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

A Happy Little Vegemite

Although I was born here, travel on an Australian passport, and structured my English major around as many Australian Fiction units offered by our national university, I fall short when it comes to many significant aspects of Australian-ness.

For starters, I don’t do the team sport thing. I’ve tried to get excited about cricket - I just love the all-white uniforms and the silly hats - but a game where two teams throw a ball at each other for days on end leaves me uninspired. While I gleefully admit an abiding fondness for the Welsh Rugby team (on account of their lush facial hair) rugby’s union and league leave me cold once the national anthems are over. Large hairy men manfully singing is somethign I find rather stirring. Ball skills, not so much.

I know I’m risking deportation for putting this in writing, but I also don’t do the valorisation of sports stars as heroes. I skip the Bradman song when I listen to Paul Kelly’s ‘Songs from the South’, and make loud, prolonged fart noises whenever a faded sports star wins Australian of the Year. I have no desire to listen to has-been swimmers justify their bad behaviour on primetime TV. If you so much as mention our nation’s preparations for that eight letter ‘O’ word within earshot of me…well, let’s just say that it’s a word that might start with an ‘O', but it ends with a very angry Peggy. The only coverage of the ‘O’s’ that I intend to watch is the Bondi Hipsters’, and the synchronised swimming with Tessy Halberton, because those ladies gadding about in a pool is just too funny to miss.

On a broader level, I don’t gamble – even on the Melbourne cup – and I don’t drink much at all. My skin burns more than it bronzes. I don’t rate our flag, or our anthem, even when sung manfully by the aforementioned large hairy men. My favourite part of a BBQ is MamaK’s coleslaw. Emus scare the shiznet out of me, hot weather makes me intolerably grumpy. Home ownership and a quarter acre block feel like an impossible dream, barring a lotto windfall – an even more unlikely turn of events given that I don’t gamble.

Before you tear up my passport, though, I do have a few things to say in my defence, things that, deep down, make me True Blue.

Australia has light like nowhere else in the world, a light I ache for when I’m away from home. It’s in my bones, it’s there I feel its absence. I love the fact that we are a democracy, albeit an imperfect one, and that anyone who wants to can go and see Question Time in the House (I went last week at the suggestion of my wise colleague. Take my advice and go, it’s a hoot and a half). We have beaches like nowhere else in the world, and air and water clean enough – for now, at least - to enjoy them. And how I love our writers, our artists, our musicians and our filmmakers, especially when they capture something of our light.

But all this pales into insignificance when compared to my most compelling argument for my Aussie status: I can’t imagine a pantry without Vegemite.

There’s nothing better on toast or crackers, particularly when topped with bubbly grilled cheese, slices of jade-smooth avocado, or globs of bumpy, cellulitey, cottage cheese. I even take a leaf out of PapaK’s book and top my scones with Vegemite. We’re hardcore patriots (even though Vegemite is owned by Kraft, which is American – it’s the spirit of the thing that counts).

Although divided on Vegemite’s nutritional merits – on the one hand, those B vitamins, on the other, all that salt - I can’t help but gravitate towards Vegemite when I’m feeling, in the words of Flight of the Concords, more Vincible than Invincible.

Case in point: I had the 24 hr virus from hell a couple of weeks ago. I’ll spare you the blow by blow, but let’s just say I was so sick I fainted three times. If vomiting were a sport, I’d be representing Australia at the ‘O’s’. The first thing I ate when I was well enough to hold food down?

Vegemite toast.

And just like that, I was on my way back to being a happy little Vegemite.

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…

Collective Wisdom

Does anybody else love ABC’s Collectors as much as I do? In the desert that is summer broadcasting, the lack of Collectors is something I’ve felt more keenly than other telivisual deprivations. (This post is going to get no less nana-ish, by the way, so if premature aging offends, tune out now). There’s something compelling about hearing stories of people who have spent their lives collecting Stuff. From the obscure (key rings) to the obvious (Wedgewood), from the ridiculous (paper napkins) to the sublime (art), I find people and their Stuff fascinating.

It’s become a trend to make the claim, however dubious, that one is ‘not materialistic’. The amount of times I’ve been told that true freedom is being able to fit all your worldly goods in a Kathmandu trekking pack is fast approaching triple figures. I once dated a boy, amazingly for quite some time, who refused to buy the correct sized sheets for his bed (a king single – bad design idea # 153) because he ‘didn’t want to be tied down with Stuff’. Given that I have rather a lot of soft, cuddly, freshly-washed-at-all-times high thread count bed linen, the relationship was clearly doomed from the beginning. The point that I’m trying to make, in a roundabout way, readers, is that it’s cool to not be Stuffed in the most literal sense of the word – to be without Stuff.

