I am beginning to think the early feminists were right about burning their bras. Mind you, there is a big debate these days about whether that historic event ever actually happened, although I’m sure I’ve seen file footage.
Whatever – I hope it did happen, as I’ve always rather related to it, although the concept quickly became such a cliché of the women’s liberation movement that it took on the taint of the ridiculous and was often used to belittle the whole struggle. Still is. Which is probably why feminist academics are now disowning it.
‘Ooh, one of those bra-burners are you?’ was certainly a classic ‘humorous’ put-down when I started out in the workplace. I remember one particularly odious public school pig saying it to me when he noticed that all the books I had bought in the literary editor’s annual book sale happened to be published by Virago, which only published works by women writers, many of them long-neglected masterpieces.
‘Trying to make a statement, are we?’ he sneered. ‘Bit of a bra-burner, are we?’ No, actually, ‘we’ just happen to like Rosamund Lehman and Eudora Welty. Grrrrrr. It still rankles with me and it happened back in 1986. What a farthog.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the whole issue of bras and bosoms recently because in the past week I have come across two ‘ground-breaking’ new products concerning that area of the female anatomy.
‘Nippits – The Perfect Solution’ are ‘sheer, featherlight, latex-free, adhesive nipple concealment strips that are totally effective in preventing visibility…’ Not convinced? There’s more: ‘Unlike any other product, they do not cover the aureole and are padless, making a smooth natural look.’
Now, what exactly is natural about having no nipples? The only women I know who don’t have any lost them to devastating and essential breast cancer surgery. Why would anyone want to buy pieces of sticky-backed plastic to hide their nipples? They should feel thrilled still to have them.
I know it can be a bit embarrassing if your headlights come on in a cold room among mixed company, but it shouldn’t be. Nipples are simply part of a woman’s body and it’s only other people’s attitudes to them that make them ‘dirty’, something that shouldn’t be shown in public. Somehow it is all right these days to reveal practically the entire breast, but not the outline of an erect nipple. If you ask me, that’s because a fat wedge of visible breast is a good perve for the onlooker, while hard nipples represent active female arousal, which is still taboo. But then, I would think that. I’m one of those bra-burners.
The other product I’ve recently been sent are stick-on strips to hold your breasts up, so you can go braless, but still maintain that perky silicon look. I’m not sure why these piss me off so much – apart from the thought of ripping them off your bare skin afterwards – but I think it’s related to the same mindset that created killer corsets and bound feet. I’m just not comfortable (sorry) with the idea of physical distortion to be more ‘attractive’. And don’t even start me on breast enlargement surgery.
What we need to leave behind is the idea that bosoms without the perkiness of youth are somehow offensive. Southbound breasts are a fact of life and gravity, and the glorious office of motherhood, in particular, changes your boozies for ever. Tuppence in a long sock is the best description I’ve heard of the maternal breast, but does that mean I have to strap them up with gaffer tape?
As a casual glance at National Geographic will reveal, this is not something that bothers African tribeswomen. I don’t know exactly what their stand is, but maybe a breast showing obvious signs of suckling is a source of pride to them. In our culture it seems to be a mark of shame.
And now I’m off to burn my Nippits.
All change
One of the worst aspects of being young in the 1970s was communal changing rooms. It seems hard to imagine now, in these days of Witchery’s pale wood floors, designer fitouts and helpful salespeople, but back then young fashion stores had one big room for everyone to try things on in.
Just girls, mind you, not pervy unisex – but believe me, it was vile enough. On a hot summer Saturday the communal fitting room of Miss Selfridge’s London flagship store was as fetid as the Wallabies’ change shed after an All Blacks clash – and I have it on good authority that the equivalents in Melbourne and Sydney were just as noisome. Honky-tonky in the extreme.
Not only were there other people’s feet to cope with, there were other people’s armpits and other people’s underwear (or lack of it) to confront as well. Not to mention the bastards who were very interested in other people’s handbags.
