Reader question:

Please explain this sentence: Lately, fashion has left little to the imagination.

My comments:

Sheer dresses, sheer as in see-through and transparent, has been in vogue lately in the world of fashion. Models have been sporting dresses that are way too revealing.

Either that or models wear just tiny pieces of bikinis, leaving most of the body uncovered.

Something like that. At any rate, that’s what leaving little or no room to the imagination suggests.

In other words, you see everything, leaving no room for imagination.

Imagination, you see, is the ability to form pictures in the mind. If we see a model wearing a robe or a full dress, we get to wonder, for example, how well he or she is built physically because their robe or full dress conceals their body and flesh.

If they wear a see-through dress, or just a bikini, then we see everything. And when we see everything, we have no use for imagination.

Similarly, when we hear someone giving us a hint of the new Sherlock Holmes murder mystery film currently showing in local cinemas, we want just a hint. We don’t want them to tell us everything. We don’t want them to give us the whole plot. We want to watch the film and find out whodunit for ourselves.

If they told us everything, it’d be a killjoy. It’d leave nothing to the imagination and we don’t want that.

Leaving little to imagination, in short, means revealing a lot, maybe too much.

It is a variation of the more widely used idiom “leaving nothing to the imagination”, which means, of course, revealing everything, leaving absolutely no room for mystery or enigma.

The opposite, of course, is leaving everything to the imagination, which mean keeping everything hidden from view.

Oh, well, for better or worse.

Here are media examples of idiom in various situations, either leaving much, little or nothing to the imagination:

1. Sam Altman is back at OpenAI. Well, he’s back at the OpenAI headquarters in San Francisco, anyway. Whether or not he returns as CEO of the ChatGPT parent company is still up in the air.

Posting on X a photo of himself Sunday holding a green guest badge connected to a lanyard labeled “OpenAI,” the just-ousted CEO wrote: “first and last time i ever wear one of these.”

Altman didn’t say why he was at OpenAI’s office Sunday, but multiple news reports, including the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, said that the board that fired him has had second thoughts and has engaged with him and Greg Brockman, the company’s co-founder and former president, for a return. Brockman resigned Friday moments after the company showed Altman the door.

It was unclear until Sunday whether Altman would consider a comeback just days after being ousted. But his appearance at OpenAI suggests he is at least mulling a return.

Still, negotiations between the board and Altman haven’t yielded any results as of yet, and it’s not clear that Altman will accept the board’s offer to return. He may impose conditions, according to multiple news reports, including insisting that Microsoft, OpenAI’s biggest investor, take a seat on the board. He also reportedly wants to add other allies as directors.

OpenAI’s inexperienced board is down to just four members after Altman and Brockman left the company: Ilya Sutskever, the company’s chief scientist; Adam D’Angelo, the founder of Quora; Tasha McCauley, CEO of 3D modeling company GeoSim Systems; and Helen Toner, director of strategy at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

The board had said Friday Altman “was not consistently candid in his communications” with them, an opaque phrase that left much to the imagination. Brockman said Friday in a post on X that the board gave Altman and other strategic partners virtually no heads up about the decision. That reportedly included Microsoft, which does not hold a board seat – but does have $13 billion invested in the company.

Shares of Microsoft (MSFT) fell after Altman’s ouster Friday, and the company’s leadership probably wants the wunderkind leader of its most promising (and very expensive) investment back at the helm before the market opens Monday.

- Sam Altman is back at OpenAI … with a guest badge, CNN.com, November 19, 2023.

2. Loyalty was a running theme last week in all things Donald Trump.

The president didn’t exactly leave anything to the imagination, either, about where he was coming from.

In a speech-turned-political rally before Boy Scouts gathered for the National Jamboree in West Virginia, Trump found himself reciting Scout Law, allowing room for a trademark aside after getting as far as “trustworthy, loyal …”: “We could use some more loyalty, I will tell you that.”

But in Donald Trump’s world, and in his White House, loyalty tends to be expected to be a one-way street. Last week was no exception. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who as a senator stood alone as Trump’s earliest congressional champion, was called out on the president’s Twitter feed for recusing himself from the investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 election and humiliated for not going after Hillary Clinton’s emails. Reince Priebus was shown the door as chief of staff amid talk about White House leaks to the media. Senators who didn’t come through on the failed health care reform bill were threatened openly and often, in various ways.

So exactly what was U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita, Greater Lafayette’s congressman, getting last week when the coordinators of Trump’s 2016 campaign in Indiana singled him out among the 2018 GOP field for a U.S. Senate bid as “one potential candidate to stand with President Trump unapologetically?”

A gag reaction, perhaps, from the left and more moderate Republicans finding new ways to deal with daily disgust and embarrassment of the things Trump does and says.

For Rokita, a Brownsburg Republican, though, it was full-on embrace.

And why not?

The race shaping up between Rokita and U.S. Rep. Luke Messer, who succeeded Mike Pence in the 6th District, already is slathered in personal slights, with the promise of more to come as they position themselves to take on Democrat Joe Donnelly in November.

- Todd Rokita and his all-in, loyal embrace of Donald Trump, JCOnline.com, July 30, 2017.

3. Madonna’s daughter, Lourdes Leon, definitely takes after her mom in the brash department ... leaving little to the imagination while strutting around at Paris Fashion Week.

LL’s naked chest poked through a sheer lace bodysuit at the Yves Saint Laurent Menswear F/W show Monday.

As you can see, she’s got next-level confidence ... but props to the black thong and strategic coat placement for keeping things just mysterious enough.

As daring as this getup is, Lourdes knew her limits – hence, her holding down her coat in position around her intimate area to avoid exposing the other half of her naked body.

Lourdes was totally owning it – she looked fierce posing away in the look, which she completed with some shades and glossy black locks cascading down one side.

With a mom like Madonna, who’s been setting trends forever, LL’s clearly not afraid to push the envelope with her style. And yes ... she even embodies her mom a bit here.

As they say ... like mother, like daughter.

- Madonna’s Daughter, Lourdes Leon Goes Braless Under Sheer Bodysuit ... Exposes Bare Chest At PFW! TMZ.com, March 6, 2024.

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：張欣  編輯：丹妮）