But I have a confession to make. I love Stuff. I love buying Stuff. I love tracking Stuff down in second hand shops. I love getting Stuff as presents. I love being given Stuff for any old reason. I love using Stuff. I love organising Stuff. I love looking at Stuff. I love passing Stuff on to other people when I no longer need it. There isn’t much about Stuff I don’t love.

The environmental and social ethics of consumption are things I might write about in the future, when there are several fewer deadlines looming over my head. In brief defence of my Stuff Loving, the vast majority of my Stuff is actually recycled – it’s on its second or third lease on life. Which allows me to add a new Love to my reasons why I love my (second or third hand) Stuff: I love saving Stuff from becoming landfill. In other defences, I bus to uni when possible, buy as little as possible in plastic wrap, and pay the extra monies for GreenChoice electricity.

But let’s leave the moral high ground relatively untrammelled, and get back to talking about the glorious business of Stuff.

For a while now, inspired by collectors and my enjoyment of Stuff, I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a collection myself. The question arose: out of all the wonderful sorts of Stuff out there, what particular item of Stuff should I collect?

My collectable Stuff, I decided, had to fit into some tight categories. Numero Uno: Inexpensive. Easy enough to understand. Numero Two-o. Useful. Out with collecting figurines, then. Numero Three-o. Must not take up a lot of space, be breakable, smelly, collect dust, or attract vermin. I’m a renter – again, easy enough to understand all of these specifications. And, Numero Final-o, it had to be something I like. After all, what’s the point of collecting something if you don’t?

All last year I pondered what it is I should collect, but nothing seemed to be quite right. Until, after unwrapping my Christmas presents from Kitty Gillfeather and Clementine Kemp, the perfect Stuff to collect dawned on me.

Tea Towels.





(Don’t laugh, you were warned that this post involved premature aging).

When I sat back and though about it, it made perfect sense. Tea towels are inexpensive – even the top of the range Irish linen ones rarely go for more than $30. They are highly useful – everyone needs a tea towel within grabbing distance in the kitchen. They are compact, and, if laundered correctly, don’t smell, and don’t collect dust or little creatures. Tea towels, although humble, combine two things I really love – kitchen stuff and textiles – in the one practical object, and, are a fabulous blank canvas for all sorts of beautiful designs, cheeky slogans, and cheesy touristy gimmickry that I so love. Furthermore, there’s a nice sense of legacy in collecting tea towels – MamaK always keeps a large family of tea towels in rotation.

Popping Kitty and Clem’s presents into the linen cupboard – a funky Babushka print and a Hamlin Fistula Hospital charity design respectively - it turns out I already had a fair start on a good collection of tea towels.




Over the years, they’ve persistently found their way into my Christmas and birthday piles, and, in an almost subconscious gesture to what I knew I myself loved, I have always been one of those annoying people who gives tea towels as gifts, welcome or not.

Oh, and if I may allow myself to edge a toe onto the moral high ground? Tea towels are biodegradable.

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.

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.

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.

A Manifesto For Recessionistas: The People’s Utopian Sartorial Socialist Revolution.

A friend of mine from college – lets call him Captain Burns - supplemented the minimum wage he earn as a burger-flipper at Maccas by pirating. DVD’s, CD’s, anything you wanted burnt, slashed, or ripped in breach of copyright, could be supplied by Captain Burns with a couple of day’s notice and an extra large parcel of hot chips with chicken salt – the standard fare of modern day Pirates, I was lead to believe. Confronting the captain one day with my ethical reservations about the stack of pirated CD’s he’s burnt for me, Captain Burns turned my newly minted lefie politics against me:

Captain Burns (munching on soggy chicken salt chip): ‘Peg-Leg you’re a socialist, aren’t you? And you think that capitalism is wrong, morally, socially, and spiritually?’

Peggy (accepting offered chip from packet): ‘Of course’

Captain Burns (washing chip down with bourbon and cola, sneakily hidden in regular cola bottle so as to escape detection): ‘Well, it’s simple really. The capitalist social structure commercialises resources – ie music – when music should be free - for and of the people. All I’m doing is giving these resources back to the people who rightly own them. Redistributing the wealth of the state, if you will. And I will. Now, how about some Smashing Pumpkins to go with your Cranberries?’

