A Bajillion Other Things

Hey Girls,

I’ve just watched Seasons 1 and 2. And, to use a Shoshana-ism, Oh My F-ing G.

Girls, you blew my mind. Why?

Well, Shoshana’s hair. And Jecca’s feather coat, which is exactly like something I wore for a teaching day at uni a few years ago (believe). And how mean Marni is to Charlie.

But most importantly, Lena Dunham.

Allow me to explain.

I’ve been writing this blog for four years now, and have frequently dipped my toe into some thought-sharing about body image. My honours thesis explored body image, among other things. I inhabit a female body, a body which forces me to engage with other people’s perceptions of female bodies, mostly through comments about its size, shape, and overall composition, or its other characteristics, like birthmarks.

Consequentially, I read blogs, and newspaper and magazine articles, about women, bodies and body image, with one eye on personal and the other on academic interest.

And, Girls, I’m bored.

Achingly bored, in fact, because the conversation is the same. Has been for years. The articles mostly follow a formula:

• Personal anecdote (hook reader)

• Branch out into a wider comment (women don’t like their bodies: sad face)

• Criticism (corporations/society/patriarchy make women not like their bodies: angry face)

• Suggestion (more plus size models/less airbrushing/no botox: I’ve-had-an-idea face)

• Pseudo manifesto (let’s love our bodies: triumphant gloat face)

• Repeat ad nauseum (Peggy’s vomit face).

The worst thing about this body image conversation loop is that nothing changes. The same thoughts get published, week after week, month after month, year after year.

If talking about women’s bodies in the way that we’ve been doing for a while now worked - if it advanced anything, if women were acknowledging that their worth wasn’t determined by their physicality – we wouldn’t still be having the same conversation. Instead, we’d be talking about a bajillion other things.

Girls, you break this loop by ignoring the body image conversation. You could have easily gone down the path of making a big deal about Lena Dunham’s naked body, seen in just about every episode. Instead, it’s mentioned twice in season one, in an offhand way, and not at all in season two.

So, rather than having Hannah (Lena Dunham’s character), engage in angsty heart-to-hearts with Marni and Jecca and Shoshana about her body, Hannah has angsty heart-to-hearts about a bajillion other things, and eats cake, naked, in the bath.

It’s as if – shock, horror – Hannah’s body is not the biggest thing going on in her life.

Naomi Wolf wrote that ‘a woman wins by giving herself and other women permission – to eat; to be sexual; to age; to wear overalls, a paste tiara, a Balenciaga gown, a second-hand opera cloak, or combat boots; to cover up or go practically naked; to do whatever we choose in following – or ignoring – our own aesthetic.’

The above was written over 20 years ago now. And Girls, it’s great to see you following, ignoring, and recreating your aesthetic.

But, more importantly Girls, it’s great to see you talking about the bajillion other things that make up the rest of life, which is something I find to be the exact opposite of boring.

Yours sincerely, lots of love, and looking forward to Season three,

Peggy xox

On Make Up and the OH-REALLY Face

This morning, I woke up to two things:

1) A thumping head cold; and
2) A text message from Clementine Kemp suggesting breakfast.

Lying in bed, texting Clem and making Chewbacca noises through my snotty sinuses, it occurred to me that I was in one of those dangerous, but potentially liberating, not-giving-a-shit moods that often accompany illness and burn out.

The upshot of this mood? I decided to face the world without my face.

You see, make up is a bit of a vexed issue. On one hand, I love playing with it, and the ritual of getting ready. While it is fun getting ready with a pack of girlfriends, as a true introvert, it’s my solo getting ready that I treasure. There is something potent, and, I think, powerful, about that little chunk of time contemplating the mirror. Whether it’s putting on a lick of lippie while listening to Let’s Dance by David Bowie (my old pre-lecture routine), checking for foundation tide marks before a job interview, or tidying up eye make up that’s gone awry between meetings, letting myself be absorbed in the simple acts of powdering, brushing, smoothing and tweaking fortifies me for the challenge ahead. On a more practical level, I love that all it takes is two minutes and three Clinique products (foundation; blush; mascara) to make me look like I’m well rested and fresh, when the reality is that I haven’t slept for longer than 3 hours at a stretch all week.

