By: Mary Fran Bontempo
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Good Lord, I hope they don’t give them a centerfold spread in the Wish Book.

In a move that has everyone who associates Sears with conservative clothing and reliable, dependable merchandise scratching their collective heads, the venerable retail store and catalogue company, home to the eagerly anticipated Christmas Wish Book, has inked a deal with those sirens of stupidity, The Kardashian sisters.

Yes, Kim, Kourtney and Khloe (Apparently, the Kardashian parents were familiar with only one letter of the alphabet) have inflicted their skanky…er, trendy tastes on Sears’ unsuspecting female customer base.

Okay, I get it. Maybe over the years, Sears has developed a reputation for cornering the market on dowdy. But the Kardashians? Talk about pitching the pendulum in the other direction.

For those of you blessedly unfamiliar with the raven-tressed Kardashian clan, father Robert Kardashian, who passed away in 2003, was the chief defense lawyer in the O.J. Simpson trial. Yuck factor number one. Mother Kim married Olympic star Bruce Jenner, whose face is frozen in a perpetual grimace, either from botched plastic surgery or from the realization that he’s legally enmeshed in a train wreck. Bruce and Kim have two daughters, who are emerging as wild children in their own right, but it’s the daughters of Robert and Kim who’ve become the poster girls for bad decisions, questionable morals and making millions with absolutely no talent whatsoever. So of course they’re a perfect fit for the All-American Sears demographic, right? Oh, so very wrong.

Yet the marketing gurus at Sears aren’t the only ones. Within the past two weeks, Kmart has premiered a Sofia Vergara collection and Kohl’s is offering a Jennifer Lopez line. Now, Vergara and Lopez don’t inspire the same reaction in me as the Kardashians, which is a slight case of nausea and an immediate drop in my I.Q. The two sexy Latinas are multiple levels above the Kardashians on the evolutionary scale, but what’s with the clothes? And who is wearing this stuff?

Kmart’s Sofia collection presents skin tight pants, leggings and tops. One piece, a leopard print bustier dress is totally appropriate—for Halloween, if you’re dressing as a Kardashian. The Lopez offerings, while less outlandish and more wearable, still include copious amounts of leopard print, including the requisite body hugging leopard dress.

As far as the Kardashians go, I wish I could tell you what elegant pieces grace their Sears line, but as of this writing, repeated clicks on the Sears website to view the sultry sisters’ apparel led to blank page after blank page. Maybe someone with a little common sense is balking at corrupting the squeaky clean Sears name with Kardashian smarminess. One can only hope.

Maybe the point is that the three retailers don’t want customers like me any more. Lest I ignore the obvious, the three lines are helmed by exotic, curvaceous women. I’m thrilled that stores are finally acknowledging the fact that most of us are not built like eight foot tall, ninety pound pencils. But exotic I’m not. And any attempt by me to pretend I am would be downright comical—or horrific, I’m not sure which. Yet, if this is where things are going, what’s a gal to do?

While I’ve been accused more than once of dressing like a gypsy (thanks, Mom), I’ve tried to steer clear of the streetwalker look. But with Sears, Kmart and Kohl’s trying mightily to “professionalize” their customers, I’m not sure what I’ll be wearing this season.

However, if things don’t improve, there is one Kardashian-inspired look I know I’ll be sporting—the grimace permanently etched on Bruce Jenner’s bewildered face.

What’s your take on Kardashian fashion? Click “comments” below and share.