Recipes that Keep On Giving: Honey Baked Lentils.

Too much of too-muchness is glorious, isn’t it?

Except for the day afterwards.

Returning to my humble abode after a lovely few days of camping out at the parents, I’ve decided to make good use of a much anticipated Christmas present and cook a dinner that, whilst richly flavoured and a pleasure to eat, is low-fat, low-sugar, low-GI, high fibre, gluten and dairy free, and vegetarian – even vegan, if you’re flexible.

Normally I don’t restrict what I eat in light of any of those particular dietary requirements. After Christmas, however, a meal that fits all of those bills is not so much of an act of restrictive discipline, but more of a compassionate gesture to my system, in the hopes that it will forgive me, for I know what I have done, and it was BAD.

As for the much anticipated present? Well, let me tell you – or rather, let me show you…




It’s a Le Creuset! Those of you who are serious cooks, or those of you who’ve just watched Julie and Julia, will know that Le Creuset is the Alpha Romeo of kitchen brands. And mine is red.



Along with kindness towards my body, taking this baby out for a test drive is a further compelling reason why tonight’s dinner needed to be Le Creusefied.

So, here is my recipe for Honey Baked Lentils, served with steamed snow peas and soft polenta. I hope that your tummy appreciates your compassion as much as I hope mine will.

Honey Baked Lentils with Steamed Snow Peas and Soft Polenta

Honey Baked Lentils – serves 4, and freezes beautifully.

1 cup black, brown, or green lentils
½ an onion, chopped
2 ½ cups water
2 teaspoons vegetable stock powder (ensure this is a vegan, dairy and gluten free brand if these are core values for you)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons honey (Here’s where the veganism of this dish is called into question. I personally think that bees are pretty darn happy buzzing around and making abundant rivers of honey, but I may just be an unenlightened philistine when it comes to bee rights. How about we all just do what we know is right in our hearts, m-kay?)
2 tablespoons oil (I use 1 tablespoon sesame oil, 1 tablespoon extra virgin)
2 garlic cloves, crushed
A large knob (about 4cm) ginger, grated. (As a side note, who decided that anything measuring 4cm merited the descriptor ‘a large knob’? Every recipe I read seems to use 4cm as the benchmark for large. In most other contexts a 4cm knob would warrant a completely different descriptor regarding size – ‘small’, ‘miniscule’, or ‘medically interesting’ are all adjectives I would use. Perhaps I should henceforth refer to all 4cm knobs of ginger as size challenged but lovely once you get to know it? But I digress…)
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons ground cumin
3 teaspoons chilli flakes (more or less, depending on how hot you like it)

1. Preheat oven to 100 Celcius.
2. In your Le Creuset…




or, if you’re still waiting on Santa to make you a member of the Kitchen Equipment Elite, in a medium sized casserole dish with lid, combine all ingredients.
3. Place casserole dish or Le Creuset in your preheated oven for 2 and a half hours, or until lentils are soft and most if the liquid has been absorbed. You can shorten the cooking time by increasing your oven temperature to about 160 Celsius, which means you only have to wait an hour and a half for dinner. The resultant lentils are still amazingly tasty, but will probably be even better the next day, as the flavours will have had more of a chance to get to know one another. Whereas if you let them mingle in a very slow oven for three hours, the resultant flavours have had time to work out their differences and harmonise into a beautiful marriage without the need for a period in the cold wasteland of the refrigerator.

Soft Polenta and Steamed Snow Peas – this makes enough for just me, so adjust to suit yourself and the number you are feeding accordingly. It’s also a nifty way to kill two birds with one stone – you cook the snow peas in the steam emitted by the water you have to heat for the polenta.

Approx. 250g super fresh snow peas, topped and tailed, and cut into largish chunks.
1/3 of a cup instant polenta (you can get this at most supermarkets – it’s in the isle with the flours and other baking goods).
Water
Salt, pepper, olive oil, and/or butter (again, depending on taste, dietary requirements, and how much cheese you ate at Christmas).

1. Place about a cup and a half of water in the bottom of a saucepan which can be fitted with your steamer. Set over a high heat.
2. Pop the snow peas into the steamer, arrange your steamer over your pot of water, which should be heating up nicely now, and cover with a lid, so as not to loose any precious steam.
3. Give the snow peas between one and three minutes, until they are done as you like. Remove from steamer, replacing the saucepan lid. If you’re the kind of person who likes to blanche things, then blanche your peas. I just think it wastes ice cubes and makes your peas cold, but if you like cold soggy vegetables I’ll only judge you a little.
4. Set the table, even if it’s just you, with a cheerful tablecloth, soft fabric napkins, pretty bowls (another Christmas present from my lovely big little brother and his lovely girlfriend) and nice cutlery.




Don’t argue with me, just do it, it’s a very important step in this recipe.




5. Select a dining companion from your bookshelf. Tonight, I’m dining with Paul Kelly.




Paul and I go way back, and his ‘mongrel memoir’, his words not mine, was a welcome addition to my Christmas stocking. It’s the perfect reading for a dinner as soothing and compassionate as this one.
6. By the time you’ve faffed around with the peas, the table, and the bookshelf, the water should be at a good boil (there is method to my madness, as mama-K often says). Add in your polenta. The packet says ‘in a slow, steady, stream’, but I throw it in the pot and stir like hell.
7. Continue to stir until your polenta thickens – this shouldn’t be much longer than a couple of minutes. As the title implies, I like my polenta relatively soft, so I can tell that it’s done because it’s about the consistency of thick porridge. It also has the propensity to spit boiling hot dollops of polenta out of the pot and onto the stovetop, or an unsuspecting forearm, when it’s at this stage.
8. When it’s all getting a bit too difficult, remove polenta from heat, and add in your salt, pepper, oil and/or butter.
9. Pile the polenta into a bowl, top with a spoonful of the lentils, and the snow peas.




10. Eat, read, and drink some sparkling mineral water. Fell your inner equilibrium mercifully restored.

Oh Come, All Ye Faithful.

N.B. This was originally supposed to be an excited post about a wonderful new dress that I recently acquired. It was going to be full of beautiful photos, capturing sumptuous fabric, vintage styling, and va-va-voom shaping, and would make you all green with envy. I’d been thinking about it all week.

Monday comes around. I position said dress on hanger, in front of some artfully arranged flowers, because that’s how I roll. And proceeded to shoot.



Oh dear.



Pride comes before a fall.



Multiple falls, as you can see.





No matter what I did, the dress looked awful. The only way that I was going to take a half decent photograph of it was to put the damned thing on, and photograph myself. But, of course, this blog is based on me being anonymous (like a fashion superhero, remember??) and so a photograph of the dress would, on account of the charming neckline detailing, result in a photograph of my face. Which ruled it out as an option.

Although this seems like a bit of a blah thing to happen on a Monday, it’s actually proved something I’ve long suspected. Photographs are not representative of the real world – or rather, they represent it, but often poorly. I swear to you, this dress looks amazing in real life. Maybe the inability to capture its amazingness lies in my photographic naivety. Be that as it may. But it proves the point that I have been stressing to many of you – and you know who you are – that my reluctance to be photographed is not entirely down to self consciousness, but to the fact that I actually don’t translate well into film, as an objective fact rather than a distorted self-perception.

Now that I have a top-five ranked dress that’s in the same boat as me, I feel a lot better about this. Because I’ve proven, once and for all, that beautiful things can look pez in photographs.

The only thing for me to do, dear readers, is to tell you the story of how I met this dress, excluding the photographs I originally imagined, and let you use your imaginations…

I’d just finished a particularly gruelling fieldwork session when I got one of those wonderful instinctual nudgings.

For some people, their instinctual nudgings take the form of warnings about impending disasters, or loved ones in peril. For me, 99 times out of 100, these instinctual nudgings are shopping related. They go something like this:

‘Behold, blessed child, and praise the name of style, for, in the hallowed halls of David Jones, await pair of shoes. Make haste and rejoicing, for they will be in your size and on sale. But hark, on the morrow they shall be vanished, and all that remains will be dust and size sevens.’

Or, alternately:

‘BE NOT AFRAID, oh sanctified stylist, for that thing-you-need-but-do-not-know-as-yet-that-you-need, is nigh! Look to your left – no, the other left – and ye who have eyes shall see that fabulous vintage bread bin on ye exalted shelf.’