Peggy (worries about morality of cd’s negated): ‘Yes please!’

Clearly, I was into 90s revival before it was cool.

Years after the fact though, my friend’s rather cynical interpretation of adolescent socialism sticks in my mind, as an example of how we should always look for ways of making our everyday lives less indebted to the capitalist system. In light of the fact that capitalism as we know it is crumbling, or at least flaking at the corners, perhaps it’s time to revolutionise and adopt a utopian position of a new sartorially socialist state…

What’s Mine Is Yours, What’s Yours Is Mine: Here’s a simple five stage plan for implementing your very own Utopian Sartorial Socialist Revolution.

Stage One of Implementation: Buy clothes. See prior posts for handy hints on this, but I think that if you like clothes enough to bother with this blog, you’ve probably fairly well along with stage one. Moving right along to…

Stage Two of Implementation: Wear clothes. Again, see prior posts, but I think you’ve got that bit worked out too…

Stage Three of Implementation: Decide you don’t like clothes on you. Whether it’s because you put on/loose weight, or change your hair colour, or decide that it’s time to grow up and get an office job and abandon your cowboy boots and floral dresses look (it’s never time for that in my book but if you’re comfortable with that then go right ahead). It’s a fact that for many reasons, happy and sad, we sometimes have to get rid of clothes. Putting aside the emotionality of the decision, you are now faced with the dilemma of what to do with them: rubbish bin, Vinnies bin, or…

Stage Four of Implementation: Share your clothes with various friends and admirers. Seems like a simple enough idea, right? You bought the dress, you wore the dress, you’re over the dress and it’s time to move on, you give the dress to your friend.

Surprisingly enough, it took me a good several years to cotton onto this. Whilst I could never bring myself to throw perfectly wearable clothes in the bin, I still didn’t think there were many other options than Vinnies for my cast-offs. Until my dear friends MiMi Goss and Rosie Bon Jovi gave me bundles of their respective hand-me-downs. Being of a larger size, I’d never really received hand me downs from fabulously stylish friends before – but having done so, I found that my wardrobe was reaping the benefits. MiMi Goss had undergone a change in aesthetic, moving from boho to refined chick one summer, and generously put her florals and paisleys out to pasture in my welcoming closet. Rosie Bon Jovi, being of a similar size but different colouring to me, found that some of her most flattering dresses didn’t do her beautiful hazel eyes justice – but they would work a treat with my brown ones. Thus, the path to the glorious revolution was lit for me by these venerated prophets of style. I consequentially did my half yearly wardrobe cull with a new ‘friends’ pile along with my standard ‘bin’, ‘vinnies’, and ‘mending’.

Like all socialist projects, though, there is potential for calamity in undertaking a Utopian Sartorial Socialist Revolution. As you’re swapping and casting off clothes amongst your friends, there’s a lot at stake. Here are a few guidelines to give you an idea of what can go wrong, and ways around these problems to ensure that your revolution is most glorious. Not that I’ve ever encountered any problems, but, being the responsible revolutionary I am, I can’t help but feel compelled to warn my comrades of potential threats.

• Always, always, always have an open door policy when receiving shared clothes. And, always always always don’t expect to be able to ask for clothes that you’ve given away to come back. Paradoxical though this may seem, if both parties have these expectations at the beginning of the arrangement, things will go smoothly. If you are the recipient of a bundle, you should make sure that the original owner of the clothes knows that they are welcome to ask for the clothes back if they change their mind. See, that’s the beauty of sharing. If you give something which you later realise is fabulous to vinnies, you can’t exactly ask for it back…so there goes that fabulous denim jacket and French navy wrap dress I threw out in a fit of pique two years ago. Whereas if I’d given them to a friend, there may be a slim possibility of getting them back. Although, I would caution against giving clothes away with the idea that you may be able to recall them in any situation other than a dire one. When you give clothes that you’re out of love with away, you need to fully expect that the recipient will fall IN love with them, and may not want to relinquish. Or she may have modified it, or damaged it, or passed it on to another friend. It may be a little bit tricky negotiating at first, but it’s well worth establishing this understanding before you share clothes.

• Be open to the idea that people will not like what you want to give them – and let them know that it’s okay if they don’t want to use a particular garment, and that you won’t be offended. Likewise, if you are a recipient, be honest about what you would and would not like to take – tactfully, of course, but honestly. After all, if you don’t want to use it, maybe another friend of the giver’s might like it.

