Crossfire Hurricane

Of all my demons, I dread procrastination the most.

Unlike pride, jealousy, or anger, whose faces I know to slam the door on, I can never make myself see the harm when procrastination comes a-knocking. I let her in and, before we know it, it’s March and those Summertime things I had to do remain undone.

Which brings me to today’s topic: why it took me a whole EIGHTEEN MONTHS of frequent, regular attendance at the gym before I ‘made time’ to buy a sports bra.

The alluring thing about procrastination is it allows you to challenge quantum physics and manipulate the laws of the universe, making and unmaking time at will.

There have been whole pockets, in the last eighteen months, where I’ve spun time into a glossy, golden expanse: afternoons re-reading Atonement (not just page 136: the whole thing); aimless Sunday driving with the windows down and Tame Impala blaring; afternoon teas, brunches, dinners, coffees, where Now was All; stolen days doing sweet FA of any significance.

When pressed on the matter of the urgent purchase of a sports bra, though, my rad procrastinatory quantum mechanics skillz emerged, and those glossy pockets of time that I’d spun out are unmade, just like that. Couldn’t possibly have gone sports bra shopping; there was a party on, a chapter to write, a job to do. Next weekend, for sure, it’ll happen.

Next weekend, and the one after the one after that happen, and keep on happening. An honest evaluation of stretch marks suggests that the old Pleasure State (with the wire poking out) does not provide adequate support in spin class.

Even still, it takes a wrinkle in the fabric of time. A scheduled lunchtime gym session thwarted by a pair of forgotten sneakers. A two-for-one lingerie deal at David Jones on my way back to the office. It was time.

I like to pretend that my iPod-priave-changeroom-danceparty-for-one (musical accompaniment: the Rolling Stone’s Jumping Jack Flash), was purely in the interests of thoroughly testing out the Bustenhalter’s bounce control.

But I’ll tell you a secret: I suspect it might have had something to do with sending procrastination on her way, and the fact that there’s no better time or place to join the Mick Jagger Strut Team than when you’ve had a win.

If said win occurs in a David Jones change room, clad in a pencil skirt and sport bra? Well, I know Mick would say it’s alright, now.

In fact, it’s a gas.

In the interests of transparency…

Sartorial experimentation is a wonderful thing. At best, you discover new and different ways of dressing, and therefore being, that you very much like.

At worst, you look like an idiot. Which, incidentally, also has a transformative effect on your way of being – humility is hard to come by any other way.

Of late, my sartorial experiments have involved a headlong dive into what I like to term High Casual. High Casual involves jeans, looser tee shirts and jumpers, and cardigans, but with understated jewellery, a subtle colour palette, and classically shaped bags and shoes.

High Casual is a little early 80s Slone Ranger - a look for which I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot – and a whole lot of it’s-the-weekend-and-I-refuse-to-think-about-anything-more-serious-than-my-next-e-purchase-of-american-apparel-tights.

In short, it’s a highly enjoyable way of being.

But, I’m one of those restless types, which means I stride, some would say fecklessly, toward further experimental modifications.

My forays into High Casual are no exception to further experimentation. Keeping everything else Slone-y and respectable, I’ve lately taken to flashing a bit of bra, and not via the usual accidental flashpoints of low necklines and flimsy shouldering.

No, my bra flashing has been of the intentional variety. I have been deliberately pairing a coloured bra under a light, semi-transparent tee or jumper. For example: royal blue lace Marks and Spencers bra/white linen blend Country Road tee shirt.

I readily confess mixed feelings about this increasing transparency (see above statement C/F risking idiocy).

On the one hand, I like the fact that there’s subversion here. An otherwise respectable outfit is roughed up a little, and I do love a bit of ruggedness to keep things interesting. There’s also something aesthetically and ideologically pleasing about the practice of exposing layers, an implicit acknowledgement that clothing, and life, is complicated. Less esoterically, peaches are best enjoyed when they are ripe, and I’m only going to be 25 once. These are The Years where, rightly or wrongly, I can Get Away With It.

On the other hand, I wonder if exposed underwear, in any context, is ever OK. How is intentional exposure through a flimsy tee or jumper any less exhibitionistic, obvious and déclassé, than exposure via a plunging neckline, a practice which I outgrew a long time ago? More worryingly, could my sartorial transparency cause offense to the general population?

I’ve spent the best part of this evening turning these questions over in my mind, seeing how they look in different lights. I’m still no closer to a definitive set of findings from my experimental research. But, transparency, and all the issues it brings to light, can wait for some other time. It’s Friday, the weekend is just beginning, and it’s time for all of us to enter a state of being where we think upon nothing more serious than our next e-purchases of American Apparel tights (or events that give you equivalent enjoyment).

High Beams

One night earlier this year when I couldn’t sleep, I channel surfed until I came upon Embarrassing Bodies. Have any of you seen it? If you have, you’ll know what I mean when I say that I absolutely can’t unsee some of the things that I saw that night. And I’m told I watched a particularly ‘PG’ episode.

The whole discussion around embarrassing bodies, though, is a fascinating one, as a sociologist and as an owner of a body. A discussion which I’d put to the back of my mind, until my body did something rather embarrassing yesterday.