Some people think that hearing voices means you’re insane, but I like to believe it just makes you a bit special. Kind of like the wise men in the Christmas story.

Anyway, I have long learnt to listen to these voices, as they are always – without fail – correct on all matters of purchasing. So, when I heard said voice:

‘Glad tidings to you, wanderer in the wilderness of an Unnamed Fieldwork Location. Under the distant star of Fyshwick, in the little town of Down Memory Lane, awaits a dress. Oh come, all ye faithful, and be joyful in the triumph of the perfect vintage dress.’

I knew that, in spite of my gnawing hunger, tired feet, and field notes that would grow expodentially the more hours I left between end of fieldwork and typing them up, I had no choice but to do as the voice said. So, off I trundled to Fyshwick.

Again, I wish to stress that this blog is in no way sponsored, and, just like last week’s post about the farmer’s markets, this is purely a savvy tip from one shopper to another, but you really must go to Down Memory Lane. Located at the very end of Geelong St in Fyshwick (just keep driving, when I say it’s at the very end I mean the absolute absolute very end), Down Memory Lane is a treasure trove of antiques, collectables, clothes, books and furniture. I make a point of going at least once a month, a whole lot more in the lead up to Christmas, and always come away with something wonderful at a bargain price. It’s also one of the cleanest and most organised establishments I know of, which makes shopping there doubly nice – no need to disinfect the new-to-you goods when you get them home.

Arriving at DML, as I’m abbreviating it, I dutifully listened to the voice in my head and started trawling the racks of vintage clothing. There was a lot there which I liked, but nothing that I LOVED. Nothing, that is, that I was moved enough to get naked for. I always think that you should apply the same rules to shopping for clothes as you do with boys. If you’re moved enough by them that you’re ready and willing to get naked for them, then it – the dress or the boy – will probably reward the time and the effort of disrobing.

I was beginning to think, after a good quarter hour trawl, that my instincts had failed me, and that perhaps my subconscious was merely generating a phantasmic excuse to get me out of some fieldwork that had boarded the train to headache land. I turned in the direction of the hat rack.

But then, ladies and gentlemen, I saw it. I want to avoid the cliché of the dress buried under a mound of others, shoved at the end of the rack, amongst a swathe of dresses that were extra small, but I can’t here, because it’s one hundred percent true. A chink of rich brown fabric poked out from between some pasty florals. I investigated, and my investigations were rewarded with the following:

An Australian made, early 60's, chocolate brown pure wool double-knit jersey boucle fitted sheath with rear vent.

Sing, chiors of angels, sing in exultation. I don’t need to add any more to the description above, because I’m sure you’ve got the picture in your mind. It’s the pinnacle of vintage perfection.

I raced to the change room, threw the dress over my head, and slid the zipper up my back.

Ding dong merrily on high, it fitted! Perfectly! A centimeter shorter than ideal, but the hem, being generous, could be adjusted. I couldn’t get back into my normal clothes and hand over my cash fast enough.

Driving back to write up my fieldnotes, I almost had an accident, so adoringly was my gaze focused on the parcel occupying the passenger seat. I like to think that the fashion gods were smiling down on me then, and protected me from a rather unfortunate incident. Which, for any parties concerned about my driving, was actually the fault of another vehicle to give way – I was just a bit slow activating my defensive driving skills on account of reverent worship.

It all worked out in the end, and the dress is now hanging on the drying rack, gently dropping its hem without the harsh assistance of a hot iron and steam. I will hem it, and wear it, and love it, all the days of my life, or at least until it falls off my back in tatters. Amen.

Farmer’s Market Fashion

My dear friend Mimi Goss and I have a standing date every Saturday morning with the Canberra Region Farmer’s Markets, to stock up on lovely fresh fruit and vegetables for the week.

Have you been? If not, you are missing out on, amongst other things, the cutest and most kitschy cherry bags. See below.



Apart from being fantastic fun, the markets are the best place in town to go to for cheap, excellent produce from the local region. Without going too far into the area of ethical consumption – that’s more Virginia Boots’s area – it’s a nice feeling to know that the dollars you spend at the markets are going straight to the farmer who grew the produce you’re buying, rather than your dollars going to Mr Coles or Mr Woolworths and a few measly cents to Mr Farmer.



But there are a few downsides to the markets. Firstly, you need to get there early, because the hipsters invade after 8.30am, complete with babies and baskets and ironic glasses, and with endless comparisons of the ‘Can-Bra’ markets to the ‘Mel-Bun’ markets (Mel-Bun, of course, being unsurpassable in the hipster stakes). Secondly, you will have to carry all of your fruit and veg to the car, which, by the time I’ve stocked up for the week, is a heavy task. Finally, you will have to work out, at a very early hour on a Saturday, What To Wear To The Markets.

In a combined solution to all three of the above problems, Mimi and I have developed a strategy of getting in early, with cute carry bags, and in outfits that, whilst not entirely hipster, are hip enough to trick the invading hipster hordes into believing that, although we may not be one of them, we’re certainly formidable enough in our style to warrant not being taken out by a side-swipe of an organic wicker basket. In short, dear friends, we’ve perfected Farmers Market Fashion.




As you can see in the above picture of some of my favourite Farmer’s Market Fashions, there’s a strong emphasis on jersey –just as comfortable as pyjamas – which is an important thing to consider at 7.30am on a Saturday. Washability is also paramount, as organic produce oftentimes means wash-it-yourself produce-which-likes-to-dirty-your-clothes. A burst of colour, a cute pattern, or some funky stripes will help keep you visible, particularly when you are re-grouping with your shopping buddy at the HOT bakery, where the tastiest…croissants…hang out.

Complete the look with one or two canvas totes with funky prints, and you’re in clover.




The Canberra Region Farmer’s Markets run every Saturday from about 7.30am onwards, at the Epic Markets, off the Federal Highway. They will be open next Saturday (18 December), but will be closed until 15 January for the holiday period. This post, although gushy, was in no way a paid advertisement or endorsement of the Farmer’s Markets – just a suggestion from one savvy shopper to another! Enjoy!

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas…

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas at chez Peggy. And I couldn’t be happier.

I think the only people who get more excited about Christmas than I are, in order, department store CEO’s, children under five, and mixed fruit manufactures.

If you, like the Dreamboat and several other people I could mention but won’t, don’t particularly get your knickers in a twist about the fact that it’s NOW ONLY NINETEEN DAYS TILL CHRISTMAS, I promise I won’t be striking you off my Christmas card list. I can see the logic in not being too keen on all the enforced jollity, relating to relatives you’d rather not be related to, and carpark traumas at every major shopping outlet in the ‘berra.

But then, when you really boil it down, the way we celebrate Christmas is about things that I fundamentally love: family, food and drink, shopping for gifts, and decorating. Topped off with a speech from a real live queen, as opposed to a drag one.

Yes, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year.

So, in this time of hustle and bustle, here are some musings from me on the things that I fundamentally love about Christmas, complete with pictures.



Family tops the list of things that make Christmas special for me. Going shopping with Papa-K for Mama-K’s Christmas presents and watching him agonise over what she would like best. Mama-K’s cooking – which, every year, she attempts to cut back on but actually ends up doing more of, because she can’t resist adding some new recipes to the Christmas classics.



Big Little brother and his lovely girlfriend’s early Christmas surprises, both of which are gracing my tree very handsomely. Little Little brother’s preferences for certain unorthodox Christmas gifts – he once bought me a blind spot mirror and a can of mushy peas. True story.

And then there’s the food. So much food. Food in amounts that at other times of the year would be considered obscene, but, for some strange reason, seems perfectly moderate at Christmas time. There are so many foods I could write about – stuffing, almond pears, trifle, prawns, oysters, rumballs…but I’ll pick my favourite Christmas food for sharing with you here. Christmas isn’t Christmas without shortbread.



It’s so simple, but somehow so satisfying, to see a little fleet of vintage shortbread tins (my packaging of choice this year) filled and ready to be gifted away.




Batches and batches of shortbread are made at Christmas time, to the point where I’m almost too sick of it to eat any – almost. One year I worked out I’d made nineteen batches…this year I think I’ll try and keep it to a more moderate fifteen. Although, with the help of a couple of mama-k’s particularly deadly Santa’s Little Helpers, the traditional family Christmas cocktail, I may become slightly more ambitious in my shortbread making. The dangers of the demon drink…

On to other addictions, Christmas is a time for shopping. Shopping with gay abandon. Shopping is something that I adore, but, as mentioned before on this blog, it’s something I have to be rather disciplined about, with the budgetary constraints common to all students. However, Christmas is a time to release all those pent up shopping urges that have been simmering away all year.



