Heard the one about Janet Reno?

It is almost impossible to make it through a late-night talk show monologue without hearing a joke about her. In David Letterman's "Current Events" quiz, as viewers saw a photo of a giant Christmas tree, the question read, "What's eighteen-and-a-half-feet tall and can currently be seen at the White House?"

Correct answer? Janet Reno.

Or, high on Letterman's top ten list of the most dangerous toys for kids? Rock 'em, Sock 'em Janet Reno.

In another joke, Letterman posed the question: "Clinton was relieved when Janet Reno decided not to do what?" Punch-line? "Corner him under the mistletoe."

Jay Leno, commenting on the Clinton family's shopping trip in New York, noted that the President bought a pair of size 13EE running shoes at Foot Locker. "I guess we know what Janet Reno's getting for Christmas," he quipped. And Will Ferrell's ongoing drag impersonation in "Janet Reno's Dance Party" on Saturday Night Live features the nation's first female attorney general as a pathetic, love-starved nerd who throws herself at men and dances like a robot on angel dust.

The news media have picked up the script. That august publication the Weekly World News first floated the story that 78 percent of Japanese men surveyed allegedly said they'd rather be shipwrecked on a desert island with Janet Reno than with any other woman on the planet. Fashion photographer Kazutaka Itosu reportedly told the News that Reno is "a vision of beauty--and by far the sexiest woman in the world." On the Weekly World News's web site, Reno's head is superimposed on a woman's body wearing a black leather strapless bathing suit. Unlike the News's other stories about public figures, such as its famous photo of Ross Perot shaking hands with an alien, the rest of the media did not dismiss this curio. Instead, CNN, Time, The Boston Globe, and others picked it up and ran with it.

The New Yorker got into the act, too, with a report saying that Clinton staffers refer to Reno simply as "The Martian."

Why has this incessant ridiculing of Reno taken on such a regular, almost ritualistic, quality?

Sure, Reno is a far cry from America's corporate standard of beauty the underweight, poreless, thick-haired, slim-hipped, big-busted, pouty-lipped sylph who helps sell Oil of Olay, Special K, L'Oreal, and Diet Pepsi. But so is Madeleine Albright, and she's not a regular in Letterman's nightly monologue. She knows how to flirt with Jesse Helms.

No, Reno's transgressions cut beneath the skin and expose some rather sensitive cultural nerve endings.

Twenty years ago, in his best-selling assessment of American life, The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher laid out the traits of the narcissistic personality, the person whose sense of self was shaped as much or more by advertising images as by anything else. We're supposed to be desperate for approval, obsessed with first impressions, and facile at managing the various poses we assume under different circumstances. Despite our best efforts, many of us find ourselves gripped in some way or other by this ethos.

Reno, however, doesn't appear to care what anybody thinks. The sort of approval that comes from wearing the right clothes, having the right haircut, putting people at ease by schmoozing and joking seems irrelevant to her. She rejects the posing that women--and men--have to do both on and off the job. That makes people extremely uncomfortable. How come she gets to evade all the psychic angst about fitting in and succeeding, and we don't?

A woman who refuses even to try to turn herself into an attractive commodity is especially threatening. With a few exceptions, most prominent public women in America are in the entertainment industry--actresses, models, TV hosts, and newscasters, for whom beauty is part of the job description. They may be smart, they may be talented, but their industry continues to insist that women are, first and foremost, to be looked at. They are also supposed to be empathetic, to make others feel comfy. Even women like Oprah Winfrey or Katie Couric--who can put people on the spot--still smile enough, tease enough, sympathize enough to be thought of as "feminine."

Not Reno. She rarely smiles, rarely cants her head in the way Clinton does to make himself look more accessible. In fact, she has none of the body language we learn to adopt as we present ourselves to others in everyday life.

Her sins are multiple: She is androgynous and doesn't care about sexual display; she refuses to follow all the rules of public performance; she won't ingratiate herself.

Of course, Reno has made mistakes in office--Waco being the most appalling. And her decision not to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the President or Al Gore has been extremely controversial.

But the jokes about her are rarely political. Instead, they are deeply uneasy, nervous outbursts against a woman who personality what the world might be like if most women just got up one day and said no to Revlon, to Cosmopolitan, and to decades of socialization.

Susan Douglas teaches Communications Studies at the University of Michigan.