Taylor Swift

I enjoy that this matches the award. But it's also very long and sleek and slick on her -- a much more grown-up choice than a lot of what she does, all of which had started to feel very tired and samey.

Taylor Swift

The last picture obscured the peepholes, though, so in fairness I have to show them to you. They are there. They are real. They happened.

Taylor Swift

I don't entirely hate them, though. I might have liked the dress better without, and they lie there kind of oddly, but the whole look is such an improvement to me that I'm willing to let her slide with a gentle slap on the wrist. Or the rib, I guess.

Taylor Swift

I mean, it's way better than this -- don't you feel like you've seen this 100 times from her? Taylor wore this to the Kids' Choice Awards the night before, for which she didn't walk the red carpet, apparently. I hope she had a really good reason, because otherwise: Are you KIDDING ME? At the Kids' Choice Awards? If Kristen Stewart can brave it and come out alive, then so can you, Swifty. And then instead of showing a proper full-length photo of your dress, I'm stuck using this one of you talking to Michelle Obama, and I have SERIOUS concerns about THAT outfit which I don't want to get into on account of our preference to stay away from political figures but let's just say that it's great and super hip from the knees down but otherwise appears to involve incredibly high-waisted jeans - revealed by a designed gap in her tunic-dress-thingy -- that make my pelvis burn in sympathy.

ACMs Mostly Well Played: Taylor Swift

My chief beef with Taylor here is this: Emcee Blake Shelton cracked a joke about her omnipresent, amazed, dropped-jaw OMG face -- you know, the one she deploys whenever she wins something/is applauded for something/gets her order delivered correctly at a restaurant, and which seems falsely modest at this point after five years of touring and a gajillion awards -- and when they cut to her in the audience, she looked pissed and mouthed, "Yeah, yeah." To which I say, "No, NO." That is the moment where any truly sensible self-aware person would MAKE that face, and then everyone in the country would love her for how she's able to laugh at herself. Instead, after she got all weirdly serious about scolding Kanye and then absolving him, and now this, I'm totally on Team West. Save the grumpies for backstage, kid. Or your songwriting den. Go write "OMG" and then make your face all over town while you're washing it with Benjamins. But the dress? A big improvement. Let's talk, shall we? [Photos: Getty]