The constant threat of your hard-earned Saturday job money being liberated from your clutches meant that you had to keep one eye on how ugly, fat and foul you were looking in that denim jumpsuit, another on how good the tall, slim girl in the other corner was looking in the same thing, and another on your bag, which was not easy, as you can imagine.
Then there was all the bending, arm-lifting, huffing and grunting associated with trying on ill-made clothes that are slightly too small for you. And it was very disconcerting, lifting your head from a downward position to see straight up someone’s bum.
In this regard the communal set-up was particularly interesting in jeans shops, with everybody lying twitching on the floor like half-dead flies, trying to zip them up. The next stage of the jeans-fitting process was the bending over to tuck under about three metres of excess denim, followed by Russian dancer bouncing crouches, to see whether it would ever be possible to sit down in them. It was like being accidentally caught onstage during a big production number in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
Another danger of communal fitting rooms was the scary gangs of rough girls shopping in packs. You seriously had to make sure one of them didn’t catch you accidentally looking at her – ‘What choo lookin’ at?’ – and if you had brought in something to try on that they fancied, like, say, an egg-yolk-yellow fun-fur bomber jacket, they’d have it off your peg and on their sweaty bodies in a minute, daring you to object. It was particularly interesting when they did this with something you already owned.
These terrifying types were just one of several reasons why you would never venture into those hellholes without your own posse of gal pals. Apart from needing a sounding-board for the obvious ‘Do I look very fat in this?’ questions (usually answered without your best friend taking her eyes off herself in the mirror), you needed protection and a bag-handler.
Woe betide the girl who shopped alone in those places, because if you’d brought the wrong size in, you had to get completely re-dressed and head back out into the dark and noisy melee of the shop floor – carrying all your stuff and all the garments you were still considering – to try to find the right one.
Plus you would lose your crucial corner pozzie, with two mirrors and two hooks, and might even have to endure the worst of tortures: the middle of the room try-on, with all your possessions scattered around on the floor like handbags at a disco, dodging fellow shoppers, while trying to get sight of yourself in a mirror.
Considering what I went through back then in the pursuit of fashion, it’s a miracle I wasn’t put off shopping for life. And probably a pity.
Trump tonsure
One of the most satisfactory trends to develop over recent years, in my opinion, is for men who are losing their hair just to plunge in and have the lot cropped off.
It is such a bold and positive statement that I always think says a lot about the chap in question. The kind of things it says are: I’m practical, I’m confident and I think I’ve got a nice-shaped head. I applaud those men.
Which is why I am sitting here in a state of shock looking at a picture of Donald Trump. I have been staring at it now – and the others in the same article about him, his lovely new wife and his lovely new money – for about ten minutes, because I just can’t get over it.
Mr Trump is clearly losing his hair, but not for him a trip to the barber for a number two; oh no, he has opted instead for the comb-over. That most terrible of ha
ir choices, far worse than the weave, or even the full-on wig. Even a glammetal perm is a better look than a comb-over.
And it gets worse. Donnie’s do is not even your normal comb-over arrangement, with a special long piece of hair growing on one side of the head, which is pulled over and glued just above the other ear. It’s a comb-forward. In fact, it starts so far down his neck, it could be back hair he’s using. It’s a shocker.
If he ever gets caught in a brisk wind – and it can fairly whistle down those Manhattan concrete canyons he so loves to build on – that mat of hair must fly up like a trapdoor. If gravity then deposits it where it belongs, at the back of his head, he must look like a heavy-metal roadie in a bespoke Brioni suit – which is the only brand he wears these days, according to this interview.
‘I used to pride myself on buying very inexpensive suits,’ says the Donster, something I find easy to believe, looking at these pictures.
‘Over the years, I’ve learned that is wrong. These days I go for Brioni, whose service and attention to detail is second to none. The way we dress says a lot about us before we ever say a word.’