On the other hand, I resent make up. I resent that I don’t feel or look professional without something on my face. I resent that people, often meaning well, claim to prefer the ‘no make-up’ look, but then pass comment on women with dark under eye circles, or an unsightly spot, because we’ve been socialised to believe that women roll out of bed with an even skin tone, glowing cheeks, glossy lips, and full, dark eyelashes (FYI – they don’t). I resent that women are taught by the beauty industry to look for, and spend their money ‘correcting’, ‘faults’ in their appearance, least someone take offense at their pores.

So, yes, if I was to describe my relationship with make up in Facebook terms, It’s Complicated.

Which is why, this morning, I threw my make up into the too hard basket and went out for breakfast bare faced. I should contextualise this by saying that the circumstances of this morning meant ditching my make up wasn’t a monumental act of bravery. Clementine, like most of my old friends, has seen me without my make up on. We were going to a quiet suburban café, early on a long weekend Saturday, and were unlikely to be seen my many people. And, I didn’t have any major break outs or under eye circles this morning, so I felt like I looked better than normal when I woke up, despite the snot and Chewbacca sound effects. Had I been particularly spotty or dark under the eyes, meeting a less understanding friend, or having breakfast somewhere less low key, I probably would have put some make up on before leaving the house, in spite of not feeling particularly inspired to do so.

While at breakfast, it occurred to me that sometimes, wearing make up or not doesn’t really matter, because nobody, in the normal run of social life, is looking that closely at your face. A little theory that sociologists call civil inattention applies here: people are absorbed in their own business, and even if you did have a particularly amazing pair of bags under your eyes, they probably wouldn’t a) notice or b) say anything about it.

Unless, of course, you encounter a rude person, who decides that your appearance is their business to comment on. In those instances, given their ignorance of the rules of social interaction, you have every right to subtly reprimand them by employing what I like to call OH-REALLY face. (My OH-REALLY face involves raised eyebrows, slightly pursed lips, and flared nostrils. Yours is probably a little different. Isn't variety wonderful?) It’s not a bona-fide sociological theory just yet, but, nine times out of ten, I’ve found it pretty effective in reminding a rude person how to behave in social situations, regardless of whether said OH-REALLY face is made up or not.

You can add Chewbacca noises to your OH-REALLY face if you like. That, however, may push you into Garfinkelian Breaching Experiment territory (SOCY1004 shout out). I guess it all just depends on how many shits you feel like giving before you’ve had your eggs and coffee, really.

Flat

There are moments when I realise I’m getting older, and I feel OK about it. Pertinent examples:
• Spice Girls nostalgia;
• Looking forward to staying in on Friday nights, not because I’m looking forward to getting my nerd on with Ulrich Beck (look him up), but because I’m going to have a bath, re-read a particularly beloved book (Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, read it), pop a Restavit and head to bed by 11pm;
• Rocking clothes I have owned for almost a decade;
• Chats with friends who are long-standing enough to remember ALL TWENTY of my uni hairdos, but kind enough to forget a few; and;
• Driving a brand new grown up car.

There are, however, moments when I realise I’m getting older, and I most certainly do not feel OK about it. Pertinent examples:
• The Wrinkle of Incredulity, mentioned eighteen months ago on this blog, has not gone away. Rather, it has increased, because numpties are always with us and there will always be a daily something or someone that makes me pull my incredulous face;
• ‘She’s So High’ by Tal Bachman, the song my first ever boyfriend declared to be my song (his taste in love songs was almost as good as his taste in women), is played late at night on Mix 106.3, Canberra’s Golden Oldies station;
• I can wear dresses I wore when I was eighteen, but, in doing so, my breasts are forced to occupy a totally different postcode than they usually do;
• I have superannuation in seven different accounts, which need consolidation; and;
• I can no longer wear high heels every day.