You see, it’s warming up here in the capital, which means that I am abandoning my favoured cardigans and scarves for a more seasonally appropriate look. I’ve also been dipping back into some summer classics, and reinventing them in some new ways.

Yesterday, I wore my favourite tangerine Country Road cap sleeved blouse, tucked into my amazing look-a-size-smaller Veronica Maine pencil skirt (not that people need to look a size smaller – although sometimes a little flattery gets you everywhere). Because my favourite top is getting into its third year of wear, and starting to lose opacity, I layered it over a nude slip, so as not to unintentionally expose my appalling lack of planning in the lingerie department (summer is almost upon us and I have no nude coloured bras). I checked my look in the mirror, and decided that not a thing needed changing.

Wardrobe win, right? WRONG.

My body decided that yesterday was the day to do something embarrassing. As mentioned on this blog before in the context of bra shopping, I have a large bust. Favourable comparisons to Christina Hendrix have been made (thank you Jordan Hawthorne, Kitty Gilfeather, Amity Merryweather et al). Sometimes, they get in the way of functional daily life, but mostly, my boobs and I get along. I say mostly, because sometimes by boobs get together and decide to completely sabotage my life. I’d imagine the conversation going something like this:

Left Boob: Hey babe, I’m bored. Let’s stir this thing up.

Right Boob: SNAP! It’s like we share a brain. What did you have in mind?

Left Boob: Hows about we deploy a chronic attack of the high beams, ALL DAY LONG, for no good reason? That’ll show her Upstairs.

Right Boob: Right on! We could make this even more difficult for The Boss if we each pointed our beams in completely opposite directions – what a laugh!

Left Boob: We are so clever and entertaining for inanimate body parts. You take the high road and I’ll take the low road...

Right Boob: And I’ll embarrass Peggy before ye! Ignite super erect high beam nipples…NOW.

I think they would take over the world if they weren’t securely attached.

Anyway, back to yesterday. There I was, minding my own business, grabbing lunch with a colleague, sitting out in the sun before December drives me indoors in the name of UV avoidance. Walking through the corridor, I cheerfully greeted a number of vastly senior figures in my school, chatting away animatedly about the weather. Until I walked past the mirror in my office: The Horror, or, my particular version of the Horror - Beam Me Up (and Down) Scotty. Quickly, I established that, no, it wasn’t cold, and, no, Dwigh K Schrute was not awaiting me in my office with the sole purpose of making all my Christmases come at once.

It was a clear case of mammary mutiny.

Normally, when this occurs, I foil the cunning plans of my misbehaving breasts with artful draping of cardigans, scarves, and coats. Yesterday, though, I had no such option, and the bright orange colour of my ‘I’m ready for summer’ blouse only served to magnify the extreme beams.

The only solution available was to grin and bear it, and spend ten minutes in the university toilets with my blouse ruched up around my neck, manipulating my naughty norks and adjusting my bra so my headlights were at least even. This procedure meant I was ten minutes late for my much anticipated catch up with Amity Merryweather, who, fortunately, could see the funny side of my embarrassing body. We agreed that the reason why these sorts of things don’t happen to Christina Hendrix is because she pays someone to be her professional high beam monitor, sort of like one of those people at airports waving coloured paddles around to let the planes known when it’s safe to take off.

I’m considering advertising a similar position. Serious applicants only.

Ita.

Dear Ita,

It’s now official. You are my new favorite person.

You, and Asher Keddy’s depiction of you in Paper Giants, are just so cool. The way you handled Kerry and Sir Frank? Genius. A demanding career and single motherhood? Again, genius. Being confident enough in your project to go ahead undaunted by poor focus group reviews? Again, and again, Genius. Bringing a vibrator to a staff meeting? Fabulous, but somehow I don’t think it’s something I will be attempting any time soon in my department. Although maybe just for lafs…

But I digress.

Ita, it’s from this place of immense props and respect that I have an important question to ask you, because if you can’t answer it, no one can.

My question is: is it alright to wear V necklines in the workplace, and, if so, how should one do it?

You see, I know from reading about it that you were very involved in Paper Giants, and gave your advice and direction as to what Ms Keddy should wear. (Of course, I am not surprised that a women of your immense talents and capabilities would take such a pro-active role in her own biopic. I expect to have full editorial control over my own when it is eventually released.) And, Ms Keddy, while depicting you taking on the magazine world, wore some pretty fabulous things, many of which were sternum-grazingly veed.

I have yet to brave wearing some of my more veed tops and dressed this year when I am having a particular ‘worky’ work day. I worry about what my colleagues and my students may think of me. Indeed, I have even written blog posts about how my ideal teaching dresses (Miss Honeys) are high necked to preserve my modesty.

But I am now wondering about the role that some Ms Buttroses, i.e, dresses and outfits that are substantially more liberated (and possibly accompanied by a charming speech impediment), may play in my high rotation working wardrobe. In particular, I would appreciate your thoughts about environments where one is exposed to some of the less refined blokes of the world (again, I feel your experience with Packers junior and senior would be of assistance here). Some of my students have a long way to go.

I would greatly appreciate your thoughts and consideration on this matter, and wish to again express my profound thanks and admiration. Even though Dame Edna did upstage you in the recent Royal Wedding coverage, you are still the standard of modern womanhood to which I aspire.

Lotsa love,

Peggy xx

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.