Having a bit of a chuckle this morning as Thing 1 was getting all vain about his hair. He wants to do the whole Justin Bieber (whatever) thing but it ends up looking more Ronnie Woods on a bad day. Poor mite. It doesn't help that he has inherited the ol' triple cowlick that has been passed down through our family since Moses was a boy.
Popular culture is such as regular and sometimes uninvited guest at our psychic dinner table. When I was a hot chick groovin' on dancefloors and french kissing frogs (way back before the combustion engine) I channelled the whole Eurythmics/Annie Lennox thing. Remember the peroxided short-back-and-sides, twelve-tone eyeshadow (with highlighter), eyeliner, mascara and glossy red lips and no less than three earrings in the left ear? (Not the right ear 'cause that meant you were gay). Now, put that glittery goddess of gorgeousness into black leggin's, black baggy singlet top with a fat belt cinched at the waist. Wait! There's more....this vision of Venus strutted around in stiletto-heeled black leather studded boots! Yes, I looked like a......like a.... drag queen!!!! 'Cept I thought I was Annie Lennox, or Annie Lennox spliced with Madonna.
In actual fact I probably looked like Marcel Marceau's understudy.
Looking back I wonder just how the hell I struck a pose in the mirror thinking "YO, HOT MAMA!!"
Not long before the albino skinhead look there was the "natural eyebrow" phase. You know, Brooke Shields cavorting naked in a pair of eyebrows for Endless Love, or Gilligan's Island or whatever it was? That was the end of an era for brow-beauticians and tweezer artisans. However it did mark that illustrious period in history when optometrists rose above the plebian masses - thanks to waiting rooms full of wool-blind patients. Gawd the eighties were hideous. And just when you thought it was safe to venture out they introduce bubble skirts again. For The Love of God!!! A praying mantis would be hard pushed to look slim in a bubble skirt. Shoulder pads come an ugly close second. Lets not go there.
A pair of Jimmy Choos a fashion doyenne does not make. As anyone who has seen me browsing the aisles of the local supermarket can attest, I am no fashionista. Yes, I agree, I could put in a little more effort to affect more Audrey Hepburn and less Fat Boy Slim, but I refuse to be a fashion victim. Sadly, we all are. We have to be, by default, otherwise we'd be walking around in fig leaves.
We are at the complete mercy of those nasty little stick insects perched on their Philippe Stark ghost chairs inside a glassy tower somewhere in Milan. That's where stick insects from around the world congregate each season for a mating session that results in the following season's "LOOK". I'm sure they snigger behind their mandibles as they piece together the toothfloss that will next season's "must have."
"Kate Moss will look fah-bulous in this dah-link," they crow.
And so too will the rest of us....in the dark, with sunglasses on, and if you squint a bit.
My dear mother has recently lost a bit of weight. Quite a lot really, probably in the realm of one water buffalo and a herd of wildebeast. Anyway, she has gone from a woman who would occasionally point an accusatory talon and spit at the Who-Wore-What Oscar's post mortem, to a woman who will coo about how fabulous next season's "nude" is or how "edgy" Natalie Portman has become.
She has also spent my inheritance on new clothes.
Perhaps what it comes down to is being comfortable in your own skin. I will never be comfortable pushing a shopping trolley whilst clad in a leopard-print leotard whereas I'm sure some of you are perfectly happy exactly the way you are. And venture out......
in a fig leaf.
Good luck to you!
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