It’s this last realisatory moment that’s been making me feel a little flat, literally and metaphorically.

It all started the other week, when I was shaving my legs in the bath (I’m. Just. So. Classy. It. Hurts). As I extended my right leg to remove the last outcrops of winter undergrowth from the back of my calves, I heard an odd ripping noise. I bent my knee, extended; there was that noise again, the noise like ripping wet cardboard. As I wasn’t in any pain, I decided it was just one of those Body Things that will resolve on its own.

Two days later, however, I noticed the noise as I descended the stairs in my building, and, again, while there was no pain, I know enough of my family’s medical history to know that You Don’t Mess Around With Knees. In my family, knees are as serious as abandoned packages in airports - serious enough to make me take the advice my friendly neighbourhood chiropractor has been gently giving for years; abandon the high heels in favour of flats.

It’s hard, forcing myself to reach for the lower options as I get dressed in the morning. Surprisingly, it isn’t the height I miss – I’m five nine in my stocking feet and already feel myself too tall – but the enhancement to the shape of my legs that a heel, even a little one, gives.

A gym instructor once told me that heels, when worn consistently, activate different muscles in your leg than normal shoes. While activating these muscles stuffs up a whole lot of other musculoskeletal processes, repeated wear will give you that classic curve from ankle to calf. In other words, heels give you killer legs, when you are wearing them and when you take them off.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to say my legs are killer without heels on, I do know that I feel my legs look better, more curved, more graceful, in heels. The drunken old men who hang around the Melbourne and Sydney buildings, at very least, make their appreciation plain (or that could just be the metho talking, I can’t be sure).

Being a little stumpier in the leg department, though, is something I can – grudgingly - accept in return for what I hope will be a longer period of my life where I can stroll through my favourite cities, run for rudely early buses, and climb the stairs to my apartment. One day, when I own a penthouse with a rooftop garden and sunken pool area, being able to climb stairs will be a most handy thing.

Or, hope against hope, some clever lady will invent an innersole for ballet flats that activates the same muscles as a pair of five inch stilettos, building that graceful curve of muscle without buggering knees and backs.

A girl can, and does, dream.

A Long, Tall Drink of Water

Because this is an anonymous blog, and I don’t post pictures of myself, there are several things about my appearance you may not know. One of which is that I’m rather tall. About 5’9, in old money. After reading in the SMH’s Good Weekend magazine that the ideal height men nominated for a woman was 163cm, I got to thinking about my height.

I’ve often whished myself shorter. When I was in school, being shorter would have meant sitting with the girls rather than standing with the boys in school photographs. When I began college and uni, being shorter would have meant that I could have gone unnoticed a little more in class, rather than sticking out like a very tall sore thumb. Being shorter would mean that off the rack dresses and skirts would be the right length at the hemline and arms. Being shorter would mean that I would be substantially less clumsy – less distance for wires to get crossed between my brain and my feet. It would also mean that I would be ‘cute’, rather than ‘handsome’, that people would not look up to me (literally), and that I could get away with some more ‘out there’ clothes and make up without worrying that I looked like a female impersonator.

On the other hand…

Being tall means I can reach the high shelves in my wardrobe without a stepladder. Being tall means that I can wear patterned tights because of the extra yardage in the leg department. Being tall makes it hard for me to be overlooked in a meeting, seminar, or tutorial, and it’s nice to have to force myself to think of not-too-stupid things to contribute. Being tall, so I’ve been told, gives a person a natural air of authority, and, as such I’m capable of bringing my classes into line by standing up when I talk to them (freakily, this does work). Being tall means that I can wear big hats without looking like an elf. Being tall means that I walk fast – and given room allocations at uni this semester, I cannot be grateful enough for my super fast walking capabilities, even if it is a clumsy trot rather than an elegant stride.

So, on balance, whilst 163cm might be the ideal height for the average woman, 175cm might just be the ideal height for me.

To Be Clichéd…

I wore a cute outfit today. Here’s a picture.