And the best bit is, no-one will think any less of you for shopping a lot at Christmas, because you’re not shopping for yourself, you’re shopping for gifts.



I may have to put a little boast in here: I’ve actually already done all of my shopping, except for perishables and a couple of small afterthougthy things. Some people would say that this is a symptom of being very organised: yes, that’s true. Mainly, though, starting shopping in October is a symptom of how much I enjoy it – by starting sooner, I can luxuriate in the pleasures of shopping for that little bit longer. Oh, and for those of you who hate shopping and can’t face the mall or the high street from Mid-November onwards? Go online. There are some fabulous sites – Nordic Fusion, Heart and Heim, and, of course, Etsy – where I have no doubt you’ll be able to locate that perfect gift without having to locate a carpark.

So, the family have been assembled, the menu decided, the presents shopped for and wrapped – now it’s time to decorate. I have a horrible feeling that one day, when I’m really old, I’ll live in a nice quiet cul de sac – AND DECK MY HOUSE OUT IN SO MANY FAIRY LIGHTS I CAUSE DAILY BLACKOUTS OF THE ENTIRE SUBURB. Just kidding...for the moment.



Christmas decorating is a whole lot of fun, and why restrict yourself to just a tree? With a little bit of invention, you can include (tasteful) touches of Christmas all around you. The apartment I live in, being so small, means that wherever you are, you can see the Christmas tree – but that still hasn’t stopped me from decorating the entrance way, the microwave, the bookshelf, and the window ledge above the sink. I wonder what Virginia Boots will say when she gets back from Melbourne?



In all seriousness, I will add a note of caution with Christmas decorating. Avoid further seasonal hassles by placing your decs in disused spaces around your home – tops of microwaves, bookshelves and window ledges are great for this reason. Mama-K once had the genius idea of hanging a series of red baubles from the door lintel. Ever single time I walked through the door, I copped a dong to the head. Not great, when coupled with the after-effects of a Santa’s Little Helper.

I think it’s going to be impossible to stop me from writing more about Christmas between now and the big day, but for now I’ll leave you with these above thoughts, and hope that you are enjoying your pre-christmassing as much as I am, and that you’re all looking Christmassy Fabulous.

Woman’s World

It was rainy here in the ‘Berra this weekend. One of those grey days where the only sensible thing that you can do is curl up with a good book and a nice cup of tea, or, failing that, go book shopping. My housemate, Virginia Boots, and I, are frequent habitués of the particularly excellent second hand bookshop across the road from our apartment. For those of you who haven’t visited ‘Beyond Q’ at the Curtin shops, it’s worth the trip down the stairs to this treasure trove, not only for the quality merchandise, but for the wonder of discovering the curios that the owners specialise in.

This weekend, I found a particular treasure, a tome titled ‘Woman’s World’, from, I guestimate, the sixties. Divided into nine sections, it deals with the following: Beauty, Fashion, That Something Extra (including how to avoid something called ‘Phone Boners’ – I’ll leave you to imagine what that term may have meant in the sixties), Cooking, Every Wise Woman ( i.e, money and catching a man), Love and Marriage, The Home, The Family, and Interests and Hobbies (‘Let’s Write a Letter!’). It gave me laugh-out-loud giggles in the store, and, knowing that at least two girlfriends could use some of the camp common-sense that this book dispenses (‘You must cherish your looks if you want to be cherished’ ‘It takes a bright girl to keep a job, but if you never get inside the door, how can you prove you’re bright?’), I simply had to buy it.



All Sunday was spent, with various lovely people, chortling over the staged yet somehow naieve colour photographs. The book certainly paid for itself in laughs. It goes without saying that we allowed ourselves that (post?) feminist moment of self congratulation: Baby, We’ve Come A Long Way. Particularly when comparing out lives with the limited focus offered in the pages of this book.

It was only this evening, after a particularly exciting and strenuous fist day of fieldwork, that I actually sat down and had a good read of this book. When I looked past the giggles, and past the self congratulation, I found myself thinking about the woman (women?) who might have read this book over the years, and their serious hopes and aspirations for the things that my girlfriends and my mum found so funny.

I could tell, from the outset, that this mystery woman was much neater than I, for the book is in immaculate condition. And, she didn’t like to write in her books – the nameplate was left blank. I gleefully filled my own name in – possibly my favourite part of a new book purchase.

But what really pulled at my heartstrings, and made me feel a bit shabby for my mocking laughter, were three teeny tiny crosses, made in pencil, against some names on the list of Names for Baby Boys (is there anything this book doesn’t cover?). What little else I know about this woman who came before me, and whether she followed the advice of this book to the letter or perhaps if she threw it out the window in favour of a smaller and punchier book by Ms Greer, I know that she liked Brendan, Gavin, and Malcolm as names for boys. Knowing this about her, and knowing that she must have felt these three names were important enough to grab a sharp pencil and mark them in her immaculately kept book, made her so much more real, and my gentle mockery somehow wrong and mean.



This book was written for, and read by, women whose hopes were as real as mine, who were as excited and anxious about how best to live their lives. Maybe I’m a little too quick to dismiss books like this, or to have a giggle, because it’s too close to home. Maybe, Baby, it’s best not to think of women as having Come A Long Way, at point B as opposed to point A, but working on the same things, albeit form different angles. And, as always happens when we look in the margins, between the lines, beyond the sixties typeface, we can see women, and lives, infinitely more complex and rich than a series of instructions and paper-cut-out dollies.

Dancing Queens and Other Early Sartorial Influences

Did you do dance classes as a little dude or diva? I most certainly did, from the age of three until my family and I moved to Canberra when I was eleven. And I loved it. Mainly, actually entirely, for the clothes.

The dance school I went to, romantically named Belcastro’s School of Dance, was a St Clair institution, and put on an end of year dance concert every November. Depending on how many genres of dance you were taking, you would need anywhere between three and SEVEN (!!!!!!!!!!!!) glorious costumes for the end of year recital. And I’m not just talking tutus here, although there were plenty of those. I’m taking Jungle Girl Outfits. Snow Princess Robes. Antebellum South Bonnets. Futuristic Fluorescence. POCHOHONTAS. These costumes were in addition to the privilege of being able to wear ‘dance wear’ 1-3 afternoons per week. Leotards and plaited buns. Those peculiar thick flesh colored ballerina tights. Tap shoes. Crossover tops.

In addition to all this wonder, I had the privilege of being taught by some most noble and lovely ladies, who profoundly influence my attitudes towards style to this day. Belcastro’s was run by the two Belcastro sisters, Julie and Jan. Gorgeously, Jan was very very skinny, and Julie was very very large. Their mum, Mrs Belcastro, looked after the till and ran a made-to-measure costume making service for those poor girls and boys whose mum’s couldn’t, or wouldn’t, sew. Julie and Jan, despite the size disparity, wore exactly the same outfits every day – a floaty skirt, camisole, and over jacket in watered silk. I don’t ever remember them wearing anything else. With hindsight, I think the magical dancing outfits were probably polyester, for ease of washing, but, to Little Peggy, they were as soft and as shiny, and fit for dancing royalty – they couldn’t be anything but silk to me. Julie’s outfit was rose pink, and Jan’s was jade green. Mrs Belcastro wore a never-ending series of home-knitted and home-sewn cardigans and skirts, befitting her gray-haired, bifocaled seniority.

As the year drew ever closer to the end-of-November concert extravaganza, Julie and Jan’s stress levels increased as the strain of coordinating hundreds of tiny dancers into a coherent performance became apparent. Both would chug vitamin B tablets during class, single handedly keping Nature’s Own afloat. Mrs Belcastro’s desk was obscured by piles of feathers and rhinestones as she bought her sewing for idle moments. Senior girls, whom the Babies (as all the under fives were known) revered as demigoddesses, jockeyed for prime solo spots. Dads began to despair that a WHOLE SATURDAY, at the start of cricket season, would be spent in the stifling school hall of St Clair High, watching DANCING. Although, once they cottoned on to the fact that there would be senior girls, wearing not a lot, dancing on stage, they regarded dancing in a more positive light.

