‘It’s never too early to start using it,’ she replied, shocked. Then she launched into a description of Ahas and CC-something’s and then listed loads of and products. It was far too much for me to cope with. I tried to concentrate but I was distracted by the line where her face stopped being orange, just above her neck. Then, out of guilt for not listening, I bought everything – well, not everything but a lot of things, anti-cellulite, anti-wrinkle, anti-oxidant, and I didn’t even know what that was.
Then I went to the shoe department, determined to buy something nice, glamorous, something totally opposite to me. I looked at the shoes on the shelves, rows and rows of them. I wondered if they missed their partner, with only one of them being displayed. Did the right miss the left and vice versa? And did they have conversations to pass the time? Did they comment on the people who tried them on? ‘Oh, God, please don’t let her become my next owner, she has really ugly feet.’ What would they say about me? I was going mad. I found a pair of high black shoes. They were beautiful: they extended my five-foot-seven height to six foot. God, they made me feel like the tallest, sexiest woman in the world. They also made my legs look good. I had to have them. I knew I’d never be able to walk in them but, hell, I could just stand. I took the shoe to the counter to reunite it with its partner and on the way I spotted it. A lonely brown suede mule that had been reduced. And it was a size five and a half, my size. It looked so lonely and neglected sitting on its own that I just had to have it. I bought my two pairs of shoes and, for a minute, I felt great about it.
Of course, the euphoria I experienced when I left the shop with my packages was short-lived. The cold afternoon delighted in making me realise I had been conned by the most evil of con-artists: the beauty-counter sales woman. I had also been tricked by a pair of shoes.
Today is about cosmetics. It’s not just vanity, it’s insecurity and fear. An obsession with beauty is something that seems to contradict the modern fuck-you woman, but it’s important to us all – and not only to those trying to hook a man. Self-image is important; looking the best you can makes you feel good, simple and true. If the cosmetics industry were a man, it would be called a bastard. It’s the sort of man who plays on your vulnerabilities and exploits them. Oh, God, excuse the lecture. I’m just bitter and on the verge of bankruptcy. Because I was not going to be able to go shopping for a while, a long while I went, and bought a bunch of women’s glossy magazines and decided to hibernate.
I went home, to find my friends lounging around.
‘What’s going on? You guys are normally out.’ I threw my packages on the floor.
Jess picked them up. ‘Blimey, you must be depressed.’
‘Thanks, Jess.’ I flopped on to the sofa.
‘We’re here because none of us has any money so we’re staying in. Let’s all have dinner tonight,’ Sarah said.
‘As long as it’s not pizza,’ Jess said. Sophie hit her. But I did laugh.
‘I hate to tell you this, Ru, but these products don’t work.’ Sophie looked very upset. We all laughed.
‘I didn’t really expect them to.’ I distributed the magazines and we all started reading.
‘Oh, my God,’ Jess exclaimed.
‘What?’
‘There’s a diet here I haven’t tried.’
We all looked at her in disbelief. There’s no diet Jess hasn’t tried.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I just have to eat cabbage soup for about a month.’
‘Yuk,’ Sophie said, looking at her perfect figure.
It seemed that the cabbage shop was about to make some money.
Sophie doesn’t ever diet. She exercises but she doesn’t diet. Most girls hate Sophie on sight – she’s tall, slim, and she eats whatever she wants. But she’s nice, so you can’t mind too much. Jess, however, is always on a diet – the hip and thigh, liquid diets, Weight Watchers, the F-plan, food-combining, pills; she tried not eating but she fainted. She tried the cigarette and coffee diet, and every designer diet on the market. And she goes to a gym three times a week. Jess is obsessed. She isn’t overweight, it’s just that now the term overweight seems to refer to anyone who is bigger than a size eight. Jess wants to be the same size as Sophie and she will do anything in her power to get what she wants. I tell her regularly that no one is as slim as Sophie, apart from Kate Moss – and, anyway, Jess couldn’t be like Sophie, she’s built differently. It really annoys me that fashion and media try to make women the same shape (thin) and convince other women that they have something wrong with them if they don’t conform. I think I’ll put them on trial along with the cosmetics industry.