The dress is vintage – I modified the skirt from an a-line to a pencil shape after watching Christina Hendrix’s Joan in Mad Men. The neckline detailing, though, is what makes this dress – that little flash of cream at the neck and sleeves really lifts this frock.

The shoes are my summer-go-to sandals I blogged about a couple of weeks ago.

The bag is a favourite Skipping Girl from years ago that Mamma-K and I share.

The jewellery is a mixture of favourite pieces, but I like the way that the round shapes pick up and accentuate the darling fabric-covered button detail from the neckline of the dress.

All in all, a pretty picture, wouldn’t you say?

But, aye, here’s the rub. This isn’t the outfit that I wanted to wear today. It’s valentines day, and I wanted to wear this outfit. Here’s another picture.

The dress was a $20 bargain from DFO, made all the sweeter because I had been eyeing it off at five times as much in the retail store. Notice how from a distance the print looks like polka dots, but, up close, it’s actually love hearts? Blows my mind.

The earrings – adorable – were $3 from Diva. There’s a rather large part of me that enjoys ghetto name jewellery a little too much. Until such time as someone gets me massive earrings with ‘Peggy’ emblazoned in 9 carat, I think these ‘love’s are a workable compromise.

The bag is my daily lug-all, but picks up the red from the dress’s heart print. So, reader, why did I go with the former, rather than the latter, outfit?

It all comes down to expectations and clichés. About conforming to expectations – in my own way as much as possible – and avoiding clichés.

You see, as I was kneading bread yesterday afternoon (I have become a sourdough tragic – but that’s the topic for next week’s blog), it occurred to me that in addition to my usual fieldwork commitments, and, of course, valentine’s day dinner at mine with the Dreamboat, I was due back at Yooni for the semester’s official kick off. I had a departmental seminar to go to, and, like any season’s kick off, everybody was going to be there.

‘Well, Peggy, wear the Love outfit’, I said to myself, ‘It’s not like anyone there will notice, and, if they do, they will surely enjoy the outfit for its campy kitch as much as you do.’

‘But, on the other hand’, I said to myself, ‘What if people pick today to notice outfits? What if they don’t get the campy kitch message that, I believe, this outfit conveys? What if, by its femininity and its cliché young-girl-in-love-on-valentine-day connotations, my special outfit goes from cute and fun to silly and immature? Is that really a semantic risk you want to take?’.

This dilemma kept me occupied until my bread was kneaded. And I came to the conclusion that, sad as it made me to dismiss my Love outfit on this, the most appropriate day of the year for it, I knew that it wouldn’t make me comfortable in the seminar.

Nobody gets dressed in a vacuum. This would be quite difficult on a practical level, from my meagre understanding of physics. When we get dressed, we are participating in a network of cultural symbols and contexts. Furthermore, our bodies, without us being able to do anything about it, also carry symbolic cultural value, via our genders, sizes, ages, and defining features. As much I would like to be able to wear whatever I want to, where I want to, whenever I want to, I’m not able to escape the cultural connotations of my clothing choices, and how they interact with the way that people ‘read’ my body. Perhaps this is more to do with being a cowardly custard on my part – and I accept that I am not a particularly brave person – but I simply can’t bring myself to throw sartorial caution and the opinions of others to the wind. I will always dress for myself, but I also dress for others, and I think, in some way, we all do that.

Although, maybe I could get away with the ghetto fabulous earrings…

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.

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 Tale of Two Cities and A Capital Idea

From St Kilda to Kings Cross is thirteen hours on a bus
I pressed my face against the glass and watched the white lines rushing past
And all around me felt like all inside me
And my body left me and my soul went running

Have you ever seen Kings Cross when the rain is falling soft?
I came in on the evening bus, form Oxford Street i cut across
And if the rain dont fall too hard everything shines
Just like a postcard
Everything goes on just the same
Fair-weather friends are the hungriest friends
I keep my mouth well shut, i cross their open hands

I want to see the sun go down from St Kilda esplanade
Where the beach needs reconstruction, where the palm trees have it hard
I'd give you all of Sydney harbour (all that land, all that water)
For that one sweet promenade – Paul Kelly, ‘From St Kilda to King’s Cross’.

