Fashion in Action!

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Culture, Fashion in Action!, Funny, General goshdarned cuteness, Parenting, UK politics
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If only… the ‘eighties might’ve been a bit more fun.

Howard did always have something of the nightclub about him… oh. It’s not that Howard. As you were, then.

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I may just order one of these books for some prospective new parents I know. It’s the perfect companion to My First Cavity Search.

“What a wonderful gift for new parents! How to Traumatize Your Children includes useful chapters on narcissistic parenting, parent as best friend, killing self-esteem, the convenience of neglect – and even how to enjoy your legacy of trauma. Not only does this book provide lots of laughs, but it actually reinforces how you really should raise your kids. 190 pages, hardcover”

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If this guy is genuine, this is very very sweet and funny. If not, well then it’s more than a little bit odd:

“Is this you? Please, if you recognise this person, read on“

You’ve got to be resourceful in love these days though, so full marks for trying and extra brownie points for being cute about it.

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From the Flickr photostream of Reciprocity, this is one of a gorgeous set called Twisting Light

Animal Dance – Twisting Light #5 The next one in the series of refraction patterns formed by passing light through various shapes of moulded and formed plastic. Photographed direct on to 35mm film.

I thought that this one looked like a chorus line of long necked llamas with large floppy ears gyrating in front of the spot lights. You may think differently. :-)

To me it looks like a headless row of dancers from an Ancient Greek vase or maybe a bit of William Morris border. Or the crysanthemums on a bracelet I bought in a second-hand shop (or ‘vintage’ store, I suppose I should learn to call them if I want to be fashionable). I prefer ‘otherly-owned’.

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If you are minded to be fashionable and want to mine the past for clothes, old magazines are invaluable for getting your eye in. Vogue is putting together a searchable online archive of all its covers from 1916 to the present day. Here’s March 1960: the makeup’s nice, the colours are lovely but I do hope the shape of that coalscuttle hat never, ever comes back in again.

“The cover is described as a “spokesman for black and white, a leading fashion pair”, while the London Look is said to be “understated, soft fabrics, with sashes as a feature and lots of patent leather”.”

Things don’t change that much do they – except the cover price. Good lord, 2/6- for a magazine – that’s only 12 and a half pence! (Around 20 eurocents, or 500 bucks.)

Oops. That I automatically knew that (and recognised a coalscuttle, what’s more) says more about my own personal vintage than I really care to reveal.

Yeah, And Why Don’t All Blokes Shave Their Buttcracks? Slobs.

Blogs, Fashion in Action!, Feminism, Women
Published on 3 Comments on Yeah, And Why Don’t All Blokes Shave Their Buttcracks? Slobs.

Would you take grooming advice from a man who can't be arsed to shave his chin let alone his butt?

One the more asinine posts I’ve ever read on HuffPo (and there’ve been quite a few) is this from expat Brit, former VH1 Wardrobe Assistant, social climber, PR man and media wannabe Tony Alcindor (see above), chastising women for their unkemptness.

He thinks women should be hypergroomed and hyperconscious of appearance all the time; any woman who’s not is a filthy, lazy slattern. Most Unlike our own dear Queen of the expat arch-social climbers, Arianna herself (and all the shiny Hollywood pals of hers Alcindor would love to be introduced to as a result of being invited to blog at HuffPo.). All are shined, waxed botoxed and coiffed to a pitch beyond even a dog’s ability to hear, much like Tony himself.

I have to quote a bit to give the true flavour of just how asinine it is:

One of my all time favorite pastimes is people-watching, and ever since I moved to New York I couldn’t be happier. It’s like being part of a giant fashion show and the sidewalk is the runway. Every street, every block, every neighborhood has another real life model strutting her stuff in this great metropolis.

Then I started to look a little closer…

To my dismay, not all was what it seemed. Not all of you were paying attention! Not all were taking the time to pull it together! When I looked a little closer, things were good from afar, but far from good. My rose-colored glasses are cracked and some of you are skipping whole steps — things you forgot to do. You think no one notices or you simply couldn’t be bothered.

THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE, LADIES!

[…]

Undergarments: A HUGE DETAIL. Stained bras, panties, slips, cami’s, stockings with holes, things with broken elastic and anything held together with a safety pin must be thrown away – immediately! Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Once it is discovered (by accident or by circumstance) you’ll thank me for the lack of embarrassment you won’t have to suffer through. Didn’t your mom always say make sure you had on clean undies in case you got into an accident? So PLEASE make sure all of your underpinnings FIT CORRECTLY! Most women are wearing the wrong size bra. If you have back fat, you may not be fat! You just might have on the wrong bra. Lastly, SPANX under everything! This is the equivalent of liposuction without the surgery.

Yeah, right. If I went out in the street right now and made every man in it drop their pants (and who hasn’t sometimes wanted to do that), I suspect not one would be found unafflicted by crotch rot, saggy elastic, pee stained Y-front or a well-aged collection of superimposed skidmarks.

I know this. I do laundry.

Alcindor goes on to damn all of us who can’t afford the upkeep of even a basic style, let alone a monthly colour and cut or a weekly salon blowdry (those who don’t go to the hairdresser at all don’t even register on his radar):

Hair: This is a very sensitive subject so I’ll make it short and sweet. Whatever your hairstyle, make sure it is maintained — we’re talking color and cut. You know those crazy commercials where people are swinging their hair and loving it — it could be you. It’s no joke. I have a few beautiful friends in LA with that kind of hair. They didn’t always have that hair, but a great hairdresser is worth a million bucks!

“I have a few beautiful friends in LA”. Get you, Mr Big Shot. No, of course they didn’t always have that hair – not until they moved to somewhere you can buy it by the yard.

All it takes is money, and hey, haven’t we all got plenty?

I thought of posting an incandescently eloquent response to this arrant nonsense at the HuffPo, pointing out the socio-politico-economic context of the constant ‘beauty’ busywork that’s expressly designed and promoted by commerce to keep women too paranoid or neurotic to actually protest their subjugation to pointless routines and expenditure. Then I thought nah, fuck it.

Alcindor’s foray into blogging is another attention seeking stunt from a career attention seeker, so this is the first and last attention he’ll get from me. Not that it will or even should bother him any, up there in the rarefied air of minor celebrity HuffPo bloggerdom. I’m sure he has many more important people to toady up to and PR junkets to attend to notice some NL blogger calling him a wanker.

But dammit, he pissed me off. And I bet he has skidmarks and hair on his back too.

“For now you can still buy a Beemer with your dignity intact. The question is, should you?” *

Capitalism, Fashion in Action!, Feminism, Media, Parenting, Sexuality, Women
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A used beemer, that is.

Why so? Thanks to Egalia at Tenessee Guerilla Women for drawing my attention to this sick little ad campaign for BMW:

As it’s described in Salon:

Broadsheet: [A] beautiful young woman — presumably naked and lying in bed — wearing a come-hither look and a crown of blond curls. In small print scrawled across her bare shoulder, it reads: “You know you’re not the first.” As your eyes drift to the bottom of the advertisement — and the top of her chest — you learn that it’s an advertisement for BMW’s premium selection of used cars. Used cars, used women — get it?! And, finally, there’s BMW’s slogan in the bottom right-hand corner, which takes on a whole new meaning: “Sheer Driving Pleasure.”

I’d also add – how old is that girl? 13? 14? She could be 18; but even so the aim is to make her look pubescent, yet still available.

The air of innocence suggests virginal chastity, yet the pose of passive abandon says ‘here, take me’. The makeup is deliberately designed to accentuate the dewy skin, pouting mouth and cherubic curls of extreme youth; yet the direct gaze gives an implicit promise of sexuality. It’s all very carefully done and just to make sure you get the message, it’s made explicit in the slogan. “You know you’re not the first”. Oh well, that’s all right then. Lech away at the child.