• Tell the recipient of your clothes about any ‘issues’ the particular garment has. For instance, if you are giving your friend a skirt that rides up, tell her about it. Forewarned is forearmed, and she will thank you for it when she realises you’ve saved her from the dreaded crotch creep – you know, that thing that happens when you get dressed, run for the bus, then realise as you’re walking through the interchange that there’s a strange creeping going on about your nether regions – that’s the crotch creep. The recipient may happily take the garment with ‘issues’ – perhaps she may know a trick to fix gaping buttons, or sticky zips – or she may gracefully decline. Either way, full disclosure is necessary.

• Lastly, and most importantly, never swap anything that comes with an ‘eeewww’. By this I mean any garment that is just a bit gross. Imagine you were a friend of Ms Lweinski’s in the mid 90s. She gave you this neat little navy shift dress that she’d got too porky for. You wear the navy dress about town, and grow to love it. And then you realise that the very dress you’ve now taken under your wing as your own has a history that is rather infamous, icky, and just a wee bit sticky…I don’t think you’d feel too good, to put it mildly. That’s why it’s a bad idea to swap or share any item of clothing that has come into contact with nefarious bodily fluids. Even if it has been thoroughly cleaned, you don’t want your friend to show up at a party wearing your old Vomity Veronika Maine.

Comrades, there you have it. Most great revolutions are born out of the suffering of the people, and the Utopian Sartorial Socialist Revolution is no different. In times of financial difficulty, the solidarity of Recessionistas is our style’s greatest strength. Swap with your sisters in style and viva la revolution!

Loving to Hate but Hating to Love

Vintage.

It’s a term I love to hate and hate to love. Being one of the most influential and prolific terms banded about in popular and highbrow writing on fashion, I feel that it deserves a blog post in its own right.

As generations to come look back on all these crazy things we’ve worn and are wearing in the naughties, the aesthetic which will be most enduringly associated with us will be the vintage look. Of course, there is nothing new in fashion borrowing looks from the past, re-imagining a particular period in history in a new time and a new place. Take, for instance, the ‘grecian’ styles popularised in the regency period – all those lovely, cottony, jane-austeny frocks were modelled on what was imagined and understood to be the ‘classical’ mode of dress.

What makes our modern notion of ‘vintage’ radically different is that it’s not referencing a single style or era, like the neo-classical look of the regency period. Rather, it is the idea that anything old – from any era – is fair game, fashion wise. ‘Vintage’ looks, as we know them now, borrow stylistically from every decade of the 20th century, and take some flavours from earlier still. It’s all a bit of a hodge podge, one that can result in some rather baffling looks. Just see Alana Hill for a pictorial representation. Girlfriend sooooooo went through granny’s closet after one too many disco biscuits, let me tell you…

The other interesting thing in the way that we do ‘vintage’ nowadays is the privileging of ‘authentic’ vintage over ‘reproduced’ vintage – at lest if you are a TRUE fashionista (whatever that is supposed to mean) you are not supposed to wear reproduction pieces from Diva, but unearth them from flea markets, preferably in Paris or Portobello. Of course, if your travels tend to take you more to Penrith than the aforementioned ‘P’ destinations, you may have a problem with this. Historically, this penchant for the genuine article is something quite unique. Whenever any trend in the past has referenced another period, it has almost always done so on its own terms – ie by remaking and remodelling new versions of old looks, rather than actually ferreting about finding the old and crusty relics in their original format. Perhaps the popularity of ‘real’ vintage is a response to our throwaway culture – that, because mass produced goods are so widely available, we value the unique, the old, and the unusual.

As anybody who has read any previous post on this blog knows, I will always be a champion of all things daring. And vintage, worn well, is often is just that. However, I feel that we’ve forgotten something very important in our quest for all things authentically vintage…that sometimes things from the past should stay there for very good reasons. SOME THINGS ARE HIDEOUS AND SHOULD BE FORGOTTEN. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s okay to wear it, even if the lens that fashion is looking through is framed by a pair of vintage ray-bans. Case in point: at a terribly groovy house party last year, a terribly groovy young man was wearing a terribly groovy ‘vintage’ Kathy Day-Knight jumper. With appliqué koala and eucalyptus leaf detail and authentic moth holes. Need I say any more?