Take a Canberra girl. Add a little money; a few couches to surf on; cheap air and bus fares to Melbourne and Sydney respectively; and a couple of free weekends.

Canberrans, newly minted and old guard, will be familiar with what happens next: the Canberra girl returns home star struck by the proverbial temptations – sartorial, culinary, cultural – that Australia’s two biggest smokes have to offer, like the little girl enamoured by the grown ups’ closet.

Being too cool for school – a character flaw I have to deal with it as best I can – I thought I’d afforded myself complete and un-breachable immunity from seduction by the splendour of the cities. Having rejected, mid way through my degree, the notion that Melburnians are cooler and Sydneysiders more fun than dull, cold Canberran’s, I held a rather smug certainty that anything the two cosmopolitan powers of Australian style could whip out, I could unearth some hidden Canberra gems that would be harder, better, stronger, faster – stylistically speaking – and all the more chick for being unexpected.

I guess I hadn’t heard the saying pride comes before a fall.

As this blog will demonstrate, I’ve come home with a rather bad case of the star-strucks.

Marvellous Melbourne

Having only been to Melbourne once in my life – for a day when I was eleven, with the parentals and the siblings, tres uncool – I was constantly met with blank stares at parties when this fact came out. My dirty little secret scandalised many – how can one possibly write about style in Australia without having visited its birthplace? Of course, this got my ire up, and I furiously resisted the notion that Melbourne had much more to offer in the style stakes than any other metropolis in the southern hemisphere. I think I deliberately developed a minor aversion to the place on account of SOME – not all - people from Melbourne endlessly disparaging the goods of our nations’ capital – our coffee, our food, our style.

It was only the kind offer of a place to rest our weary heads from the dear Miss Bennett, and the enthusiasm of my main squeeze, J-Man, that prompted me to hop onto ‘what if’ and book some flights for a winter getaway. Packing was a challenge – having heard tell of the uber cool Melbourne fashion pack, I was quaking, under my coat of bravado, in my black leather knee length boots. I decided to take as many options as my classic pre-rebranding country road overnighter could hold. This involved several vintage dresses, a lot of black, and plenty of stretch jersey for its magical crease resistant properties. I was terrified – for, as anyone who has had to move to a new environment knows, big fish from little ponds tend to get eaten alive when they hop on into the roaring stream of life.

Instead, Melbourne and I took one look at each other and fell hopelessly in love. Or at least, we decided we simply had to jump each other then and there. Melbourne is a city after my own heart – it wears its style on its sleave, its lapel, in the seam of a stocking or the heel of a boot. Because of this, Melbourne, or at least the areas of St Kilda, Fitzroy and Carleton that I came to know, is quite relaxed. It knows who it is and as such, has nothing to prove to you. If you take that same attitude to clothing and to life, as I do, you are one of the fold and welcomed to style’s bosom with no further vetting required.

Being someone who feels that a conversation isn’t complete if there hasn’t been something said about clothes or accessories, the casual way that Melburnians have of talking about clothes made me feel right at home. Shocked and delighted was this Canberran to lean that Melburnians actually…
Stop.
You.
On.
The.
Street.
…to talk to you about what you’re wearing, who designed it, how fabulous it was. Needless to say, when a grand dame of the Melbourne style set, wearing the most incredible fuchsia fascinator, stopped me to compliment me on the skirt that I’d made and was wearing during a mid morning wander, I felt like I’d arrived - and that I was, oh, only about ten foot tall.

