“In olden days a hint of stocking was looked on as something shocking. Now, heaven knows, anything goes.”

Well, not quite anything. When Cole Porter wrote those words, in 1934, America was belatedly emerging from the Victorian age in which even piano legs were trimmed with lace collars lest anyone get saucy ideas.

Now, with young women sporting pierced navels and tongue studs, you might imagine the whole business of what women can display without comment had long gone.

Not so. Washington is still reeling from a commentary by the Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize winning style guru, Robin Givhan, which drew attention to Hillary Clinton’s cleavage.

For a routine speech in the Senate, Mrs. Clinton wore “a rose-colored blazer over a black top. The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V-shape. The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn’t an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable.”

And the point of this observation? “To display cleavage in a setting that does not involve cocktails and hors d’oeuvres is a provocation,” Ms. Givhan suggested. “With Clinton, there was the sense that you were catching a surreptitious glimpse at something private. You were intruding — being a voyeur.”

Ms. Givhan is paid to observe then pass on her observations, but in this case she did more than register her opinion, she speculated upon Mrs. Clinton’s motives. Did the senator knowingly intend to provoke? It seems most unlikely. Perhaps Pulitzer Prize winning style writers are too grand to ask questions of their subjects. If elicited, Mrs. Clinton’s own account of her intentions was left unreported.

Did Mrs. Clinton invite the attention of Peeping Toms? The only voyeurs in a position to take advantage of this “provocation” were the few superannuated senators slumped in the chamber not already immersed in a post-prandial nap.

Unless it has radically changed its mission, C-SPAN 2, which inadvertently broadcast the glimpse of Mrs. Clinton’s cleavage, is well down the list of cable channels favored by the sex starved. And, in any case, it is voyeurs who are the perpetrators of bad behavior, not their unwitting victims.

But enough of this silliness. Mrs. Clinton is not an easy person to paint as a victim, nor a woman who invites much sympathy, yet it is an indication of how puerile this country remains about all matters sexual that the first woman to stand a decent chance of becoming president has to put up with such drivel.

Hillary Clinton is a middle aged woman with a bosom. Big deal. Get over it. Sniping at her for daring to dress as a woman is old fashioned sexism at its worst and should have no place in a serious debate over who is best suited to replace President Bush in the White House.

Somewhere along the feminist line, sexism changed its meaning. Originally coined to describe how women were patronized simply for being women, the word was soon hijacked by puritanical feminists as a means of purging all mention of sex.

Sexism is discrimination on grounds of sex — or, as the word police would now have it, “gender” — not the act of referring to sexual matters. To scrutinize a woman candidate in a way that you would not scrutinize a male candidate is sexism plain and simple. To suggest that she is trying to subliminally sexually excite her audience is both sexist and shabby.

This is not an argument for “potty parity,” that useful term which demands that men and women are treated equally by architects in the provision of toilet facilities, heaven forbid.

The thought of style writers opining on whether Fred Thompson or Ron Paul is sending suggestive sexual signals, or whether Rudy Giuliani or Dennis Kucinich is making come-to-bed eyes, must be an anathema even to Robin Givhan. It is an argument against judging women candidates by a different measure to their male counterparts.

Mrs. Clinton, if she has any sense, will ignore catty comments about her chest from a Pulitzer-winning pundit. The most powerful woman ever to inhabit the White House was the indomitable Eleanor Roosevelt, who never let her sumptuous bust get in the way of her progressive ideas.

The senator may also recall that Ronald Reagan, after listening to a group of stuffy British male chauvinist types bemoaning the fact that the Conservatives were led by a woman, Margaret Thatcher, reminded them, “England had a Queen named Victoria once who did rather well.” His hunch that Mrs. Thatcher would trounce her male rival was vindicated at the next general election.

And Mrs. Clinton can take comfort from the fact that Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, Golda Meir, Indira Ghandi, Angela Merckel, and many other strong women have had to put up with being patronized and diminished by sexually inappropriate comments, then went on to rule with a rod of iron.