I think the prevalence of hideous vintage blunders like Koala Boy indicates a very real truth about vintage, particularly the quest for authentic vintage: that it’s really challenging to find good stuff. Aside from raiding the wardrobes of relations, which have yielded some wonderful finds, in particular mama-k’s glomesh bags and a couple of romantic eighties wonders, I have very few vintage pieces in my wardrobe. Of note is a fantastic rust-coloured seventies shirtwaist with a charming mini maple leaf print, courtesy of my fabulous friend MiMi Goss who unearthed it at a local boutique’s closing down sale, as well as the fantastic blue enamel choker I found one day at Landspeed in amongst all the dross.

My wardrobe’s paucity of vintage is not for want of trying. It’s simply because, if you’re after truly fabulous vintage, you have to look long, and you have to look hard. There’s an awful lot of wallpaper coloured mui-muis and very few rust coloured shirtwaists in the world, more’s the pity. Although it does make sense when you think about it. When you’re looking at an antique or vintage clothing store, you’re looking at a random sample of the clothes that people wore twenty, thirty and forty years ago. If you took a similar sample of what people on the street are wearing today, and time capsuled it, you would find a similar ratio of chaff to wheat that you find in most op shops or vintage stores. Therein lies the reason why the quest for the perfect vintage dress/bag/coat is rather akin to that for the holy grail – long, arduous, and with no guarantee of a reward at the end.

To a certain extent, this just makes it even more wonderful when you unearth a gem. But it can also be incredibly frustrating – if you love the idea of wearing authentic vintage, for the stylistic cache it carries as well as for the environmental benefits of recycling, it’s hard not to get disheartened by the amount of crap that is out there. If you tend to be of the curvier persuasion, this problem tends to be exacerbated. Due to the fact that we’re better nourished and/or larger than our female ancestors, be prepared for vintage clothing to be in a narrower size range. Another factor going against the larger sized fashionista is that vintage clothes, particularly vintage clothes from the fifties, are so wonderfully flattering on a curvy figure that those rare larger sized pieces in good condition are either a) handed down to grateful granddaughters who should thank their lucky stars and their mamas for what they gave them or b) are snaffled up by the dedicated vintage shopper or merchant. Tough but true. A final word on vintage sizing: clothing was often fitted quite different in eras gone by. Even up to the nineteen seventies, it was common practice for women to wear restrictive girdles, and clothing, even that designed for curvier women, operated from the assumption that the waist would be nipped in and supported by a tight girdle. Breathing and eating being two important and pleasurable bodily experiences, I think it best not to attempt to recreate the girdled waist at home, don’t you?

What all of the above means for the curvier vintage fashionista is that she’s just going to get a bit more creative. For instance, I very rarely expect to find clothes that fit my size fourteen frame, or shoes to fit my size ten feet. Even when I do find clothes that fit my body, they are often too short, particularly in the arms – we often forget that women were not only smaller, but also shorter in the past than they are now. What I can do, though, is get the vintage look through non-sized accessories – costume jewellery, bags, hats, scarves, and sometimes coats – or take a vintage piece that I adore, but doesn’t fit, and customise it. A longer vintage dress can often have enough fabric to cut a simple skirt. That requires some skill with the sewing machine, and some confidence in drafting a pattern, but even the most undomesticated of the female species can and should be able to sew on a button, right? So, if that’s you, and you find a wonderful vintage garment with fabulous buttons, snip them off the vintage piece and replace the existing buttons on a cardigan or a coat with the vintage ones.

The other thing to be aware of is that, although authentic vintage is wonderful for so many reasons, there’s actually no shame in fauxing it. Just so long as the fauxing is done well – ie, you choose pieces that look genuine – no one will be any the wiser. This can also be a more cost effective way of doing vintage if you’re on a budget, as most of the chain jewellery stores stock vintage-style pieces at pocket-money prices. A word of advice though – if you are fauxing it, embrace the fact that the most successful faux vintage pieces will be more aligned with the kitsch rather than the classic. For instance, don’t try and faux vintage diamonds, pearls and other precious stones – the poor workmanship will be obvious and will give the game away. Instead, faux it up all the way to town when it comes to imitation enamel, Bakelite plastic, gold or silver tone jewellery and no-one will know that that fantastic red flower ring which is so mid century is actually $9.95 from Diva.