The thing with Melbourne, as I surmised from my sojourn to the City Museum with J-Man and friends, was that Melbourne was the planned pregnancy after the bastard child that is/was Sydney. No offence to Sydney peeps – I’m coming to valorising your fair city in a few paragraphs – Sydney has always been a shambles. Never really thought about other than a quick and dirty route to eliminate Britannia’s refuse, it grew up never knowing who it was – without order, in anarchistic clusters around the jagged coastline and gash of a river. No-one wanted Sydney, and, consequentially, it grew up with a desperate need to be wanted. Melbourne, on the other hand, was the much loved and wanted child – its conception was carefully planned at a time when there was enough money and know-how to make this one work out well, after the mistakes of last time became evident. Thought was given to the future of the colony’s second legitimate child – streets and suburbs planned in advance, on a grid designed to maximise the fledgling city’s sociability and prosperity decades, centuries, into the future. Just as its shambolic origins influence the Sydney we know and love or loathe today, the planned, considered nature of Melbourne’s origin is evident in the relaxed self assurance with which the city carries itself. Melbourne has nothing to prove, because it has always known its worth.

And it shows in its style. Not to repeat the cliché that weary Canberrans hear all the time, but people in Melbourne dress in a way that’s all their own. Whilst there are trends – in particular, the skinny jeans/rocker hair/bomber jacket look for the lads – there’s a sense that anything you wear is fabulous so long as you look like you in it. Of particular note was the way that Melbourne women are unafraid to embrace both neutrals and colours – see earlier post – as well as vintage and modern pieces – again, see earlier posts. Prints also featured heavily, along with chunky hand knits – a necessity in a city whose mercury drops almost as low as Canberra’s. There also seems to be an aversion to dressing entirely in mass market labels – hence the proliferation of markets, one-off shops that sell local and imported designs, and vintage stores.

Another element of Melbourne style that I feel deserves note here, and became all the more apparent after my adventures in Sydney, is that Melbourne women and men seem much more comfortable with their bodies. People of all shapes and sizes were dressed beautifully, and with an eye to clothes that flatter, flaunt and fit. Perhaps this stems from the preference for one-off shops rather than the chain stores, whose sizing provision leaves much to be desired. The Melbourne gal seems to be much happier in her body – whether it be curvy, tall, short, or straight up and down. Not to say that there aren’t people in Melbourne who battle with body image – I’m sure there are – but they just seemed to be better equipped to dress the body in a way that is sexy and stylish, which, I have no doubt, provides an instant boost of much needed confidence. As a curvy women, I have never felt more comfortable with my figure as I did in Melbourne, because everybody else was embracing and working with what they had too.

The Melbourne experience is not all roses, however. I was concerned at several points that it appears to be the fashion for young Melburnian women to wear one side of their hair almost completely shaved, and the other side quite long. This, I feel, is taking the individual approach to style a little too far. Expressing yourself is a grand thing, but you’re also wearing your hair in such an ugly way that it hurts my eyes and causes me to vom a little in my mouth. No offense but it’s true. And as for those coffees I’d heard so much about…well, they were good, but I still think the Gods are better…

Splendid Sydney

The weekend after my Melbourne sojourn, my dear friend Clementine Kemp and I hopped on a Murray’s coach at the unglamorous hour of 8am on a Saturday in order to spend the weekend with our friend Kitty Gillfeather. Kitty’s older sister’s apartment in Neutral Bay was free for the weekend, and, given that bus fares were super cheap with it being a recession and all, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

I must confess here that my relationship to Sydney is a rather complex one. I spent my childhood there – we moved to Canberra when I started high school – and, like anywhere that you spent your childhood, pleasure and pain indelibly colour your perception of the place. Coupled with this was the fact that the part of Sydney my family and I lived in – St Clair, a part of larger Penrith – has a tenuous relationship to the rest of Sydney. Some Sydney purists say that anything further inland then Parramatta can’t be truly described as Sydney – and they are entitled to their opinion. However, the people I grew up with, myself included, always felt ourselves to be a part of the city, even though the tip of the Nepean river we inhabited was an hour away in light traffic from the iconic harbour. I think my test for whether you are, or have been, a true citizen of Sydney is a simple one. Go to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, find Brett Whitely’s ‘The Balcony 2’, and look at it, really carefully, for five minutes. If you have tears in the inner corner of your eyes, or a lump in your throat like a stuck chunk of panne di casa, you’re Sydney through and through. I’m one such person, and Sydney will always have a very special place in my heart.