The day before concert day was dress rehearsal day, which was a point of high stress and anxiety for poor old Julie and Jan, but the best day of the whole year for me, because it meant seeing all the costumes, all finished, all at once. We also got to do a trial make-up run to see how our faces would look behind the lights –almost, but not quite, as exciting as costumes.

There was always a bit of competition to see whose mum’s take on Mrs Belcastro’s pattern was the best – when we were babies, this meant The Most Sequins and Tutu Pouf. As we got a little older, it meant The Shortest and Tightest. After a year of planning and hard work, with a typical Sydney thunderstorm building, there was inevitably a row on rehearsal day between the Belcastro sisters, the senior girls, the other dance teachers, or the poor husbands who were on sound system duty. Jan, particularly, was a tat Nazi, and made no bones about the fact that anybody with visible tats would not be dancing under any circumstances. End of. Hence, there were some particularly choice phrases tossed around backstage as the senior girls, in little but G-Bangers, anxiously helped each other cover the ubiquitous early 90s dragon shoulder n’ cleavage tats – this was the time before tramp stamps - with layers and layers of sweat-proof-dance-proof-nuclear-proof foundation. Oh how the mighty demigoddesses were fallen, but we Babies loved them anyway.

I remember, more than the rows and tat dramas, the kindness and graciousness with which Julie and Jan treated their students on dress rehearsal day. More than anything else, it’s this graciousness that makes them queens of dancing and of style. I’ll never forget Julie consoling a distraught mother and daughter who, upon seeing all the other Lion Cub Suits for the Lion King number, realized that they’d spent all night fashioning the sequins into leopard-like spots, rather than scattering them randomly for a luminescent effect. Julie swept in, in her magnificent rose pink dancing outfit, crowing about how wonderful it was that we’ll have a special leopard cub dancing with all the lion cubs today? Wonderful indeed, because I think that girl danced her leopard-spotted heart out that day.

Likewise, I’ll never forget Jan quietly having a word with the senior girls about a little girl whose mum wasn’t around, and whose adoring dad, trying his best to make up her face for the spotlights, had given his six year old a facefull of slap that would, by comparison, make a trannie look natural. The senior girls, adept with the make up brushes, quickly did a spray n’ wipe on the little one’s face and worked her make up back to something more Dance Concert than Drag Night. I don’t think her dad noticed the difference from the audience, but his daughter certainly did.

At the end of the concert, as the whole of the dance school filed on stage to take the final bow of the year, Julie and Jan would graciously accept the overblown bouquets of roses, organized by the senior girls, and thank us all for the wonderful year of dancing we had given them.



Standing on the stage, in front of all the parents, they would clap for us, and make us feel like we really were dancing queens. And it’s this graciousness, and the radiance that it bestows, which is the true legacy that the Belcastro sisters have bequeathed to me –I am always striving towards a glimmer of what they had. That, and there’s nothing I like more than a crossover top, a couple of sequins, and a floaty, poufy, skirt.

Make Me Happy

Many moons ago, my creative writing lecturer told my class that the most powerful thing that you can do is to make something – anything at all. According to him, it didn’t have to be anything special or recognised, or particularly good, but it just had to be something that you made yourself – where the lines between intent and finished product were clear and traceable, and where you had a part in something, from the beginning, middle to end.

This is something I think a lot about, as I get on with the business of life as a PhD student. I sometimes think that by being firmly situated in an analytical environment, where, at its worst, things aren’t made but torn apart, makes me all the more grateful for people who make things, and for the albeit small skills I have that allow me to make. As above, they’re not the best, they’re not critically acclaimed, they’re flawed, but there is something highly satisfying in wearing, using, or living with objects that are made, wherein you can feel the links between intention and action.

Spending a Saturday afternoon at Bunnings with the Dreamboat and what felt like the large majority of Canberrans, it became apparent that making things is something that, without thinking too hard or analysing too much, people do all the time. Something about planks of wood, nails, glue, paint, weed matting, and all those other amazing and mysterious things that make their home in Bunnings makes you feel somehow more alive and strangely competent, masterous even, of your own environment. It is, fundamentally, good for the soul. Who knew a bit of humble DIY could be so empowering?

So, here are some glimpses of things I’ve been making lately. I hope that you enjoy them, but, more to the point, I hope that it makes you want to make something of your own, whatever that may be.

Anybody recognise these cushions? They’re all reincarnated dresses/bags,

The beginnings of a new cardigan. Not sure if I like how much the ribbed cream/blue stripes remind me of a milk jug…

Table runners from dressmaking offcuts,

Sweet summer skirts,

Pots, and pots, of tea.

Happy making!

Bedroom Advice for Young Ladies – Top Five Handy Hints for Better Bedroom Experiences.

Hint #5: Size Does Matter.

I wish somebody had given me this sage advice when I bought my first ‘grown up’ bed 7 years ago, but size does matter.

(What did you think I was going to be talking about in this post? Clearly, the title could be about nothing other than interior decorating. Minds out of gutters, people…)

You see, should you want to be sharing your bed with a Someone, a Someone who is potentially rather tall, you might want to consider splashing out and going for the queen size, as opposed to double, option. Or be totally extravagant and go for a king.

Either way, remember spooning all night is delightful in the realms of imagination, but, in reality, it’s pretty annoying. And nothing kills passion like waking up cranky.

My key problem with my bed is that it has a foot on it – see picture. Whilst my bed looks lovely, like something that a Scandinavian lady-of-the-manor would indulge in romantic trysts on, it means that my Someone, who is a rather tall fellow, cannot lie straight in my bed. Instead, he lies diagonally across it, leaving me with two triangles of mattress with which to rest my weary bones. Which makes for lots of squishing, and a cranky Peggy first thing in the morning.



So, the moral to the story is, if you are at all interested in sharing a bed with a Someone, be considerate of their size. Opt for the next size up, or at least, pick a double bed frame without a foot, so that the Someone’s feet can poke over their edge till their heart’s content.


Hint #4: A Restful Colour Palette for a Good Night’s Sleep.

Your bedroom is for sleeping. Sleeping is very important. Studies vary in their recommendations, but I’ll tell you this for free – a bad night’s sleep is sure to mess up your day.

Colour, lots of it, is fabulous, and the rest of my home, and indeed most spaces I inhabit, are a veritable rainbow. But, the one place I make an exception is the bedroom. Just as certain fast food restaurants (*cough* MacDonald’s *cough* *cough*) use bright and clashing colours to stimulate appetites and encourage you to EAT THEN LEAVE, choosing restful colors, preferably from the same colour family or an analogous grouping, is a simple way to make sure that your bedroom visually cues yourself into being calm, rested, and serene. Even if you’re the latte-chugging-hurry-sick-mobile-phone-irradiated self you are during your business hours (*cough* Me! *cough* *cough*), a room that’s got a monochromatic scheme, or a subtle range of colours, is going to have some sort of a calming effect. Think shades of blue with greens, a mix of creams and wood tones, or even the classic white on white. All are excellent bedroom choices for a young lady.



Total mastery of the bedroom colour scheme isn’t easy to do in a rental property, or in other situations where you can’t paint. But, all is not lost.

One way around this is to go with whatever colour your walls happen to be, and roll with that as the theme. Luckily, the last three rooms I’ve had have been white or off white, which has meant that I’ve built up a collection of bedroom furnishings and furniture around a neutrals/white/black/wood palette.

Also, don’t underestimate the power of soft furnishings – soft in texture, but strong on impact, if used correctly. A fugly chair can quickly be turned into something much more attractive by the artful draping of a throw or two in a chosen colour – and the textural interest a throw provides can break up the potential monotony of monochrome. You can also choose to match YOURSELF to the monochromatic scheme, but I think that’s crossing the border between restful/serene, and padded walls. But everybody’s line is different…


Hint #3: Be Flexible.

As mentioned above, I’m renting, and anticipate being a renter for quite some time. Which means, regrettably, moving quite a lot more than I would like.

Moving a lot necessitates a high degree of flexibility in the bedroom. When selecting bedroom furniture, it’s imperative that it’s flexible in two ways: firstly, it’s easy to transport – it comes apart, or is lightweight, or, at very least, has ample gripping points for the brothers, dads, and friends enlisted to the task of moving to grab onto.