One final word of advice on vintage. I said above that I loved to hate and hated to love it. That’s because, when styled well, vintage fashion is brilliant and will set you apart from the pack, but, when styled badly, it looks like what it is at the very heart of the matter – old clothes. Some of you may beg to differ, but my attitude to wearing vintage – either genuine or faux – is to pastiche, and not to parrot, a particular era or feel. There’s something quite sad in seeing someone who looks like they time travelled walking down the street. Again, it’s a lack of creativity – to parrot the look of another era is to negate one’s own creativity. Rather, what is fantastic is when you see vintage items pastiche into a look that is completely the wearer’s own – so, for instance, a vintage dress, contrasted with uber modern but stylistically sympathetic Melissa heels, and a bold colourful bag, looks fantastic because we can see that the wearer has put their stamp on the outfit. And that’s when I can say, without reservation or qualification, that I love vintage.

LBD vs Let's Be Different

I have a confession to make.

Not only do I regularly go panty-less, I don't like little black dresses.

Let me tell you the story of me and the Little Black Dress. I bought my first LBD the week before my twenty first birthday. It is the archetypal little black cocktail dress - sleeveless, with wide set shoulder straps, a ‘v’ neckline, shaped waist and tulip skirt that finished just above the knee. Silk, no embellishments, on sale, perfect fit. I thought I'd found the fashion pot of (black) gold at the end of the rainbow. I anticipated that I would wear it constantly.

A funny thing happened, though, when I put it on before going out for dinner on my birthday. Rather than feel elegant, timeless and sophisticated - what I'd hoped to feel on my 21st - I felt flat. Uninspired. Boring. I tried in vain to jolly myself into the party mood, but couldn't. I simply didn't feel like me. Or, rather, I felt like me, but on mute.

I had a hunch this might have something to do with the dress. Everything else about the evening was perfect. In the interests of being a benevolent wardrobe dictator, however, I decided to give the dress a couple more chances to prove itself. Both times it failed miserably - again, I had that curious mute feeling I'd had at my birthday. Something was definitely amiss with that LBD. Months of puzzling over the problem of the LBD later, I came up with the reason why I never felt quite as fabulous as I normally do when wearing that LBD. Finally, it dawned on me and all the pieces fell into place.

As I said in my first post, writers write, sculptors sculpt, but as fashionistas, we wear our art. Being the ultimate fashion cliché, my LBD was blocking my ability to express myself clearly. Try and imagine how Iain McEwan would have felt if he ended 'Atonement' with something as trite as 'better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all'. Or Donna Tart's 'The Secret History' finished with the words 'boys will be boys'. I admit to taking some liberties here, but I can't imagine that Iain and Donna would feel particularly great about those words on the last page of their novels. In fact, I think they'd feel like they'd copped out - that they'd resorted to a cliché when they could have expected something more original, more creative, more fabulous, of themselves. That's exactly how I felt about the LBD - that I'd failed to express myself completely because I threw in the creative towel and resorted to the hackneyed and the cliché.

Like all great clichés, the LBD was initially a stroke of creative genius. When the LBD-bomb was first dropped by Coco Chanel in the 1920s, it was nothing short of a revolution. It 'freed' women from having to worry so much what to wear to the numerous social occasions a gal-about-town would be - and still is - expected to go to. An LBD, back when it was a fresh new concept, would have said a lot about the wearer; about how modern, how carefree, how liberated and devil-may-care she was.

The trouble with the LBD now, though, is that it's become a fallback position women adopt when they don't feel confident enough in their creativity, in their own look, to wear something truly fantastic and truly expressive of themselves. It's fashion's missionary. And because it's been so heavily promoted, and reincarnated in every decade since the 1920s, there are just so darn many of them around that to wear an LBD actually makes you pretty much a part of the fashion wallpaper. Dull, dreary, black wallpaper, that is.

This isn't to malign the black dress in general - indeed, I have a couple of other black dresses, both jersey, one clingy and the other floaty, which I love. In both cases, though, the black dresses I love have something a bit different going on - one of them is a print, the other has a daring and unique v-back construction. Both of them have something that sets them apart from the pack. My critique of the LBD is restricted to the heavily promoted 'classic' version - see the description of mine above, or the Portmans window next time you're in a shopping mall. It's the cliché of the black cocktail length dress in a plain fabric with minimal detailing that my vitriol is reserved for.

