Obama’s hot, hot, hot

Yesterday Maxim came out with numbers 100-91 on its Hot 100 list of (surprise!) the 100 women they regard as hottest. The actual surprise was that the list, which generally limits itself to women who might conceivably pose in lingerie on Maxim’s pages, included Michelle Obama.

Obama beat out Deanna Russo of Knight Rider, Melissa Rycroft of The Bachelor, Rebecca Mader of LOST (yay LOST!), Marisa Tomei for her role in the Wrestler, Olivia Munn of Attack of the Show, Padma Lakshmi of Top Chef, Yvonne Strahovski of Chuck and the rest of the world’s estimated 3 billion women to land at number 93.

It’s a weird thing; I kind of want to give Maxim credit for being able to find sexiness in something other than their archetypical back-arching starlet. But something about it gives me the heebie-jeebies. Would we like Michelle Obama as much if she didn’t obviously spend a lot of time working on her arms? Would we have liked Hillary Clinton more if she had ? Would we have liked Sarah Palin less if she wasn’t attractive enough to have been a beauty queen?

For that matter, how sexy would Maxim find Michelle Obama if she hadn’t (basically) given up her career to help her husband move forward? Just something to think about.