Jess has size twelve bones, not fat. That’s her build and it suits her. Jess couldn’t be a size ten, although it’s not worth trying to tell her that. Her mother once told me that no matter how much she dieted Jess would always be size twelve, she can’t change her bones. As I’ve said before Jess doesn’t like to be defeated: at the moment she’s saving up for liposuction.
When Sarah left university she was overweight, not fat but bordering on it – too much beer. As soon as she started her job the weight just fell off and she became slim and normal for a girl of five foot three. Jess went berserk. She followed Sarah around, ate what she ate and even called her at work every lunchtime to find out what she was having. Sarah said her diet was just ‘sensible eating’ and she said she had to lose weight because fat women are discriminated against in the workplace. I took her word for it. She also said that when she was overweight too many strange skinny boys had paid her too much attention. Sarah got sick of Jess trying to work out how she lost weight, so to get her own back she told Jess that toothpaste was high in fat content and had loads of calories. Jess flew into a rage, called Boots and screamed at them to invent a low-calorie one. Sarah found it hilarious, but when she told her the truth Jess refused to speak to her for a week.
I don’t think for a minute that I have the perfect body – I’d be hugely deluded if I did – but I have a good reason for not being like Jess. You see, I’m as paranoid as the next girl about my body. I held my stomach in every time I slept with Ben – every day – I hate my thighs and have a huge bum, but the alternative to paranoia for me is even worse; diet and exercise. I have tried dieting a couple of times, but it’s like giving up smoking: impossible. I ate cottage cheese and crisp breads, but then I’d have to have chocolate because I was still hungry. I realised I was too lazy to diet, so I gave up. Then came the exercise. Sophie and Jess went to aerobics at university, so I joined them once. It was awful. I hadn’t known how uncoordinated I was until I tried aerobics: my arms wouldn’t move at the same time as my legs and I didn’t know what I was doing. The next day I ached so much I couldn’t go again.
Ben used to run every day and he persuaded me to go with him once. By the time I reached the end of our street I was huffing and puffing and Ben got really cross because I wanted to go home. He tried to get me to run every day to build up my stamina, so I had to hide my trainers and say they were lost. I made a choice: I would accept the way I was and just live with it, no guilt, no misery. That was my sensible choice. I think you’re only allowed one obsession (more is unhealthy) and I was obsessed with love.
Jess went to buy cabbages and I continued to read my magazines. I have to admit I’m not a faithful buyer of women’s mags, so reading them was a real revelation. I wasn’t a very good woman. I wasn’t a very good twenty-first-century woman. My life wasn’t how it should have been at all. And my bottom was definitely too big. I qualified on only a few points: I had an education, I had a sense of humour and I had friends. But I didn’t have a great career or aspire to one, I didn’t have a boyfriend or a fast car or a shit-hot apartment. I was a failure. I read articles on how to have twenty-five orgasms in five minutes, female circumcision, which made me feel sick, how beauty queens get taken advantage of, how to tell if your best friend is after your man, how to tell if your best friend is really your best friend, how to spend a mi
llion pounds on cosmetics (already done that), how to get promoted, how to ask for a pay rise, how to tell if your boss is your enemy, how to improve your career prospects, how to spend thousands of pounds on a holiday, how to diet without cutting out food, how to diet by cutting out food, exercise of the month, how to make your boyfriend fall in love with you, how you can tell when he doesn’t want to commit, and I also looked at a hell of a lot of clothes. It was exhausting.
I looked at Sarah, who was reading how to make a million by the time you’re thirty. ‘Sarah, are women really like this?’
‘No, Ru, most of the women who read these mags are like us, but with aspirations to be like that.’
‘But I’m not like that. It sounds awful,’ I said.