Secondly, you want, as far as possible, any furniture you buy to be up to radical multi-tasking, as, in the process of changing house, your room size and layout is likely to change radically as well. One of the things I loathed about working in furniture stores as an undergrad was that the ranges were targeted very specifically towards certain rooms, and to having a single use. To me, this is a really inefficient way of thinking about placing furniture in a space

My bed, with all its faults as outlined above, is fantastically flexible – it comes apart and can be put back together in ten minutes, and none of its component parts weigh more than five kilos. It can be stored virtually flat (thanks IKEA!). Because it’s a frame and mattress, rather then an ensemble, it’s also a multi tasker, in that the under bed space can be used for storage. This almost, but not quite, makes up for its other shortcomings.



Another piece of flexible bedroom furniture is my great grandfather’s fold out desk. Aside from being a lovely thing to have, with its ink stains and faint smell of pipe tobacco, it’s a truly flexible marvel.




Point A: the desk can be lowered or raised as needed, opening up a compact space when the desk it not in use. Point B: It’s actually quite roomy – and lockable – and is thus a perfect repository for various important documents and other secret things. Finally, Point C: Although it now makes its home in my bedroom, it is not bedroom specific – it’s flexible enough to be used, in other future houses, as a telephone table in an entrance way, as a desk in a study, a funky book display in a lounge room, or even as a hutch to store kitchen palaver. With flexible pieces, you are only limited by your imagination (and there I go, lapsing back into furniture salesgirl mode…)

Hint # 2: Put That Thing Back Where it Came From.

There is nothing worse than trying to relax when you are surrounded by a sea of moving bedroom debris. Hence, my very simple piece of advice: put things back where they came from.


As my pics suggest, you don’t necessarily have to put the things back neatly – they just have to go back. In their place. Leaving the important surfaces (bed, desk, reading chair) sans clutter.



So, you get your favorite yellow cardigan out to wear with your new skirt. It doesn’t work.

What do you do?

You put it back where it came from, on the hanger, in the wardrobe.

Simple.

Hint #1: You’ve Got The Love.

All of this is sounding a little didactic, but, at the end of the day, this is your room, so it should be personal – it should reflect, probably more than any other space in your home, your loves and your passions. And not in the l’amore, l’amore sense, but in the sense of who and what really matters to you, the people and things you want with you when you are dreaming.

Reciepies That Keep On Giving – Part One: Stovetop Magic Brownies

One of the things I’m really excited about branching out into with this blog is recipes. I love to cook, and loved to do so before it was trendy. Ok, that was a hipster moment, but I’m willing to deal with that because this is 100% truthful. Watching Junior MasterChef with my housemate, Virginia Boots, I can’t help but be a little put out that cooking is now what all the cool kids are doing. Cooking is what I used to do all weekend, every weekend, when I was small, and it certainly wasn’t cool. Often, it was with Mama-K, but other times, it was by myself, mucking around with flour and sugar and butter. I guess that’s a point of difference between my childhood cooking and the childhood cooking depicted on Junior MasterChef – no expensive or flashy ingredients, but lots of good, honest, floury fun.

And in the spirit of good, honest, floury fun without expensive or flashy ingredients, here’s my first recipe in my series of Recipes That Keep On Giving – Stovetop Magic Brownies. My idea about posting the occasional Recipe That Keeps On Giving is a chance to showcase some of my favorite and most frequently cooked things. Not because they are the fanciest, but because they are the easiest, most economical, are always well received, adjust up and down to feed a crowd or just yourself, and, more often than not, freeze, defrost and transport beautifully. They’re kind of my kitchen’s best and fairest players.

This brownie recipe is fairly new to my regular rotation, but it certainly meets all the criteria for a Recipe That Keeps On Giving. Having played with other brownie recipes and not being particularly happy with the results, especially when the outlay on ingredients is taken into account, I was very pleased with the results this recipe yielded with minimal effort or expenditure. Originally, it came from ‘She’s Leaving Home’, lovely cookbook by Monica Tapapgia (AKA, Monica From Playschool, if you grew up in the 90s like I did…). However, I’ve simplified the methodology, and adjust a few ingredients – enough so that I feel justified in changing the recipe’s name. I call these Stovetop Magic Brownies because all the mixing is done in a single large saucepan, on the stovetop, and they are magical because…THEY DON’T CONTAIN ANY ACTUAL CHOCOLATE ! Although I’ve had arguments with The Dreamboat and his housemate, Jordan Hawthorne, about whether cocoa powder, a principal ingredient in this recipe, counts as ‘chocolate’ or not – I maintain it doesn’t, Jordan and Dreamboat maintain it does – what we can all agree on is that these brownies are amongst the richest, moistest, and chocolatiest we’ve ever tasted, semantics aside.




Stovetop Magic Brownies

Makes approximately 24 medium brownies, depending on how you slice it.

350g Salted Butter
140g Cocoa
675g (yep) White Sugar
6 Eggs
250g Plain Flour
3 Tablespoons (yep) Vanilla Extract
200g Chopped Nuts (Although I never really bother…)
1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius. Line a lamington tray, or other largish, deep sided, square or rectangular dish with baking paper, or grease generously with butter. This temp might seem quite low for brownies – it is indeed, and it’s one of the variations I made on the original recipe. I’ve found, at the suggestion of Sam from Amore Cakes’ cookbook (check out her brilliant chocolate almond cake next time you’re at the Epic farmer’s markets!) that all manner of things have a better taste and consistency when cooked at a lower temperature for a slightly longer time, these brownies being no exception.
2. In a large saucepan, begin melting the butter over medium heat. When your butter is about half melted, add in your cocoa powder, and stir occasionally with a wooden spoon, being careful not to let the cocoa/butter mixture burn, until almost all the butter is melted and the mixture is dark and glossy.
3. Turn off stove, but leave saucepan on the element to make good use of the radiant heat. Add in the sugar, and stir until thoroughly combined. I like to add the sugar whilst the mixture is quite warm, as it seems to help it integrate into the mixture more quickly.
4. Now, add in your eggs. At this point I like to switch to a balloon whisk, but I’ll leave the choice of weapon to you. Mix until smooth. Stir in the vanilla essence.
5. Finally, carefully add the flour (and nuts, if you are using them), bit by bit, so that you don’t have too many flour splashes to clean up.
6. When everything is incorporated, pour mixture into your prepared tray, and let it settle out. I never bother trying to make a groove in the middle with the back of a spoon to ensure even rising, but if you would like to do that, you can. I’ll just judge you from afar.
7. Bake for approximately 40 minutes, or, more importantly, until the middle of the brownie doesn’t smooch in when you touch it.
8. Slice brownie in the tin about ten minutes after cooling and dust with extra cocoa or icing sugar, if that takes your fancy. Leave the brownie in the tin until entirely cold, if at all possible, to get the best and moistest result.

And there you have it. Last week, I made a triplicate batch of these for my first years, to celebrate the last tutorial of semester. Needless to say, they soothed the pain of talking about exams no end. Ah, the devine power of a Stovetop Magic Brownie. I think this rather bad photo captures how I feel about them…

I smoked, but I didn’t inhale…

I smoked, but I didn’t inhale…

I have been thinking about this blog of mine lately.

Thinking, but not actively blogging, as some of you’ve astutely pointed out.

Which is sad, as there has been SO MUCH that’s happened lately about which I coulda, shoulda, woulda, blogged.

A New Place.

A New-To-Me Car.

A New Office.

A New Batch of First Years.

SPRING!

And lots of other Wonderful Life Events…

Which has prompted a bit of a mental re-working of this wee blog, and a pledge to do a little better.

You see, as the title of this post insinuates, I’d had a bit of a puff at blogging in this space. You know, cos all the cool kids on the playground were doing it. And it looked so cool a glamorous in the films...and I was curious to try it.

I liked that first little puff, but not quite enough to go out and buy a pack of my own, if that analogy makes sense (true story: I explained Foucault to first year using the solar system as an analogy…let’s see how many students write about asteroids, black holes, and moons in their assessment, instead of power/knowledge, discipline, and the embodied subject!). Overall, I was having fun with this blog, but I wasn’t willing to make the commitment.

Namely, I wasn’t willing to overcome years of not being able to take a decent photograph (in front of, or behind, the lens) in order to really enter into the blogging spirit. And, you know…there’s a limit to how much one can write about fashion and style. Even moi.