Too true, Trumpman, so please explain – how can someone who has enough savvy to appreciate the finest suits on earth possibly walk away from the mirror with his hair like that?
Because if, as according to his own theory, his suit is saying: ‘I’m incredibly rich and discerning, too – I know top schmutter when I see it and only the best is good enough for Donnie Boy,’ what on earth does he think his hair is saying?
Well, my first suggestion for that speech bubble competition was: ‘I’m not middle-aged. And that’s an order.’ But thinking about it a little more, I started to wonder if it might not be something more along these lines: ‘I’m not middle-aged. Please?’
But really I can’t decide if walking around with such a blatant and unconvincing denial of the truth on his head is an act of supreme over-confidence, tragic insecurity, or just plain self-delusion.
I’m mostly inclined towards the latter, because the person that Trumpton’s rug puts me instantly in mind of is Michael Jackson. It smacks of the same inability to see oneself clearly in the mirror.
There is an official medical condition in relation to people with eating disorders, called ‘body image dysmorphia’, describing what happens when a skeletal anorexic looks in a mirror and sees Fatty Bigbum looking back.
Trumpo clearly has an advanced case of rug dysmorphia. Maybe he sees himself as he was aged twenty-five smiling back, which must be lovely for him, but really, he does need to be told the truth.
So can someone please ask Elton John to call him with some useful numbers?
The young
I recently attended a very marvellous event at a house near where I live. The owners are generous people of artistic inclination and every once in a while, when the mood takes them, they throw open the doors to their sprawling lower floor and fill it with friends and friends of, for an evening of hearty food and live music (and quite a lot of wine). Just because they can, really.
The night I went, there were five female performers, a mixture of amateur and professional, with one once-well-known cabaret singer coming out of retirement to make us all hoot and roar; and another who sings like she is channelling Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Janis Joplin simultaneously. Fabulous stuff.
Really, the whole thing was bliss, but apart from the generally life-affirming effect of live music and people who can be bothered, there was something else which made the evening quite magical. The hosts have children in their mid-twenties and they were there, along with a crowd of their friends.
They were so beautiful.
It was like having a flock of exotic birds or butterflies in the room, as they flitted around in wonderfully eccentric clothes they had mostly designed themselves. (The mother of the house had an iconic fashion label in the 1970s, so it is in their blood.)
And I wasn’t the only one who noticed it. Several of my friends – we are all in our forties and beyond – also commented on it.
It wasn’t that these young people were amazingly Gucci ad/Natalia Vodianova/Gemma Ward/film star beautiful. It was a more complex combination of above-average looks with innate style, an air of open-minded intelligence, and then the final ingredient: youth.
I don’t think that ever before have I been so properly aware of the potency of fully ripened youth. I mean, it’s not exactly a new idea; I understood the concept, but it wasn’t until that night that I really appreciated its power.
I have seen gilded youth before en masse, in particular at Henley Regatta, possibly the greatest festival of erotica I have ever attended, in terms of beautiful young men at their peak. But back when I used to go to that event, I wasn’t much older than those glorious rowers myself, so checked them out from a different point of view. They were gorgeous among my peer group.
Only now, however, from the perspective of proper middle age, having recently, I think, come to accept that all vestiges of my own youth are completely gone, could I really appreciate the magic of youth.
It has an almost alchemical effect on the atmosphere in a room, I realised, spreading a sense of joy and celebration – even among those, like myself, who are looking back at it.
Just a couple of years ago, when I was still desperately clinging to the very last shreds of my own, I think the combined impact of their youthful radiance might have depressed me. I would have felt less-than, left out, left over. But the other night? I just felt joyous looking at them. And slightly relieved.
They say that youth is wasted on the young, but I can remember clearly the sense of responsibility I felt when I wore its mantle. The urgency always to look wonderful and to be having a spectacular time – to fulfil other people’s expectations of what it should be like to be Young – frequently made me miserable.
