The Mannequin Candidates

January 4, 2010: Many things are maneuvering for my attention as the new year (2010) gets underway -- financial insecurities, Nazis, my ongoing search for a good literary agent -- but for my first entry of this decade, I'd like to focus my attention on something much more important to me, and much more pressing -- the new and exciting selection of sexy store mannequins.

I've had a hard time trying to decide which store has the sexiest mannequins. Much to my pleasant surprise -- and bothered attention -- several local places met this holiday season by introducing some of the most fetching female dummies I've yet had the pleasure of ogling.

While some stores are still offering the standard attractive, old-style dolls -- Ann Taylor's, for instance, features the classic headless stand-bys, dressed for elegance and artfully crafted to last a lifetime -- others have introduced new, sometimes-provocative, sometimes-alluring, and sometimes-just-plain-dirty dressing dolls on display for public amusement and, sometimes, utter bemusement.

Chico's has started displaying an amazingly sexy torso -- I mean, I couldn't take my eyes off it. While it lacks some of my favorite parts in a lower half, the top is just so spectacular I could understand dating a headless torso with just that certain something.

Gap has gone one better, with a vivid collection of armless naked white bodies that's not to be equalled. (They're just standing there, like you could go right up to them and start small talk!) Just seeing those dandy displays decorating a wide-open window right on Westport, Connecticut's Main Street, made me simultaneously blush and wonder why I traded it all away by marrying a woman with a head.

If this scintillating selection of hand-crafted beauties is any indication, 2010 promises to be a magnificent, hopeful and breathtakingly tawdry year!