For me, the fatal flaw of the LBD concept, aside from being overused to the point of cliché, is the idea that a single dress can reflect how you feel at a cocktail party with your girlfriends, on a romantic date, at a work dinner or at a family wedding. All of those events, for me, have a different emotional tone – joy, excitement, loyalty and dread respectively. For all its supposed universality, the LBD doesn't resonate with all of these tones. Before defenders of the LBD will bring out the accessory defense - you can change the tone of the outfit with accessorisation - this in and of itself reflects a sad truth about the LBD: at its very best it's merely a blank canvas for fabulous accessories. Think about the LBD Audrey Hepburn wore in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany's’. Now take away the necklace and the cigarette holder. What have you got left? Not a whole lot of fabulous, that's for sure.

My clothes ought - no, need - to be more than blank canvases, just as a writer needs his or her words to be more than just text on a page. Whilst it's necessary to have some pieces in your wardrobe that whisper rather than shout ‘fabulous’ from the rooftops, I feel that the LBD doesn’t even belong in the category of whisperers. Every piece in your wardrobe - even if it's a workhorse item like jeans or a black vee neck - must be more than just a blank canvas, and must have something to say. Most of us don't have the money, or hanging space, for clothes that don't say anything at all, and can ill afford to surrender our individuality to clichés in an increasingly homogenized world.

Throwing down a gauntlet, I challenge you, dear reader, to abandon the LBD. Instead, Let's Be Different. To wrangle some ee cummings here, I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

So Let's Be Different.

Panty Problems: Just Say No

For such a teeny tiny garment, the humble panty is responsible for a great many of my fashion vexations. It’s like the pea under the mattress in that much loved fairytale, the Princess and the Pea. Hidden from the naked eye, small in size and seemingly harmless, panties nonetheless have a knock on effect on the rest of your outfit, and on the way that you feel. I would go so far as to compare panty problems with other foibles of modern life, such as locking yourself out of the house, leaving your ipod on the bus, or bumping into an ex in your trackies. The impact of a panty problem is implicitly acknowledged in those handed-down womanly phrases – of course you’d be upset if your knickers were in a knot. Likewise, a change of panties can change your outlook on a situation, hence mama-k’s oft-uttered aphorism: ‘put your big girl panties on a deal with it’. An eternal truth if ever there was one.

There are many reasons why the humble panty is so important. For starters, it is the piece of clothing that is – literally – closest to the body, and, to get all fashion-theory on your, blurs the boundary between the body and clothing, between the public and the private, more than anything else that we wear. All clothing blurs these boundaries to some extent, but it’s the proximity of the panty to that last great bodily taboo – the vagina – that locates a particular cultural significance in the panty. Our culture is fascinated by panties – even those asexual butt condoms in Bridget Jones’s Diary goad Daniel Cleaver’s desire. Ever wondered why an inept bloke, when getting a little bit ‘textual’ with you, never asks about your socks or your scarf? It’s because, due to their physical proximity to a taboo area, panties are loaded with social and sexual significance. Who knew a little scrap of poly-cotton could say so much?

On a less theoretical note, panties are the ‘foundation’ upon which the rest of an outfit is constructed. Anyone who wears jersey – and you all should, it’s a much maligned fabric – will know this. Panties that cut into your rear, ride up or down, have a texture that shows through the fabric of your outer garments, and are too dark or light, are the downfall of many otherwise excellent outfits. Even the much touted solutions to these underwear problems – the thong and the support knickers – have their own issues. Thongs are just as bad, in fact worse, than the garden variety bikini brief in terms of cutting into the fat that most healthy women have deposited around the hip area, and make even the most pert of bottoms look as though they’re meeeeeeelting down your thighs.

Briefly, I thought that support knickers would solve all of my underwear problems. They were smooth and seamless, and gave an extra couple of inches of lift in the cheek area which looked very well under a slinky dress…until I caught a glimpse of what was going on above and below the elastic line of the knickers. The beguiling thing about the support panty is the promise that it can vanish a portion of your flesh. NOT TRUE. It just moves it elsewhere. Like burying toxic waste underground, you’re just redispersing the problem, rather than vanishing it. In the case of support knickers, attractive and proportional flesh is redispersed into a spare tire around your waist where the top of the support panty ends, and two matching mini tyres around your thighs where the support panty begins. About as sex-ay as…well, that particular spelling of sexy.

At my wit’s end one day, having gone through my entire panty drawer trying to find something that wouldn’t pull, pucker, roll or otherwise interfere with my fablousness, I did a very brave thing. I abandoned the quest for the holy grail and went without panties. It felt a little strange at first, I will admit. But by the end of the day I was sold on the no-panty concept. I felt free, easy, and more than a wee bit breezy. There was no going back.