‘Me neither,’ Sophie said, although she was often in these magazines herself.
‘It’s OK, you don’t have to be. I mean, the have-it-all image is the perfect life. Most of us have more realistic visions.’
‘It’s just a myth, isn’t it?’
‘Yup.’
‘So no woman is going to have twenty-five orgasms in five minutes?’
‘No.’
‘And I don’t have to look or behave like these women in here?’
‘No.’
‘Thank God. I think I’ll write and suggest some more appropriate articles.’ I went off to get a pen. Sophie and Sarah exchanged glances. Jess bounded back in.
‘Jess, what do you think of these magazines?’ I asked.
‘Invaluable. I would never be able to live my life without their guidance.’ She looked hurt as we all collapsed in giggles.
I started thinking of making my list of things I wanted to find in a women’s magazine. Rules for women to abide by when having safe sex. The first is that you always hold your stomach in until the man marries you, the second is use a condom. Of course, if you have a flat stomach and don’t need to hold it in then you don’t deserve to have sex. Instead of investing in an expensive Wonderbra, fold your arms across your chest, just like you’d do if you were really cold, it has the same squash-together, push-up effect. An article on eligible men not afraid of commitment and where to find them. No matter how fashionable it becomes, never wear brown tweed. Which famous people are looking for love and where to find them. Fad diets and pills don’t work. Only diet if you’re really fat. Beauty doesn’t come in a tube, babe. Being single is not a disease. Not wanting a career is not a disease. Then I would read it regularly.
I tried out my list on my friends. They were a little unimpressed, apart from Sophie, who agreed with me.
‘Ru, you’re just not thinking about catering for today’s women. We don’t want to read that stuff, we want to know how to have it all.’ Jess looked stern.
‘Oh, God, here’s an article for you, Ruthie, one about house-husbands.’ Sophie passed me the magazine she was reading.
I read about men who stayed at home, looked after the house and the kids and did the shopping. ‘I think the idea of having a house-husband is horrific,’ I said.
‘Me too,’ Jess agreed.
‘Really? I thought you’d appreciate the concept of a downtrodden man chained to the kitchen sink.’ I was surprised.
‘Oh, God, no. I want a successful husband with an interesting job. No one will be impressed by me having a house-husband.’
‘Well, I don’t want one because then I’d have to work,’ I said.
‘If having a house-husband is dull so is having a housewife. Equality, Ru. The only people who should be in your house during the day are housekeepers.’
‘But I don’t think the majority of the population can afford housekeepers,’ I pointed out.
‘Oh, I’m sure they’re quite cheap.’
If I live in my own little world, God knows whose world Jess lives in.
I carried on to read a debate about whether to take your husband’s name when you got married and should you be Ms or Mrs.
‘Jess, you’re Ms not Miss, aren’t you?’
‘Of course. Women should not be status-graded according to their marital status. I refuse to be judged like that.’
‘OK. Sarah, are you Ms?’
‘Yup.’
‘Same reasons as Jess?’
‘Yes, Ru. The point is that my name is Ms Sarah Rogerson. When, and more to the point if, I get married, my name will be Ms Sarah Rogerson.’
‘So as well as not adopting Mrs, you’re not going to adopt your husband’s surname?’ I asked.
‘Why should I change my name?’ Sarah asked.
‘Exactly. Men are Mr and that hasn’t changed ever, I don’t think. Also the man gets to keep his surname. It’s so unfair,’ Jess added.
‘OK, so what happens when you have children?’
They looked at me blankly.
‘Which surname do they take?’
‘It’s so unfair. Men keep their name, then they get the woman to take it, then they get to pass it on to their children. What do women get, huh? A bloody raw deal, that’s what. I mean, the only way to solve the problem is to give them both surnames, but that means hyphenating them and that’s just tacky.’ Jess was on a tirade now and I was beginning to wish I’d never started this.