Now I can enjoy other people’s youth in a way that I couldn’t always relish my own and I take great comfort in the knowledge that as each generation fades to grey, another will be coming up into bloom behind them.
Far from a cruel reminder of former glories, the eternal wellspring of youth is the greatest possible comfort to those of us who are looking forward only towards old age.
Junk sadness
I am obsessed with junk. Op shops, garage sales, flea markets, boot fairs – I love them to an almost unhealthy degree. I can get as excited by what I might find in a big old junk shed as I would in Barneys or Harvey Nichols. Mostly. But sometimes junk shopping makes me so sad, I have to run away and eat a cake.
It happened this morning. A friend texted me to say that she’d seen some old chintz curtains in a local emporium that she thought I would love. So I headed over there on a weekday morning and it left me feeling lower than the Mississippi delta.
Maybe it was because junketeering is normally a hard-earned weekend treat and on a Thursday morning I really should have been in my office working, so I felt guilty rather than excited from the outset.
There was also the location of the shop. It’s in a poor part of town and while they style it as an ‘antiques centre’, really it’s just a group of slightly desperate traders selling off the sorry detritus of other people’s lives in a really sordid old shop. It smells of damp and old shoes.
Then there was the fact that the curtains weren’t my thing at all. I could see why my friend thought I would like them – they were flowery – but I really didn’t. So that added disappointment to guilt; a potent combo.
I should have just left then, but my tat addiction wouldn’t let me. I had to poke around in every corner of that hellhole in case the perfect old jug, or lidless teapot, or embroidered pillowcase, or amateur painting or souvenir headscarf was hidden there, just waiting for me to rescue it. It wasn’t. Although I did unearth some nice old nursery napkins for my household linen-obsessed best friend, who has a big birthday coming up.
But that find wasn’t enough to stave off the junk sadness – especially as I knew I was paying slightly too m
uch for them – and by the time I tore myself away from that godforsaken dive, I felt seriously low.
In the end it was the toys that really did it. Not just the sentimental idea of the determinedly cheerful old monkey with a jolly red fez on his head and stripy trousers that nobody wants any more – although there was one and it was pretty poignant. Poor old Bobo.
It was the collection of costume dolls from around the world that finally finished me off. I could so clearly see the little girl who used to own those dolls and the delight on her face every time Daddy brought her home a new one. It was so clearly a collection, once proudly displayed, and now it was just a heap in a box. I felt so lowered as I looked at them.
Then it was like the whole shop filled up with the ghosts of the children who had owned all the toys. I could see their little faces and feel their excitement at getting something new – and here it all was, reduced to dust and desolation.
Not that those children are necessarily dead now; they are probably living meaningful adult lives, but as the mother of a nearly four-year-old myself, any reminders of the fleeting nature of childhood become very unbearable.
Especially when your little angel is being looked after by someone else while you are supposed to be working, but actually you are wasting your life – and hers – in a foul junk shop.
I’m OK now. I’m in my office, I’ve had a bun, I’ve spoken to my daughter on the phone, and as the day has gone on I’ve become glad I had that intense junk shop tristesse, because it’s taught me a lesson.
I won’t go junketeering again until I feel I’ve earned it – and I’ll take her with me. And if she wants that monkey, she can have him.
Food scares
The late Dr Atkins has finally finished me off in regard to food. Now I don’t feel safe eating anything.
We’ve all been brainwashed into being terrified of fat for years. Cheese, butter, the nice crispy bits on a lamb chop, let alone a gorgeously creamy cheesecake, were the enemy. Thanks to my friend the wholefood guru, I have long known that it’s the transfats in hydrogenated vegetable oils which are the absolute killers, but it’s still hard to feel safe in relation to animal fats and one’s waistline, isn’t it? Especially if you have ever been on the Scarsdale Diet.
Gravity Sucks Page 5