But, with a bit of rethinking, I have come to the conclusion that it’s time to stop puffing, and start inhaling. I’m going to light up this blog and smoke it.

Not without a few new developments, though. This is a heads up that, along with lots and lots of…erm…interesting (read: inexpert) photos, you can expect posts – a fresh one every Monday, on a widened range of topics, including, but not limited to...

Beauty Advice.

Handy Household Hints.

Musing on Interior Decoration.

Recipes.

Social Commentary.

Funny things that Happened to a Friend of a Friend of Mine.

Music, Movies, Books, Telly.

Foucauldian Social Theory…OK JUST KIDDING. I won’t do that to you, unless you are in first year.

So, dear readers, this is the beginning of what I hope will be a whole-hearted, long-term, hard-to-shake-even-with-patches addictive venture for myself and maybe for you too. Stay tuned next Monday for a freshly lit post, and until then, happy lifestyling.

A Very Angry Peggy

What greater weekend pleasure is there than the Saturday paper, a plunger of coffee, and some peace and quiet? I am religious about few things, but my weekend paper ritual is one to which I am a fanatical adherent. No matter how topsy turvy the preceding week has been, or how deep the shadows cast by the looming week, the forty five minute oasis of my Paper Ritual makes me feel calm and well equipped to deal with Life and whatever it may bring. The Saturday Paper Ritual has been in place since I was old enough to read. As a child, mama-k and papa-k would turn the house upside down looking for Good Weekend, only to discover that I’d squirreled it and myself away to the loo for a nice quiet read. In honour of this, my parent’s housewarming gift to me was a subscription to the Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun Herald, to continue my weekend ritual – and no other gift I received warmed my cold, uninsulated house more.

Sometimes, though, the perfection of my ritual is spoilt by something monumentally stupid and offensive being put into print. Take this morning, for instance.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by which particular columnist was the party pooper in question. OF COURSE it was Maggie Alderson. As mentioned above, my relationship with the SMH stretched back a long way, as does my relationship with Maggie. Over the years, it has gone from befuddlement, to admiration, to love-hate, and, over the last couple of years, to YAWN. Part of the reason this blog was born was to exeroscise the nagging feeling that I could do what Maggie did, only better. After all, I have more things to write about than My Adorable Child, Fashion When I Was A Gal, and The Agonies And Ecstasies Of Dieting – Maggies’ three principal column topics.

Occasionally, though, she pulls out something that shakes me out of my lethargy.

In today’s column, ‘Chewing the Fat’, she takes aim at nude plus size models. I would recommend that you get your hands on a copy of the column, if you can, to read and judge for yourself.

As I read this column, my emotions, if represented on a scale of YAWN to ASTRONOMICALLY HIGH BOOD PRESSURE COMPLETE WITH NOSTRIL FLARING, went from the former to the latter in the space of a few inches of newsprint.

It would appear that Ms Alderson has taken issue with nude plus size models, and their use in fashion spreads, in the most bizarre and backward of ways. Credit where credit’s due, however: I actually found myself nodding moderate agreement with her in the first part of her column, where she suggests that the usage of large naked ladies is tokenistic. Indeed, it is. Just as many other groups in society are treated tokenistically by the fashion industry. However, I think there has to be a start somewhere – and if there’s just a few images of a variety of beautiful bodies out there, then that’s enough to start people thinking and questioning the status quo. So, I agree with Maggies’ suggestion that it’s tokenistic, but, rather than see tokenism as an end point, I choose to see it as the beginning of something potentially quite radical. You know, longest journeys, smallest of steps and all that jazz.

Then, to use a Supernatural-ism, Maggie Jumps The Shark. It would appear that her issue isn’t just with the tokenistic use of larger models, it’s with the fact that they’re naked. Que? I thought, as I could feel my blood pressure starting to rise. What’s wrong with a naked plus size model? Well, according to Maggie, the only reason why they are naked it because, and I quote, ‘fat women often look better with no clothes on’. Well, yes. Four out of five ex lovers recently polled agree on this point. Maggie, however, seems to hold the view that naked ‘fat’ women, to use her more direct ‘n derogatory parlance, are less liberated than clothed ‘fat’ women.

Consider, for a moment, Maggie’s previous contention: that ‘fat’ models are used tokenistically. Implying that they are used in ways other than ‘normal’ models in magazines. Let’s have a think about how ‘normal’ models are portrayed in fashion shoots. Mostly, they are – shock, horror – naked, or nearly so, posed in all manner of outlandish scenarios. ‘Oh yes, of course I surround myself with designer leather luggage, sprawling about in a thong, whilst sipping espresso – don’t you?’ seems to be the concept behind many advertising shoots for high end labels. So, I would argue, the very nudity of many of the plus size models – indeed, as Maggie points out, showing themselves off at their best – counters the tokenism that Maggie accuses many plus size photo shoots of, because the ‘fat’ models are being treated like any other model – i.e. stripped bare, posed with bizarre objects, and with a photographer undoubtedly standing over them shouting things like “You’re a ferret, baby. No, a meerkat. No, a sea otter! Give me SEA OTTER! Make me FEEL it, baby, YEAH. And I’m spent.”.

(O.k., so my perception of photo shoots may be heavily coloured by the Austin Powers trilogy).

Maggie appears, also, to have missed the point about the inclusion of ‘fat’ women in fashion shoots. Rather than being used to sell clothes, the inclusion of ‘fat’ models, however cynically or tokenistically by editors, is about recognising the beauty of different bodies. It’s a celebration of flesh, rather than fabric. Hence, nudity – artistically posed, beautifully photographed – makes perfect sense in shoots that revel in the appreciation of abundant flesh.

An interesting aside: as I read in Good Weekend’s Number Crunch last weekend, men, on average, nominate a size fourteen as the most sexually desirable size. Perhaps the frequent exposure of ‘fat’ model’s rude bits is instead catering to the male gaze, starved as it is for beautiful images of larger female bodies. This is something Maggie appears to have forgotten – that men look at women, and men have opinions about how women look. And it would appear that men like the look of ‘fat’ models, which may go some way to explaining the dearth of clothing in many ‘fat’ shoots.

But back to Maggie’s column.

Please imagine, dear readers, the scene here. By this stage I’m midway though the column, huffing and puffing, steam pouring from the ears and from my second plunger of freshly brewed coffee. Thusly, so far so terrible, right? Couldn’t get any worse? Here’s the direct quote that resulted in metaphorical brain splatters from my head decorating the kitchen cabinets:

‘He’s (Karl Largerfeld) Living proof that in most cases – not all, but way most – the difference between being a size 10 and a size 18 comes down to two things: self control and giving a sh**. In other words, having “being slim” on the top of your priorities list…It has to be the main thing you think about, requiring constant planning and effort.’ (Alderson, March 27, 2010. Sorry, PhD student, can’t help but reference).

It has to be the main thing you think about, the top of your priorities list. Really, Maggie? REALLY?

Not only, Maggie, have you Jumped The Shark, you have Eloped To Vegas To Wed The Shark In The Little White Chapel With An Elvis Impersonator Officiating.

To begin with. My concerns. With the above statement. Are manifold. (Short. Sentences. Breathe. Peggy. Breathe.). What sort of world is Maggie living in when a modern woman can, and should, have ‘being slim’ at the top of her priorities list, the main thing she thinks about? Whatever happened to being a good person, love, kindness, family, friends, an education, good health, a career, as priorities and things to think about? On a more basic level, what about the stuff of life that we all have to give due diligence to every day of our lives – rego payments, essays to grade, washing machines to install, vacuuming to be done? What kind of a woman can place ‘being slim’ at the forefront of her mind and her life?

According to Naomi Wolf, in her famous epistle on this very subject (The Beauty Myth – READ IT), this is exactly the manifestation of patriarchal oppression that characterises the lives of modern Western women. Rather than discovering cures for cancer, painting masterpieces, and writing The Great Australian Novel, Wolf argues that women are taught to limit themselves and their opportunities by placing, as Maggie seems to suggest, ‘being slim’ at the top of our life priorities list. Because we devote so much time and energy to ‘being slim’, Wolf argues, we can’t possibly live as equals with men, because we’re just too darn tired and hungry from all that slimming and feeling bad about slimming. Essentially, we stop ourselves from being our best because we think we will never be good enough until we’re skinny. Although Wolf’s work is extreme, polemical, and impassioned, I’m inclined to agree with the gist of her argument. Especially, as we can see from Maggie’s latest offering, the Beauty Myth is alive and well.