‘I totally agree. Ru, we have to give up our identity when we get married. Even in this day and age we’re expected to. It’s unfair. Men give up nothing and gain everything,’ Sarah added.
‘Oh, I’m sure you’re right. But do you think that the majority of the people who call themselves Ms are married or single?’
‘What?’
‘Well, I’m interested to know. Calling yourself Ms is supposed to stop people from knowing your marital status. Do you think that the people who don’t want their marital status known are single or married?’
‘Both, of course,’ Jess said and Sarah nodded.
I think the majority of people who call themselves Ms are like Jess and Sarah.
After reading all the magazines, I needed a lie-down. My education had greatly improved with what I had read, but I felt like shit. It was definitely time to live. I’d said it a thousand times before but I hadn’t done anything about it. No, I’d just let myself get into loads of irritatingly awful situations and that didn’t count as living, it counted as disaster. It was time for me to stop suffering from Miss Havisham syndrome and become an embracer of life. Yes, that was what I needed to do.
Chapter Ten
A gentleman’s guide to post-date etiquette. After meeting a young lady at a party or taking her out for a date, a gentleman will always help her into her coat and escort her home. He should take her to her front door, but if this is not possible then he must put her into a taxi. It is correct and necessary to telephone her the next day to enquire if she reached home safely. A law is about to be passed to ensure that this takes place.
***
With my new-found optimism, or nearly optimism, I embraced, or sort of embraced, the first day of the new month. I think I’m ready for a new year, so here we go. My new life starts right now. My girlfriends weren’t around and I needed to go out to celebrate so I called Thomas.
‘Thomas, it’s Ru. I need you to take me out tonight.’
‘Why?’
‘Because no one else is here and I want to go out.’
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘I don’t care, I just want to go out.’
‘Is this the pizza-guy thing still?’
‘No.’
‘You’re not going to cry, are you?’
‘Only if you don’t take me out. Please, I need some fun and you’re the only friend I’ve got and I promise I won’t talk about Ben all night and I promise I won’t cry.’
‘OK, I’ll be there in an hour.’ I hung up and thought how much I loved Thomas.
He turned up on time and I hugged him. I was going out.
‘Listen, let’s go to the Windmill, then maybe we can get a curry or something,’ Thomas suggested.
I agreed. ‘So, how are you?’ I asked.
‘I’m OK – I’m trying anyway. Come on, let’s get a drink.’
In the pub, with our drinks, I felt safe. I decided that I would be positive tonight and for once not bore people to death with my problems.
‘You have had a run of bad luck. God, Ruthie, I can’t believe what a disaster you are.’
So much for that. ‘I know.’
‘It’s not about careers and stuff, it’s about your personal life. You need to get that bastard friend of mine out of your system, you really do. You don’t deserve what he did to you, and Johnny and I both told him that, but we can all be horrible and I’m sorry.’ Thomas looked apologetic.
‘It’s nice not to be lectured on careers for once; come on, tell me more about how horrid men are.’ We laughed. I liked the honesty I knew I’d get with him and I also liked knowing that we would never sleep together.
‘You say you don’t understand men, but we’re simple, really. We like beer and girls and sometimes we’re ruled by our penis, but we do have brains – some of us – and we can be nice and even sensitive. But women, well, I’ll never understand women. I mean, you wanted equality and you got it, but it’s never enough. Women want to be on top, they want more than equality. I think women nowadays are scary.’
‘Only because you know Jess and Sarah. Not all women are like that. I know some see men as the enemy, which is stupid, but most still think you have a valuable place in this world. We still have deep emotions and we always will. That stops us from becoming really scary.’
‘Maybe, but I don’t think you’ll stop until you’ve got us as slaves. You’ll treat us as badly as we treat you. God, what a nasty thought.’
‘I didn’t realise you were so bothered by this.’
‘I’m not, I’m just saying, that’s all.’
‘Yeah, well, you sound terrified.’
Rubber Gloves or Jimmy Choos? Page 18