Jamming

Sunday 1st October '06 74kg

I feel bad for not having updated this in such a while, but not that bad. I have had a blissful summer at home, doing nothing but shop, eat, paint and go for long walks in the countryside. I even made some jam. This, perhaps, being a good illustration of the slight obsessive-compulsive streak in my personality, as you have to wonder why I would spend several full weeks totally absorbed in the sticky and exhausting intricacies of jam making - eventually turning out approximately 15 jars of the stuff -when I don’t even really like jam. I normally have the attention span of a small kitten, but when something grabs me it really grabs me if you know what I mean. I am one of those annoying people who will play a song over and over until it makes myself and everyone else around me sick. Speaking of which, I brought a lot of fifties music over the holiday. I first acquired some a while back as a sort of joke, but it has kind of grown on me. I can only listen to it in a certain mood though. Now I know why everyone was so depressed in the fifties, having to listen to that crap all day. It’s just so militantly cheery, even the so-called blues. If you were at all down to start with that’ll finish you off, I swear.

~

It feels really odd to be back in the city after four months at home in the middle of nowhere. I have just gotten so accustomed to going out in public everyday with no make up and an outfit comprised of anything I could find on the back of my chair. No-one bats an eyelid at home no matter what you wear. The only situation in which they will is if you go out in a fully thought out and co-ordinated outfit with jewellery and make up to match, then they stare. Cagoules with a summer dress and wellies? Fine. Three mismatched jumpers, baggy shorts and socks with sandals? The height of normality. And you know what? I love it. Before I went to uni my general uniform was my brother’s old t-shirts about ten sizes too big, huge, baggy boy’s shorts that came well below my knees, and gigantic, boy’s black skate trainers with white socks. Now I have clothes coming out of my ears and never anything to wear. Welcome to womanhood.



Picture - me at the beach over the holidays - t-shirt, 2 jumpers, duffel coat, cagoul, wooly hat, wellies...

Something I have noticed recently is how much nicer people are to you when you look attractive. This works for both sexes. Whenever I go out looking good, often dressed up in my fifties gear, I have so much of an easier time of it with people. Being a naturally shy person with one of those miserable faces when I’m daydreaming that people just love to say “cheer up love, it might never happen” to, I have never done all that well with people. When you are dressed up pretty and cute and unthreatening people are just so much more accommodating and responsive. Without meaning to sound belittling, this effect can usually be achieved with men by getting your tits out, but girls can be a tad more difficult. There is one particular dress I own that illustrates this very well. It is a bright magenta nylon vintage number with tiny white dots on it. It has a high slash neck, short puffy sleeves and reaches to just below my knees. It resembles the party dresses I used to wear as a child in the 80s and could not in any sense of the word be described as sexy. It is cute though, and stylish, although not particularly flattering. Every time my one of my friends sees me in it he bursts out laughing. Every time I wear it out I receive no male attention, (Although frankly, the way I am going, this could be nothing to do with the dress at all) but girls just love it. I get complimented hundreds of times on it. People just walk up and start talking to me, something that never happens in real life, ever. I’m not entirely sure what point if any I am trying to make here, except the one I have made before, in order to get on in life you need to be attractive enough for people to like you, yet no so attractive as to pose a threat. Being cute helps, people think you are innocent and delicate and need protecting. People around here always assume that about me – that butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth. It’s always a good indicator of how well someone really knows me if they can see past all that. So far no one here has.

~

A while ago I was watching tv and flicked onto the second half of one of those ubiquitous makeover shows that seem to be everywhere at the moment. “Take a person and see if we can’t transform them from a perfectly nice, friendly looking (If a little frumpy) Mother figure to a false, frumpy chav in half an hour.” Only this was one with a twist. It was for men. Te basic premise of the show was that they took three obviously ugly men, one fat, one short, one tall, (Rather like Boggis and Bunce and Bean in the Fantastic Mr Fox) took them out, and tried to convince them that there was nothing wrong with the way they looked - they could have any woman in the room falling at their feet – it was just a matter of self confidence. Now when was the last time they did that for women? Even the best shows in which they actually do try to make a half hearted stab at rebuilding their shattered self confidence, (Probably ruined in the first place by all the other shows in which they ritualistically rip women to shreds as if nothing else in the world mattered apart from the bags under their eyes) they still focus most of the show on a makeover, surgical or not. It just makes me so angry. The message we are given by the media is that nothing about women matters except that they look young and sexy. Never mind their personality, it is all negated if they don’t measure up to some impossible standard no one knows exactly who set, flatter men’s egos and end up looking and sounding exactly like all the other brainwashed automatons out there. Whilst simultaneously being berated by the very same “fashion gurus” for not having their own definitive signature style. Men on the other hand can look and act how they want, but so long as they believe they are god’s gift (Not usually a difficult feat in my experience) all women will fall for them. And you know what the sad and awful thing is? It’s true. Even on the program itself they proved it. They took these hideous men with absolutely nothing interesting about them other than the fact they were pathetic enough to actually go on national television for help picking up women, put them in a room full of attractive, normal women and guess what happened? The women fell at their feet. It makes me sick.
And yes, I am aware of the ironic ramifications of this project.

~


You would not believe the hassle I have been through trying to get heated rollers. In order to complete the fifties look, it appears that in addition to the side parting and slightly shorter hair, it needs to be gently curled. Not only that but you just cannot get the size heated rollers I need anymore, which is ridiculous because I’ve seen them on tv. You can get non-heated ones, but not heated. I actually tried the non heated – a disaster of course, but it was amusing that the sweet little old lady in the shop in rural Devon that I brought them from didn’t bat an eyelid at me coming in, in a full fifties outfit and buying an armful of gigantic rollers. She probably hadn’t noticed things had changed since the fifties in the first place bless her, she probably thought that that was a perfectly normal and respectable way for a young lady to dress. Which of course it is, ahem…