Raising Maine

I was lounging on the couch, eating red Twizzlers and watching Project Runway, where the contestants were designing a Bob Mackie-inspired dress for guest judge, Christina Aguilera. The show is my number one guilty pleasure (reading Entertainment Weekly from cover to cover is a close second), and in rare moments when I can watch Project Runway uninterrupted, I’m in a pure state of couch potato bliss.

Just when the contestants’ models were about to walk the runway, a call came from upstairs. “Mama! Where are you?” Will is getting his two-year molars—his finger is almost always lodged into the corner of his mouth—and he’s having trouble sleeping. Even though Project Runway was recorded on the DVR, I didn’t want to wait for the ending. I asked him if he wanted to watch a show with me, which might as well have been a rhetorical question.

We cuddled together on the couch, and I wondered (briefly) if Project Runway was appropriate for a two-year old. Unless one of the models walked down the runway naked, which I knew wasn’t happening, I couldn’t imagine the show would make an impression on his young mind. He pointed to Christina Aguilera. “Who’s that girl?” he wondered. I told him she’s a singer. Will paused and considered her for a moment. “She needs a sweatshirt,” he said.

I looked at Christina’s bare arms and low-cut blue dress and had to agree. “Yes, Will,” I said. “She could probably use a sweatshirt.” I thought about Aguilera in her pre-motherhood, Dirrty days, wearing nothing but chaps and a muddied bikini top in a music video, and thought her blue number was decisively more conservative. But still. This is Project Runway, couldn’t she have stepped it up a notch, especially for the fashion savvy Tim Gunn? A two-year old and his mother certainly think so.

[For photos of the aforementioned pop star, go to http://thehazards.wordpress.com/]