Initially, I thought I was alone in this deviant panty-ditching. I kept it on the hush, commiserating with other girlfriends over their panty problems even though I’d secretly found the ultimate solution. Until one lunchtime, over ham and cheese croissants with my lovelies Kitty Gillfeather and Clementine Kemp, I blurted out the truth:

That I wasn’t wearing panties. And hadn’t been for some time.

Clementine was aghast – but, to my great surprise, Kitty announced that she wasn’t wearing any either. After much giggling and strange looks from neighbouring tables, it turned out that Kitty and I had arrived at a similar conclusion – panty problems far outweighed panty benefits, and thus the panty concept should be ditched. Problem Panties: Just Say No was the slogan we adopted. Numerous other discussions with gal pals resulted in a wider-than-expected array of panty problems and panty solutions. Some went with the no-panty option only if they were wearing pantyhose. Others resorted to a nude coloured spandex slip to resolve the problem of bulges created by the favoured cotton bikini brief. More, still, were scandalised, and slightly intrigued, by the fact that you could actually do away with the panties and their associated problems, and the world wouldn’t end.

Of course, I am loathe to hand down any sartorial dictates on this page. If you want to wear panties, thongs, support briefs or good ol’ fashioned bloomers, then I will support your right to wear whatever you want, sister. I just think it’s worth mentioning the possibility of going free range. After all, if feminism is about ‘choice’ in this day and age, it can’t hurt to add free-and-breezy to the bikini, thong, or French knicker option, can it?

I will add one caveat to this post, however. There are times and places where panties have literally saved my ass – pardon the pun – and caused me, the most impassioned advocate of the free-and-breezy, to acknowledge that there is a season for all things, including panties. To put it more succinctly: when you’ve stood waiting to cross a busy road in Fyshwick on a breezy summer’s day, and your charming floaty skirt has been blown over your head in a particularly strong gust of wind, you will truly come to know the value of that little scarp of poly cotton. As will passing motorists. Arguably….

Because We Live Our Lives In It

There’s a scene I love in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. A team of stylists, under the eagle eye of editor Miranda Priestly, are putting together an outfit for the latest edition of Glamour Magazine. Andi Sachs, the protagonist and supposed heroine of the story, snickers at the gravity the assorted fashionistas and their assistants afford the situation. Because she’s ‘above’ fashion. Miranda, catching onto Andi’s contempt for fashion, gives her the passive-aggressive upbraiding of the century, culminating in saying that fashion is important ‘because we live our lives in it’.

Although I would hope that noone reading this blog takes their look, or themselves, as seriously as Miranda Priestly does, I can’t stand by her more. No culture in human history could be described as free of fashion. Even when we try to ignore it, or downplay its influence in our lives, like Andi in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, we can’t escape the fact that our very decision to NOT be ‘fashionable’ is, in fact, buying into a certain counter-cultural aesthetic – a fashion - that exists only because fashion does.

This blog is about celebrating the way that we live our lives in fashion. By fashion, I do not mean what is in fashion at the moment – what I mean by fashion is the way that we express ourselves through the clothes that we wear. The way that it can allow us to be a pirate princess, an earth mother, or Sophia Loren, all in the space of a day. The way that it communicates who we are, who we belong to, and who we wish to be, through the placement of a button or the shape of a heel. A fellow fashionista once said to me that whilst other people paint, compose music, sculpt or write, we wear our art every single day. That isn’t to say that we are always spot on and impeccable – I for one am most certainly not – or that every outfit could be described as art. But it is about realising and celebrating that every day, when we get dressed, we have an opportunity to create.

I don’t mean for this blog to be an exposition into the ‘rules’ of fashion – in fact, I will rail against the notion that fashion has rules in a post appearing here shortly. What I mean for it to be is a place where I can share with you my thoughts and experiences with ‘wearing art’, and where you, hopefully, will feel comfortable with sharing your experiences too.

Stay Fabulous,

Peggy Entwhistle

P.S. One final note before we truly get started – you may recognise yourself or things that you have said at points in these blog posts. You’ll know who you are, but, for the sake of keeping your identity a secret (like a fashion superhero!) I will have given you a pseudonym. Likewise, my true identity is pseudonemically shrouded, although if you’ve arrived here through a facebook post it’s likely my cover’s been blown! Nonetheless, let the guessing games begin….