Image, communications experts tell us, is all about what you look like and sound like, but has very little to do with what you are actually saying.

And the power of one’s image is the theme running through two recent columns from our favorite gal reporter, the Pulitzer Prize winning fashion writer Robin Givhan.

Givhan’s special gift is her ability to read the pop-cultural information in the way hair is combed or a suit is worn. Her columns, nominally about clothing, are more likely to be about the cultural impact of a pop celebrity or politician — she has written about Condi Rice (”Rice’s coat and boots speak of sex and power … a volatile combination … that in political circles rarely leads to anything but scandal”) as well as Dick Cheney (”The vice president was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower.”)

Thus it was with relish that we read her column today which connected the powerful visual jujitsu of the Rutgers basketball girls with the Duke Lacrosse boys. Both teams were coming back from a barrage of racial slurs and both were the prime players in near simultaneous press conferences:

The mostly black Rutgers team had been maligned by a radio shockjock as “nappy-headed ho’s”; the white Lacrosse team had been accused of rape by a black stripper and turned into a punching bag for pious cable-show chatterboxes, who pegged the boys as arrogant children of privilege. That is, until this week when all charges were dropped after DNA evidence proved the charge groundless.

Race code is a particular specialty of our Robin, herself an African-American woman, but that code was not in evidence, by her lights, in the twin press conferences. What she did see was the sort of star power she had just a week before found beguiling in that most improbable of starlets, Sanjaya Malakar — a notoriously tuneless American Idol-ette so famous at this point he has become a one-name celeb. (A Google search on his first name runs to 74 pages … so far.)

And what did the Rutgers girls, the Duke Lacrosse boys and the delightfull girly-boyish Sanjaya have in common? All have been publicly ridiculed and all have come back, on sheer image alone, to turn the public in their favor. Image, communications experts tell us, is all about what you look like and sound like, but has very little to do with what you are actually saying.

“This was a week in which college students endured the kind of public spotlight and personal pressures that can reduce mature adults to tears,” Givhan began in her column this morning. “Instead, these young men and women … maintained their composure. And dressed to make their point.”

ON THE RUTGERS GIRLS:

The first thing one noticed at the Rutgers news conference was a sea of scarlet facing the cameras. The 10 team members showed their unity by wearing matching red and black warm-ups instead of street clothes…

The young women had been insulted as a team and they would respond as such. No player, not even the white members of the team … tried to delineate herself as an individual — to perhaps separate herself from [shockjock Don] Imus’s disparaging remarks that reached a nadir when he declared the team members “nappy-headed ho’s…”

And while they wore their hair in a variety of styles from buns to bobs, none of it appeared to be nappy. (And if it was, so what? Nappy should not be mistaken for unkempt. )

They weren’t dressed to look more grown up than their years would suggest. … They looked like kids, and they seemed vulnerable, like a chain of fold-and-cut paper dolls. They only needed to hold hands to complete the image.

ON THE DUKE BOYS:

As they sat before the cameras, one’s eye paused on Finnerty, in his checked button-down shirt and his blazer with gold buttons. Evans, the only one of the three to have graduated from Duke, wore a gray suit — with the conservative lines of something that could easily be worn by a banker — a signet ring and a substantial watch. Along with Seligmann, the young men looked confident and comfortable. They weren’t wearing their clothes with the uneasiness that is often detected among those who don them only for weddings and funerals.

Their advantages were underscored by Evans when he noted that he was exonerated in large part because his family had the financial resources to hire top-notch defense attorneys and experts. What, he wondered, happens to those who aren’t so lucky?

Privilege had helped him to claim a victory. He wasn’t trying to hide it, pretending as if it didn’t exist or apologizing for it. Only making the reasonable observation that everyone should be lucky enough to have it on their side.

ON THE FABLED SANJAYA:

As America’s ears bleed, it sounds as though Malakar no longer is attempting to sing — that is, to enunciate lyrics while simultaneously carrying a tune… So Malakar has given himself over to style…

He is fashioning himself into a male pop tart. Not just a smiling Bratz boy looking to exploit a healthy head of hair to juice up his image, but someone using fashion as a steppingstone to fame.

Malakar doesn’t just have good hair, he is his hair. [Above an artist speculates on Sanjaya's hairdos and don'ts.]

He follows in the long-standing tradition of female pop stars with only the barest whisper of a voice, or a passable croak, who have used style to make themselves into successful entertainers. See: Britney Spears, pre-rehab … See: Pussycat Dolls: The Search for the Next Doll. See: Diana Ross and her hair…

At 17, Malakar does not ooze testosterone. He has a slight build that never fills out his studiously hipster clothes…Of the other male contestants, Blake Lewis and Chris Richardson are battling over who can best imitate Justin Timberlake in his skinny-tie-wearing, vest-sporting, bright-white-sneaker-loving Bringing Sexy Back phase.

Malakar plays the asexual pretty boy with the gleaming grin, who always looks like he spent more time primping his hair than rehearsing his song. He is a compelling presence onstage not because he makes the heart go pitter-patter but because he’s putting on a hair show. Next week, it would not be shocking if he appeared with his hair teased into a beehive, out of which flew live bees.

The door to fame has cracked open for Malakar. And he is working the zeitgeist with his hirsute shenanigans. Nothing about his tactics are unusual. The only surprise is that, in this case, the performer so willing to be reduced to a big smile and even bigger hair is a man.