When Mr. MILF proposed marriage, he bought me two surprise things and a ring was not one of them (I had my great-grandmother to thank for that Art Deco hardware): a diamond necklace from one of those stricter-than-airport-security buildings on 47th Street — remember, this was 2002 — and a pink satin strapless from Cynthia Rowley, so he could whisk me off to Jamaica with the instructions to pack just a bikini and stilettos (remember, again, this was 2002). That both perfectly fit my figure was lovely. That they both perfectly fit my taste was nothing short of miraculous, especially since Cynthia Rowley has never been a go-to designer for me, like Daryl K (on sale) has consistently been. But Eric Wilson, writing of the fashion industry’s rescue attempts in The New York Times, reminds me why Rowley’s considered one of the smartest women in the business. Unlike the everybody else’s recycled, short-term solutions, Rowley wants “the fashion equivalent of an organic garden” — teaching the craft of fashion in home-ec and encouraging young Americans to start their own factories, much as the vanguard is heading to the farm today. At first, owning factories may sound like the dingy underbelly of a glamour industry. But if you think about how much top designers respect, depend upon and directly interact with les petites mains in France and the little old cobblers in Italy, it becomes evident quickly just how much access, influence and goodwill a domestic factory built in These Times could gain the right girl (or guy). Now, all you laid-off soul-searchers out there, doesn’t that sound tempting?

How does this happen? Deborah Copaken Kogan is an Emmy-winning journalist and best-selling author (”Shutterbabe”) with bylines in The New Yorker and The New York Times. Her husband was a movie exec until he was laid off in November, and her son is an actor who is slated to play Young Spock in the upcoming Star Trek. And yet, to read her heartbreaking “Drowning in Debt” essay for Cookie, one could be forgiven for thinking … what? That the Kogans squandered everything? Maybe, but the five “frugal to a fault” Kogans wear nothing but hand-me-downs and the occasional Old Navy, while living in a two-bedroom apartment with a five-by-seven-foot room off the kitchen. True, they live in New York City. But still. It shouldn’t be that 2.5 incomes lands a family $30,000 in the hole after the corporate parent gets canned, thereby gutting the family’s health insurance. What’s more, Kogan is so desperate for additional bank that she’s looking for a job in finance — even though her timing is off. So, what happens when we lose creative-field stars to more pragmatic professions because our system provides no safety net? My first reaction is, That sucks. But the glass-half-full side of me remembers the flourishing art and music scene of the late ’70s/early ’80s that followed New York City’s near bankruptcy. And I try really, really hard to delude convince myself that, until our immature nation catches up with the communal ethos of the rest of the industrialized world, we can strike cultural gold twice.

In the “Duh” news of the day, Katie Holmes, looking her radiantly gorgeous self, tells Glamour, “When I met Tom, I knew in an instant that we were going to be together.” Well … Duh! Isn’t that just about always how it works in an arranged-marriage situation?

If you say it enough times in print, it becomes true. Right? As the worldwide obsession with Michelle Obama’s fashion choices shifted to her toned arms last week, Andre Leon Talley looked bound and determined to convince everyone that Michelle Obama is skinny like the rest of the women who appear in Vogue (political wives most certainly included, as evidenced by this irrelevant-but-for-Vogue line from the story about Silda Spitzer’s cautious re-emergence: “[Dana] Buchman has tried to dress Silda but admits her friend is too slim for the clothes in her collection.” You can practically feel the magazine’s sense of relief).

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think Mrs. Obama’s got a bumpin’ bod — those sculpted shoulders are the subject of intense admiration for good reason. And “long” and “athletic” are certainly accurate adjectives for her physique. But “lean”and “lithe”? No wonder our new First Lady was hesitant to appear in the magazine. Girlfriend’s got serious booty, and I bet her husband loves it. More important, American women love the booty too. Those curves serve as yet another indication that Mrs. Obama is real — not an out-of-touch social x-ray who starves and trains 24/7 — and gives battered American broads something with which to identify. Remember HRC’s much-maligned big booty as feminist rallying point? The difference is that Michelle Obama not only knows how to flatter that womanly load, she also wields it like a power tool. And that confidence is something that Vogue, in making the First Lady the face of its “Power Issue,” should have enthusiastically grabbed with both hands, and gone, “Yes! All salute das First boot!”

Hi everybody! Happy 2009 and welcome back to Magazine MILF! I don’t know about you, but after dreading the return to imagined productivity, I am psyched to be here. Whether it’s that top-secret ambition drug they pump into New York City oxygen — it’s clearly not in the chemistry of Palm Beach, where I reveled in the local pastime of doing nothing for two weeks  — or my new year’s rez to chill the fuck out, I can’t say. But I do know I was given a major boost by Lisa Belkin’s awesome “The Way We Live Now” editorial for The Sunday Magazine.

Taking Caroline Kennedy’s controversial Senate bid as her jumping off point, Belkin very rightly points out that job experience is no longer what it used to be. Time was, your career followed a logical path from Point A to B. But the mom sabbatical — not to mention dot-coms — changed all that. Now, lots of us, especially moms who stay home, come to the table with a range of experiences gained outside the traditional office structure, which, as Belkin points out, is made for men whose wives stay out of it. Kennedy, for example, raised $70 million for New York City schools and wrote books about the Constitution while she raised children. All of which is a lot more relevant than, say, Bill Bradley’s Knicks tenure. And yet, because her experience isn’t traditional, or man-glam, it’s considered irrelevant. Bullocks. So what’s the lesson here? Forget the alarmist don’t-ever-leave-the-workforce scare tactics of Leslie Bennetts’ “The Feminine Mistake” and forge your own flexible career path. Do what feels right, right now. If that means staying home, sure, it’s risky in lots of ways. But life is an experiment and you just might surprise yourself by creating something totally awesome over lunch with friends that you couldn’t have done as an office drone. Besides, once you have a child ruling your life, who needs a boss telling you what to do as well?