However, as I mentioned above, Sydney does have some issues of insecurity which I just can’t bring myself to ignore, despite my love for the place. It’s louder, brasher, and sexier than Melbourne, its younger sibling, and I think that this stems from a desperate desire to be seen, heard and acknowledged, rather than from a place of confidence. Somewhat paradoxically, there’s also the tendency to try and fit in as much as possible – hence the proliferation of chain stores and the sad absence of the little one-off shops I love so much. Walking along the busy streets of Sydney, I recalled the Groove Armada lyrics that were the anthem of my high school years: if everybody looked the same, we’d get tired of looking at each other. Everybody looked the same, and I got tired of looking.

That’s not to say that there weren’t some wonderfully stylish people in Sydney – mostly the lovely Kitty’s gorgeous sisters - and wonderfully stylish places to shop – Paddington markets get a most honourable mention here. What stood out conspicuously for me, though, and was epitomised by our night out at the town, was the tendency of the ladies of Sydney to be (how can I say this without sounding prudish?) a little underdressed. Not in terms of formality, in terms of quantity of fabric! Fifteen centimetres does not a skirt make, ladies. Clementine, Kitty and I weren’t hitting the Cross – indeed, our watering holes of choice were amongst the most well regarded and popular in the city – but some other women didn’t quite get that memo as they were well and truly dressed for a hard night’s work. If you get my drift.

I’m a huge proponent of celebrating the body that you have, whatever its size or shape, and in not hiding away bodies or body parts that are not considered attractive or sexual at this particular point in history. But what is celebratory about squeezing Rubens-esque thighs into a skirt three sizes too small? Or wearing a bra that converts an ample bosom into four bizarre mounds of misshapen fat? One such young patron of a fashionable nightspot was dressed thus. She had the potential to be a very attractive woman, the sort who would have been an artists model two hundred years ago. It seemed, though, that the prevailing norms of Sydney style – ie show as much as you can while you can (and even then for ten years afterwards) – had got the better of her. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened had we transplanted her to Melbourne, and steeped her in the celebratory, individualistic style ethic that was evident in every fibre of that city. Perhaps she would have found herself felling more comfortable straying from the high street chain store look – and they tyranny of high street chain store sizing – and embracing her beautiful curves in a way that made her look as fabulous as she was, rather than like a doughier, spilling out-over-the-edges version of the Sydney cookie cutter girl.

Homeward Bound

As I journeyed home with many thoughts in my head – top of the list being how I had managed to drink that much without repurcussions – I got to thinking about Canberra’s style. If Sydney is the bastard child with an insecurity complex, and Melbourne’s lead the charmed life that gives it the licence to be whoever it wants to be, what could I say about our fair capital? The youngest sibling, by far, and not yet past the stage of pulling at the skirts of her two older sisters, as my shameful degree of star-struckness illustrates. Canberra is developing a look that is its own – one that I think is informed by a conflation of the student chick of the universities and the crisp, slick quality that the best of the public service provides. However, it’s still a long way from making its debut and coming out on the public with a definitive statement of who she is. And it occurred to me, some time as we were driving parallel to Lake George with the wind turbines white against the purple storm clouds, that that’s ok. We’re a new city, without the sense of history that informs Melbourne or Sydney’s styles, which gives us a playfulness, a naivety, and an innocence, which we shouldn’t try to grow out of too quickly. We can borrow our older sisters’ heels and lippy, for it’s fun to play dress ups, but not be too quick to be either one of them, and wait for our own time to come. A capital idea even if I do say so myself.

The Area

A few weeks ago in the David Jones change rooms, I was eavesdropping whilst I had my head stuck through the armhole of a particularly confusing dress. The conversation went something like this.

Customer (to salesgirl): Excuse me, but can you give me a bit of an opinion on this dress? I’m just not sure…

Salesgirl: Well, I think it looks great. It really brings in your waist and your legs look fantastic.