No doubt BMW’s marketing droids are aiming for a discrete demographic – and from the message sent by this ad, I’d say that’s the repressed-paedophile-with-aspirational-tendencies-in-a-boring-job-that-doesn’t-pay quite enough-for-a-posh-car market segment. I bet the research people found their target audience goes on holiday in Costa Rica or Thailand as well; but what I’d find even more interesting is the range of media this ad’s been placed in. That would tell us even more about whether BMW sees their customers as potential paedophiles or not. But on the content of that ad alone, I think that were I a second-hand beemer driver, I’d be just a tad insulted.

[First spotted by Copyranter.]

* Jeremy Clarkson, The Sunday Times

Comment of The Day: Fashion Victim

Comment of the Day, Fashion in Action!, Internet, Life under Capitalism, Media
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Maybe this commenter to Charlie Brooker’s latest column about Ascot hats is a trifle overinvolved. But is he right, is the thrill gone?

supercereal

Jun 23 08, 02:20am (about 7 hours ago)

I’m actually really disappointed in you, I used to look forward to getting the guardian every Monday just to read your column, I’ve been a fan for a long time, since I was working a crappy minimum wage job in a newsagents putting myself through college and on my break I’d read your column on the back of G2 with the yellow cartoon, it was really witty and insightful with original ideas. I got into the Guardian because of you and now I get it every day. I live in Ireland and don’t get whatever channel screenwipe is on, so I tracked all the episodes down online and really like them, I don’t buy papers on weekends, but I track down your screenburn column online, that’s how I got into the guardian website last year and now I check it every time I’m online.

It’s two o’clock in the morning, and the only reason I’m online is to see your column before it’s in tomorrow’s paper.

I’m not just a casual reader, I’m a big fan, I was really happy for you when you got upgraded to a proper column inside G2….the reason I’m telling you and the whole internet this, the reason I registered just to post this comment, is so that you know I’m not just some dickhead taking potshots, like just saying something like [Charlie you silly monkey, i like hats, LOL, u are gay.]

I couldn’t give a fucking toss about hats, and to be honest I really don’t care what you think about them. Your columns have gotten progressively worse over the last few months, you’re just getting god damned lazy, so shape up or shut up cos it’s just depressing, you were one of the ones who told it like it is, you were one of the good ones, but now you’ve become one of the mob of tittering twats you despise, you don’t seem to have anything original to say any more. I won’t ever pick up the paper on a Monday with any sort of expectations of any kind about your column, I’ll still read it…along with the rest of the paper, but I won’t turn to that page in G2 first or I won’t be disappointed when they have a stand-in, you’re just another boring columnist with nothing to say…that’s all I have to say really. You’ve probably realised this the same as I have, you know deep down that you don’t have it any more, that you’re just phoning it in. You know when you write a bad column and you don’t need a stranger like me to tell you.

That’s all, just to let you know you lost a fan, I’m sure I’m not the only one, I’m not trying to be harsh so you’ll kill yourself in the bath with a lady razor or anything, I just feel that I’m not alone in this opinion and had to say something, I wanted to do it earlier but I couldn’t give you any more chances, I nearly did it last week (what a pile of balls) but this week was the last straw…bye.

Was it? Was it really? Was it really?

I came across Brooker’s loopy, Mr Angry viciousness through TVGohome. He has said what we all think but lack the eloquence to say about the crap being fed to us by the media, like a foul-mouthed suburban Chomsky but without the charm and with even stupider hair. Brilliant. Now he’s become what he despises, a lazy insider who phones it in for a fee. Yes, I know that’s always been his schtick, but when did he start believing in it?

I suppose this is all part of the accelerated lifecycle of writer stroke tv personalities in the New Media. How long has Brooker been a cult? About five years, all told, including the 2 years or so bubbling under online, and reaching a high point with Nathan Barley.In meeja whore terms that’s ancient. Ah well, live by the sword….

There’ll be another Angry Hip Young Person along in a minute anyway. Next!