise young children without fear of being pushed into poverty."

Stark is referring to the changes Mitt made to the Massachusetts welfare program when he was governor. "I wanted to increase the work requirement," Romney recently explained. "I said, for instance, that even if you have a child 2 years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, 'Well, that's heartless.' And I said, 'No, no, I'm willing to spend more giving day care to allow those parents to go back to work. It'll cost the state more providing that day care, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.'"
Reporters at the blog Stylite.com tracked down the shirt Ann Romney wore on CBS's morning show Monday – and found out it cost $990. We mention this only because we, too, were struck by Mrs. Romney's shirt. It had a very large bird across the front, and was unusually eye-catching and hip for a political spouse. It also made Mitt Romney, who was sitting beside his wife in his customary suit and tie, look somehow even more buttoned-down than usual.In fact, the shirt almost overshadowed what Mrs. Romney actually said in the interview. Asked about popular misconceptions about her husband, she said she felt he had been wrongly characterized as "stiff" – when in fact, he was a "wild and crazy" guy.

"I still look at him as the boy that I met in high school when he was playing all the jokes and really just being crazy, pretty crazy," she told Charlie Rose. "And so there's a wild and crazy man inside of there."Maybe she meant it in a Steve-Martin-and-Dan-Aykroyd kind of way.

This was actually just the latest in a series of "wild man" comments Mrs. Romney has made about her husband, in an evident effort to loosen up his image.

Earlier this month, in a radio interview, she responded to another question about Romney's perceived stiffness by saying: "I guess we better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out, because he is not!" She also called him "the life of the party."

Likewise, in a recent interview with "Entertainment Tonight," she called him "a very funny guy," and offered as proof: "He doesn't comb his hair when we are not going places."

Even as far back as December, Mrs. Romney was referring to her husband as "my most disobedient child," saying: “The five boys – can you imagine? – at the dinner table, they never behaved. And Mitt was the worst of all.”

Now, it's common practice for political spouses to offer voters behind-the-scenes glimpses of the candidate's lighter side, to make them seem more human. And sometimes these "relatable" anecdotes don't exactly go over the way they're intended – as when Michelle Obama told an interviewer back in 2007 that daughters Sasha and Malia didn't like cuddling with their dad in the mornings because he was "too snore-y and stinky," possibly forever linking President Obama and morning breath in the minds of many voters.

But even more important than not being unnecessarily icky, the picture the spouse conveys needs to seem honest. Efforts to present a candidate's more down-to-earth side still have to comport with voters' general sense of who he or she really is. Otherwise, they ring hollow or smack of desperation.

Back in 2000, Al Gore's wife Tipper – who, like Mrs. Romney, was seen as far more easygoing and personable than her spouse – was repeatedly called on to try to lighten Mr. Gore's image, with decidedly mixed results. (Much of it seemed as forced as the couple's infamous seven-second kiss at the Democratic convention.)

Perhaps it's just us, but when Ann Romney talks about her husband like he's the world's biggest cutup, it doesn't exactly sound convincing – or even all that helpful. We'd argue Mrs. Romney is a far more effective advocate when she speaks about her husband's strengths as a husband and father, or as a fix-it guy.

Given that the Obama campaign is reportedly trying to portray Romney as a Don Draper-esque throwback, maybe Romney should instead try to turn that into a strength. Perhaps some faucet-fixing anecdotes from Ann are in order?