Customer: Yes, I know, but it’s just my upper arms. It’s The Area, you know?

Salesgirl: Ah, yes, The Area. We’ve all got one. Honestly, it really doesn’t look that bad. But if it bothers you, would you like to try the dress on with a cardi for a bit of extra coverage?...

The salesgirl and the customer continued to trade musings on their various Areas while I wrestled various bits of myself into the corresponding parts of the dress. Although the rather complicated frock was occupying a lot of mental energy, I couldn’t help but be enthralled in the areas that these women were listing – body parts I would never have even thought could be a problem, apparently, were. Whilst I was buttoning up, thinking how silly it all was – I mean, who would be upset about their shoulder blades, honestly – it occurred to me that the salesgirl and the customer had touched upon a peculiar and pernicious truth. No matter how beautiful a woman is, no matter how confident and flatteringly dressed, there will always be The Area – the part of one’s body one simply cannot stand.

Our beauty culture is built upon the premise that women – and, increasingly, men – always have to be working on changing something about themselves. Even if you go the whole hog – the botox, the lipo, the nipping, the tucking – our beauty culture increases the magnification on the lens through which we look at the body so that things which we weren’t aware of before are suddenly bought into focus. I’ll never forget, a few years ago, reading an article about shoe-crazed Manhattanites having surgery to reduce their ‘toe cleavage’. That’s right folks, toes ain’t just toes anymore – there’s good and bad toes, bad toes having a crease of skin between your big toe and the next toe along, creating a line similar to a busty woman’s cleavage. Anyway, thinking that was a load of bollocks, I promptly went out shoe shopping. Lo and behold, when I tried on a pair of darling red patent pumps, I had the dreaded toe cleavage. The salesgirl commiserated with me, and suggested I wear them with socks.

Of course, I bought them, and I still wear them to this day, toe cleavage and all, without the coverage of a sock (which would look daft anyway). But, for a moment, I got to feeling that perhaps I should get something done about my toes because they’re just not right. I got suckered in, momentarily, to one of the most ridiculous myths our beauty culture has created.

Not to blow my own horn, but I’m a sociologist – I study this sort of thing – and most days I think I’m pretty good at being a critical reader of the messages our culture constructs. I’m steeped in literature that is critical of the demands women are coerced into placing on themselves. Yet the messages are so pervasive that, even as I’m laughing at them and deconstructing them with my sociologist’s cap on, I still look at my toes – or my breasts or my ankles, or my ears – in a slightly different way than I did before. Every time, it’s an intellectual and emotional fight to remind myself that my body is fine as it is.

It’s a fight that I’m not alone in, as the conversation I overheard in the change room illustrates. Be honest – you probably fight a similar battle most days too. Indeed, in the UK, fighting with one’s Area is the subject of the reality TV phenomena of the makeover show – Trinny and Susannah, and Gok Wan, have made careers out of working with women in their battle with The Area(s). How good these shows actually are for women’s self esteem is a discussion for another post. What is pertinent about these televisual forays into women’s deepest insecurities, however, is that there’s a market for watching women struggle with, and eventually accept, their bodies, their Areas, as they are. Anyone who has done first year film studies knows that we like to live out our fantasies, the lives we can only imagine for ourselves, though what goes on on-screen. I think the most useful thing we can take away from these shows is how very much we are fighting, and how very much we want to win the war.

As alluded to above, for all the talk that I talk, I still can’t always walk the confident walk. I don’t think I have developed the secret weapon that will, once and for all, end all the battles we fight with ourselves over Areas which are more imagined than real. If I do find that secret weapon, you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime, though, we can take comfort in the fact that this is something we’re all fighting. As I finally arranged myself into the rather confusing frock, with a bit of help from the salesgirl, we both looked in the mirror.

‘It’s my knees,’ I said, ‘they’re my Area.’

‘They’re mine too,’ she said, ‘but you know, if you hadn’t of told me, I wouldn’t have known.’

Sometimes, all you need to vanish an Area is for someone to be your mirror, and to let you see more clearly through their eyes.