As we’ve read from her numerous columns on My Adorable Child, Maggie has a little girl, who I can’t help but feel desperately sorry for. Surely as a mum of a little girl, Maggie should want a world where women’s priorities should be extended beyond ‘being slim’. A world in which a woman whose priority in life is ‘being slim’ is perceived as the great and tragic loss of human potential that it surely is. A world where plus size nudity is celebrated as the beautiful and sexually desirable thing. Indeed, a world where all female bodies – plus size, skinny, pregnant, post childbirth, post fifty, of all different shapes, sizes and quirks – are seen and celebrated.

This is a world that is a long way off. We can see, however, the beginnings of change, in the way that men relate (and, arguably, have always related) to women’s bodies, and in the way that some cynical and tokenistic, or possibly just socially minded, designers, photographers and editors are gradually shifting the goalposts on what sort of women’s bodies can be lauded as beautiful.

But while I’m waiting for this change…

I threw Maggie’s hateful column in the recycling, and went about my day, full of the miscellaneous stuff of a woman’s life. Being skinny didn’t enter into my thoughts or my priorities at all.

And everything was right with the world again.

Secrets and Lies

As it’s been almost a year since I started this wee blog, I thought it might be time to correct a few assumptions that you, readers, may have made about me. You could be forgiven for thinking, reading this blog, that I am impeccably stylish and pleased with what I wear most of the time, and that, being someone who blogs about style, I have no secrets.

How wrong you are, and how remiss of me not to tell you before now about my Top Ten Shameful Style Secrets and Lies…

Number Ten: I want to wear red lipstick every day, but don’t.

Number Nine: I wear track pants. Out of the house. Often out of the house. Often down to the shops to collect dinner ingredients. Often tracksuits with holes in dangerous places – the term crotchless being appropriate.

Number Eight: I stress out about wearing the same outfit to two tutorials in the same semester, least my students judge me as a poor postgraduate with no clothes.

Number Seven: I spend entire weeks wearing sarongs and pregnant-style tops in summer.

Number Six: I shop at target. Even when I have money.

Number Five: I envy girls who look amazing wearing jeans, uni sweaters, and ponytails.

Number Four: I myself wear jeans, uni sweaters, and ponytails, and do not look amazing.

Number Three: I don’t feel like myself without make up.

Number Two: I’m never happy with my hair. Ever.

And – drumroll please – the final, most hideous confession.

Number One: I wear crocs. ALL THE TIME.

P.S. you may have noticed some changes to the blog of late – I hope you like them as much as I do! Although it’s taken the best part of a year to work out the intricacies of Blogger, I think my inner luddite is suitably conquered. Love, Peg.

Breast Dressed

N.B: this blog is somewhat of a companion to my ‘Panty Problems: Just Say No’ post from about a year ago. If talk of lovely lady lumps and the like offends, please tune out. Now. Love, Peg.

Travel is a real eye opener. New sights, new sounds, new discoveries (square sausage, black pudding and haggis FOR THE WIN).

And, of course, new shops, trends, and dress norms to explore.

Discovery #1: Uggs cost 60 POUNDS in Scotland and thus are highly coveted sartorial status symbols.

Discovery #2: Scottish women are impervious to cold and will attend a February wedding (read: 2 degrees celcius, fog and light mist) in a summer cocktail frock.

Discovery #3: the boobs of the UK are the Best Dressed Breasts the world over.

Why, might you ask?

Well, there’s just so much CHOICE in terms of bras. Walking into a lingerie shop, or a lingerie department in a major department store, is like walking into a candy store of lace, silk, and general delectability. Everything – and I mean everything – is lovely – and, more importantly, available in all sizes. What could be more heavenly, I ask you?

It’s as if British manufacturers have taken a good look out the window, around the office, and at the nearest girl’s night out and stumbled upon a powerful truth that I wish they’d exported to the antipodes along with convicts, rabbits, noxious weeds like thistles.

That truth being that boobs come in all sizes and shapes, and so should bras.

Historically, my relationship with bras, and my breasts, has been long and somewhat tortured. I developed early – I can’t really remember what life was like B.B. (Before Boobs). My first bras, which MamaK sensibly insisted were fitted by a trained professional, were rather plain and boring, with no fancy embellishments or anything vaguely resembling prettiness. At the time, this made bra-wearing anything but fun (although I am actually thankful that I could save the discovery of sexy lingerie until I was old enough to appreciate it in its proper context – i.e. sixteen, and doing everything that girls of that age are supposed to…). Coupled with change room teasing through primary and high school – contrary to popular mythology, girls who develop well and early are not always placed on a lofty pedestal of developing womanliness by their young peers – this potent combination of ugly bras + ugly people meant that I drew the only conclusion I could at the time: breasts, specifically mine, were ugly.

I spent most of my teenage years wishing my breasts away, desperately envious of girls who could get away with nothing under their tee-shirts whilst I needed industrial strength scaffolding to stay afloat. I think, in the chronology of my relationship with my breasts, these were The Wilderness Years.

Then, something wonderful happened: I went to college. In the ACT system, college is where students go in years 11 and 12 – so you’re a YOUNG ADULT at a school with other YOUNG ADULTS where you’re treated like a YOUNG ADULT and you can talk about YOUNG ADULT stuff like SEX and DRUGS and ROCK AND ROLL. Or, more like, your aspirations towards those three lofty goals of YOUNG ADULThood. It was there, in that heady, sweaty mix of all of us working out who we were and who we wanted to be, that I realised two things: that boys like boobs, and that boys like boobs FULL STOP. No matter how big, how little, how round or high or wide, boys LIKE THEM, quite possibly more than they like anything else on God’s green earth.

Being perfectly honest, and at risk of being a Bad Feminist, this meant that I could finally begin to entertain the possibility that maybe I might like my breasts too, if I gave them half a chance. Giving my breasts half a chance meant setting them free from their functional scaffolding, and looking for other options that supported not only my breasts but my fledgling and fragile self esteem.

I can still remember the thrill of purchasing my first Really Sexy Bra and Knickers. As mentioned above, I was sixteen, and doing all those things that sixteen year olds do. As I’ve said many times before on this blog, we don’t always dress in a way that reflects who we are in the present moment, but who we are becoming, and who we want to be. And although I was confused and had a lot of growing up to do at that point, I wanted something that would make me feel strong, sexy, and powerful – and nothing was more a reflection of who I wanted to be than a chocolate brown French lace balconette bra and knickers set from Elle Macpherson Intimates. It cost me a weeks’ pay, but the boosts it gave were worth it.

Over the years, I’d estimate that my spending on lingerie would have been enough to have placed a down payment on a small apartment, but, no matter how poor I was, I always felt as though good – in both the practical and the aesthetic sense – lingerie was never a waste of money. Which is just as well because in Australia, you’d be hard pressed to find lingerie that fits both of those categories – practical and pleasing to the eye – without relaxing the purse strings considerably. This was something I was always happy to do, even if it meant having only one or two bras, and repairing them until it really was time to pension them off to the back paddock. This was fine whilst my breasts were in the ‘normal’ cup size range – from A to D – but, in my Honours year, whilst the rest of me stayed the same, my boobs jumped two cup sizes, into an E. Overnight. Literally. I went to bed with D’s and woke up with E’s.

Sometimes the universe burdens us in the strangest of ways.

Having breasts that were suddenly outside of Australian clothing’s ‘normal’ range meant that I was in for a rude shock. Whereas previously the lingerie world was my oyster, I was thrust into the barren wasteland of Full Figure Lingerie. My first ever foray into a specialist stockist of Full Figure Lingerie (a euphemism I grew to hate – why not call a spade a spade and just say Bras for Big Boobs?) involved tears in the change room. The sales girl did her best, but when I asked her for something sexy, all she could produce was a hackneyed red and black number so massive that it encroached into my décolletage and flattened my breasts into two squarish blobs. I bought the bra, in the two colour ways available, because it was the best of a bad lot. There were other, prettier bras available in E cups – but they were out of stock, on backorder with a two month wait list, and completely beyond my financial means.

