Fellatio or no fellatio, long after the paperback tell-all biographies have begun to gather dust on Salvation Army shelves, Monica Lewinsky will make a fine trophy wife. To the dismay of her legal defense team, she has posed for the camera of celebrity photographer Herb Ritts. Judging from Ritts’ five photos of Lewinsky in the July issue of Vanity Fair, she has all of the buzzazz — and the body — to reel in a celebrity husband.

For those of you who have not yet perused the new issue of Vanity Fair at your neighborhood Kum & Go magazine stand, Lewinsky is in fine form. Delicious! Finally, after months of satisfying itself with Lewinsky’s unflattering high-school yearbook photos, America has a glimpse of the spark that might have attracted President Clinton to this woman. If Clinton really committed the alleged dirty deed, then he certainly must have been compelled by one very distinct physical impetus: Monica’s mouth.

Lewinsky’s lips — abundant, moist and supple — grin brilliantly from the pages of Vanity Fair in a come-hither shade of scarlet as if they had been photographed in 3-D. A mouth like that deserves it’s own starring role on “Melrose Place.”

Camille Paglia first asserted the Monica’s Mouth Theory of Executive Seduction in Salon magazine. Based on her long study of pornographic pictures and videos, Paglia compares Lewinsky’s mouth with Paula Jones’ mouth and states, “I was stunned when I first saw the pictures of Monica Lewinsky on every TV program — the big wide smile, the nicely relaxed lips with all those teeth — and I thought, Oh my God, here we go again!”

It wouldn’t be the first time that a woman’s lip service has shaken a nation’s government. In a brief vignette accompanying the Vanity Fair photos, Christopher Hitchens ranks Lewinsky among the great temptresses of history, including Cleopatra. Historians theorize that the celebrated queen of Egypt was not a physically beautiful woman; it was probably Cleopatra’s remarkable verbal ability that enticed the great men of Rome.

This raises some interesting questions: Was Clinton’s zipper moved by lips alone? If she did go down on the president in the Oval Office, what flirtatious words passed through her famous lips before she could learn firsthand whether Clinton is a boxers- or a briefs-man? Was she clever? Was she articulate? She reads poetry. Did she tempt him with seductive verse?

The world may never know.

Lewinsky’s lips have remained silent throughout these months of intense media scrutiny. If she is as adroit at using her mouth for verbal discourse as her interest in poetry would suggest, then the silence imposed on her by the legal mess must be a frustrating burden. Perhaps this little collection of photographs in Vanity Fair is her way of sending a message to the public.

Her casual smiles and her almost irreverent pose with the stars and stripes on a beach seem to be telling America something — a reply to those polls indicating that Americans don’t care what Clinton does in the privacy of the Oval Office.

The message is: Frankly, America, Monica Lewinsky just doesn’t give a damn, either.

Why should she? Regardless of the outcome of this scandal, her reputation is already in shreds. What employer will want to hire her? How will she be able to shop for groceries under the cold, cutting stares of judgmental eyes in the supermarket? What will Monica Lewinsky do?

It must have been utterly humiliating to see those drab high-school yearbook photos splashed across every newspaper and all over national television — to hear the lewd jokes. She did the only thing she could have done. Just like Scarlett O’Hara donning that bright red dress, Lewinsky applied the sexiest shade of crimson lipstick and rose to the occasion. She struck her best devil-may-care pose so everyone could take a long look.

Looking good is the best revenge.

Tom Owings is a graduate student in English from Ames. He is the opinion editor of the Daily.