If you are looking for depth in today’s post, you will be disappointed.  It’s Friday, and I’m going to snark and be shallow.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

So it seems the Mr and Mrs Dear Reader have declined dinner with the French President and his wife.  Rumors are running wild about the reasoning behind the snub.  And since I’m feeling feisty, I’m going to throw my theory out there.

I think Maxim’s Number 93 is intimidated by the real most beautiful first lady.

Exhibit A-Maxim’s #93

Mrs. Dear Reader

And Carla Bruni

Carla Bruni

Not enough?  Hit the jump

Mrs. Dear Reader in a little black dress

Lady M

Carla Bruni in a little black dress

Carla Bruni black dress

Yeah.  And this woman doesn’t need $400 hideous shoes.  In fact, she doesn’t even like make up.

“I have an austere temperament,” she says. “There are things that give me no pleasure: objects, clothes, jewelry. I’ve worn them all, but all that stuff interferes with my daily life.” She does her own hair. According to her friend Farida Khelfa, “Carla hates shopping and would wear the same pair of trousers every day if she could.” Makeup doesn’t interest her—”It takes forever and doesn’t make you look better after 30.” A beauty at 41, she looks a little like a cat, a little like her mother, a little like an actress during rehearsal: all there, no facade.

And she understands that her husband is the elected official

At the Elysée, her office is a ground-floor room hung with a jacquard of rose garlands on pale-blue silk. “What’s the pretty statue on the mantelpiece?” I ask. “I have no idea,” she says. “Everything in the office belongs to the Elysée.” She has no staff of her own—”The status of first lady isn’t defined, so anyone who worked for me would have to come out of the taxpayers’ money, and I don’t want to take up unearned space.”

Hmm.  “Unearned space?”  Methinks our First Lady fears being outclassed.