The second period of Wilderness commenced. This was only slightly better than the last Wilderness, as I at least knew in my heart of hearts that my breasts were indeed lovely, but this knowledge made shopping for bras more frustrating – I felt as though all of my breast’s loveliness was literally being squished out of them. Some days I even went bra-less, because it was simply too depressing to contemplate putting on some of the horrors that now comprised my lingerie wardrobe. After much thought, I decided that the problem with the Full Figure Lingerie industry was that their Ideal Breast, for which they designed all their bras, was a completely different shape to mine, with completely different needs. My problem was that my breasts, due to my large bone structure and impressive set of pectoral muscles (if I do say so myself – it’s carrying all those textbooks under my arm, I tell you) were actually firmer and higher than the Ideal Full Figure Breast, meaning that the bras available in Australia in an E+ cup were far far too supportive and rigid, with way more scaffolding than was necessary for someone with my frame and muscle structure. Whilst a very supportive, ridged bra, with a wide central panel and full cup coverage, would be ideal on a woman with a small rib cage, little muscle tissue and lots of boob, it was absolutely hopeless for me, and, what’s more, made my breasts look dreadful and made me feel dreadful.

There was an end, however, in sight. Mama-K, on a trip to Mother England midway through my honours year, came back with stories of an oasis of beautiful lingerie – in all shapes, sizes and colours – at Marks and Spencers. Being unsure of my exact size, and understandably feeling a bit awkward about shopping for sexy lingerie for her daughter, she bought me home just two Marks and Spencer’s bras to try. Although E cups, they looked…just like a lovely, ordinary lacy bra, complete with a low front profile, delicate straps, and transparent lace. I wore those two bras until they were grey with over washing, desperately hoping that one day I would make it to the promised land of Marks and Spencers, to rejoice in the loveliness of sexy bras in 14 E-F.

One Day finally came a few weeks ago, in Scotland, and it was better than I ever imagined.

The greatest thing about M&S was that there was no specialist section for Fuller Figure Bras – rather, most of their ranges just ran up to a G cup as a matter of course. This means no scarily wide centre panels, no full coverage cups, and no scary thick straps. No opportunity for manufacturers to charge through the nose because they’ve cornered the Full Figure Lingerie market – because all boobs are already catered for as a matter of course. M&S, as the locals call it, even stocks a range of post-mastectomy bras – something which, in Australia, you would have to hunt around specialty stores to find. You can even get scary huge squashy bras if that’s what floats your boat – everyone’s a winner. Here’s the bottom line: to buy a nice, lacy bra and pants in Australia, the outlay would be close to $150 at RRP, and your choices would be black and porny, pink/red and porny, or cream and virginal – just try and tell me that the Madonna/Whore paradox is dead! In the UK, shopping at M&S, the MAXIMUM you’d be looking at would be 50 pounds RRP – that’s about $100 in our money – and you can choose from dozens of lovely bras, with many levels of subtle graduation between vampish seductress and daisy fresh innocent. I won’t tell you how many sets of lingerie accompanied me home – but, to give you a ballpark figure, it’ll be at least a week before The Dreamboat has seen the full gamut of my UK purchases.

And the best thing of all? You can shop M&S online, and stand alongside me in my boycott of ugly, expensive Full Figure Lingerie that is all that’s available in Australia, or just ugly, expensive lingerie in whatever size you wear, because all breasts are beautiful and deserve to be dressed accordingly. Let’s not settle for lingerie that only uplifts our busts – rather, let’s strive for lingerie that uplifts our sometimes flagging and fragile egos, and elevates us to a higher plane of bodily acceptance and love. At least, I know that’s now where my personal bra bar is set, and I think you’re all, dear readers, worth a similarly high standard of support.

A Juvenile Success

In honour of the 52nd Annual Grammy awards, Sammy Compton, sister of my special housemate Sookie, threw a lovely Grammys party, complete with many of my favourite things – tea, curry, and a dress-to-impress code. Of course, being a PhD student, which is just a nicer way of saying ‘I hide under a rock and eat a lot of lentils’, and having a rather strong attachment to the music of my childhood – they just don’t make songs like they did in the nineties – I wasn’t entirely au fait with all the celebrities strutting the carpet. I am, however, au fait with all things sparkly (again, as a result of that other 90s childhood staple – Baz Lurhman’s Strictly Ballroom), and felt thusly qualified to get my critiquing groove on.

And boy, was there plenty of sparkle and swagger. Some good (Katie Perry and Beyonce, USHER O.M.G. I LOVE RIGHT DOWN TO THE CREAM PIPING ON YOUR SUIT), some bad (Jennifer Hudson, YOU HOT, BUT NOT IN THAT DRESS), some ugly (Taylor Swift – NUFF SAID) and some just fracking weird (RHIANNNA. LOVE. HIRE A STYLIST).

But the show this year was really stolen by the under-four-foot crowd – and no, Rosie Bon Jovie, I’m not talking about the midgets – I’m talking about the kiddies. Of course, Beyonce and Jay Z’s nephew, who accepted the Grammy for Run This Town in the stead of Kanye (because if we learnt anything from the VMA’s, kids, it’s that Kanye, a mike and an award show do not mix) stole the show in his baby tux – but there were plenty of other kiddies, so much so that I wondered if Lady Gaga’s frock would be commandeered as some sort of playpen kiddycreche.

Perhaps this is the logical extension of our youth obsessed culture, but kids have become, suddenly, the new frontier of cool. The prevalence of beautiful celebrities with their beautiful babies is indicative of this. Whilst I think it’s great that we’re now moving towards a celebration of childhood, it also gives me the worries sometimes. Particularly when these celebabies (a celebrity baby – geddit???) are dressed as extensions of their mums and dads (Gewn Stefani, Brit Brit and Mr and Mrs Becks, report to my office immediately).

To betray my closet academic interest (and a terrible pun – closet meaning both SECRET and WARDROBE!), children’s clothing has, almost always, been a replica of the clothing of adults. It’s interesting to look at the way that children’s clothing through the ages denotes the way that they were related to by the rest of the community. In the not-too-distant past, for instance, babies and young children up to the age of about six were dressed all alike, irrespective of gender, in simple white frocks, and weren’t given proper ‘clothes’ until they started their schooling at about six or seven. Fashion theorists postulate that this is, in no small part, to do with shocking rates of infant mortality – that it didn’t serve anyone well to get too attached to an infant or very young child, or to view them as a person in their own right, and this extended to the clothing of children. Once one had passed through the hazardous years of infancy and early childhood, it was possible to be regarded as a potential adult – and thus, dressed exactly like one. For poor people, children were dressed in the hand-me-downs rags of older siblings and cousins, or wrapped in swaddling cloths – again, because why spend what little money you may have on clothes for a baby who, in all likelihood, would be carried away.

It wasn’t until the beginning of the 20th century that upper and middle class parents began to dress their kiddies as…kiddies. Not as infants in swaddling cloths, and not as micro adults, but as something in between – as children. Of course, what age ranges constitute ‘child’, or what ‘child’ even means, have been up for negotiation ever since, and perhaps this latest incarnation of children as an extension of their parent’s look is simply the latest perambulation of our cultural attitudes to children and childhood.

But I can’t help but hark back to the brief moment a couple of decades ago – from the late 60s to the end of the 80s – where there was a certain playfulness and whimsy to children’s’ clothing – where children were encouraged to dress in clothes that they chose, that they liked, and that made them look – well, like kids. This was how I was dressed when I was growing up. For sure, I remember many a violent tantrum at mama-k’s insistence that I wear GREEN PLAID rather than PINK TULLE WITH SPARKLES AND LACE. But, at the end of the day, I was pretty much allowed to dress how I wanted to, and in a way that was entirely my own - not like a grown up, very much like a kid, and with a degree of personal latitude and creativity.

It makes me sad to think that, in our efforts to make our kids look just like us, we don’t give them the opportunity to look just like them. As much as I look forward to picking out outfits for the little tykes in my life, I look forward even more to seeing what they pick out for themselves. Case in point, and returning to the sister-themed origins of this blog post, Clementine Kemp’s little sister, and my absolute favourite six year old, LuLu, has perfected this art of dressing exactly like herself. With her artful draping of floral fabrics, held together with hairclips, she was a delight to behold at a recent afternoon tea at my house, and an example from which all of us could learn. Indeed, when children, left to their own devices, come up with the most ingenious creations, it makes me wonder why we’re not copying them, rather than trying to get them to copy us.