:: The Wendy House ::

According to wikipedia providing legislation for females to have equivalent to male voting rights happened in

• 1920 in the USA,  males of colour were given the right to vote 50 years earlier 1870
• 1928 in the UK, males over the age of 21yrs, irrespective of race of property were enfranchised from 1919. 

Both countries legally enfranchise males of different races before they enfranchised women.  What might that imply about beliefs of equality?

stranger on the street:  have you got the time?

This is not a question I was asked in the US.  This question has been put to me on several occasions when walking from bus stops to appointments in the UK.

The question always makes me think twice before replying.  Am I being asked for the current time or does the asker suspect that I may be a professional street walker?

Not natural,  arguably not beautiful and definitely not with a feather as implied by the imagery in this advert.  According to this advert natural beauty without surgery can be achieved by the injection of long lasting stuff.  Surely this is an abuse of even the 1968 trade’s descriptions act? 

To achieve naturalness you need injections?!

If the woman pictured in this advert is an exemplar of naturalness you also need lots of product such as dark eye-shadow,  mascara, lipstic, hair-dye, with some additional refinements in the form of eyebrow plucking, dental adjustments and airbrushing.

Burn me as a witch for saying it, but I’d much rather wrinklefest without layers of product on my skin and hair however ‘unnatural’ that might be.

t may be in the park,  but e is defintiely in the Greek Island beach disco bar.

In a disco infected bar on Santorini one of the pack commented on the extensive evidence of e-nhancements:

Poodle: I can’t believe all the boob jobs around here,  its increadible!

Wendy: you mean like that girl in the sequinned bikini?

Poodle:  Yes,  and that girl,  and that one, and…

The disco smelt of e-strogen affilitated enhancements and the bar music played ‘…you are just a sexy girl, nothing but a sexy girl…’ 

Poodle and my un-enhanced selves looked beautiful in our simple gently curved, gravity aligned, purity.

Padding removed from swimsuit bra's (flickr photoshare)

I reached my teens in the late 1970’s before the introduction of the ‘wonder-bra’.  Now,  bra’s without inbuilt padding, often called ‘push-up’ bras, are the smaller portion of the brazier market.  Luckily some designs do enable you to easily remove the default-provided padding and some celebrities are plucky enough to not-wear this generally unnecessary accessory and deal with the publicity that makes an issue out of their choice (e.g. Charlie Dimmock).

I can also verify that Jacksons stocks some fabulous bras without padding or underwiring,  Jacksons is a fashion rebel,  I love it!

After introductions Afghan told us that the weather forecast was too rough to complete a sail to the next Island, even Ferry’s were being cancelled due to the seasonally characteristic high winds known as the meltemi.  While clearly a good decision given the high waves,  this was a damping suprise to the whole pack. Afghan explained using essential information omitted from the promotional material, girls are in control:

‘mother nature is our cruise director’ 

 ‘the Aegean is a bitch’

[seadog laughter]  Ha HA HA HA!’

 real sailing experience #1:  be prepared not to sail. 

The pack spent the first afternoon on-land bonding at a beach-side disco-Taverna called JoJo’s; drinking beer, dancing, talking, reading books, sunbathing, sketching, meeting other tourists, swimming and making cell-phone calls/texts.  

Just incase there is any residual doubt amongst my readers that generally women are not considered praiseworthy, or enabled to take-on prasieworthy roles beyond those condoned by patriarchal values,  the BBC reported an analysis that confirms that celebrity females are more likely to be HATED and less likely to be LOVED than celebrity males:

In a nutshell, despite years of equal opportunities, the media - and the people who watch and read - prefer the stay-at-home mother over a woman who lives her life in public, particularly one who is overtly ambitious or successful in making money. There is great satisfaction among many people in seeing them humbled

I do hope no one is terribly suprised or shocked by this result.

wandering through an empty mall, alone,  wearing fitted jeans and t-shirt, I stopped at the information centre for some vital information:

Wendy:  Excuse me,  can you tell me where the restrooms are?  (Soprano voice)

I still haven’t sufficiently re-adjusted to England to actually say the word ‘toilet’ out loud in a public place without sniggering.

Mall Information lady (MIL):  Toilets?

Wendy:  Yes (smiles, manages not to giggle)

MIL:  Womens? (no hint of a smile,  a stern facial expression)

Wendy:                     …..Yes?…   (stops smiling and listens to the directions from the seemingly grumpy looking MIL)

The Ladies toilets were next to the mens toilets.  The directions to find either of them were the same.  Why do you think the MIL wanted to establish with me whether I was asking for womens or mens toilets? 

My outline form in said Jeans and a t-shirt (flickr photoshare)

Excerpt from BBC article:

A woman who was seen being punched by a police officer in CCTV footage has said she is disappointed after it was confirmed he will not face charges.

Punching a female suspect (guilt undetermined) five times while the suspect is on the floor after having fallen down a flight of stairs, while colleagues watch, is legally acceptable according to the ‘Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC)’ who stated that the police officer being investigated used

“justified and proportionate force”  

Watch the BBC video footage which includes a brief explanation of legitimate subdue techniques that include punching.  I had naively believed that the Police are trained to act in concert to restrain suspects using a range of effective techniques prior to resorting to punching.  

The BBC article is at pains to state that the victim boes not think she has been racially abused.  Unsuprisingly, whether this is an act of hate against females is not raised.

Imperfection alert

Sometimes I say, do, or type things that are miss-spelled, poorly punctuated, mr-typed, or otherwise perceived as jarringly inconsistent with being a self-professed fake-woman.  This effectively makes me a fake-fake woman, a double-fake woman,  it’s not like a double entendre,  double identity or double indeminty.  It can be perceived as duplicitous. 

My duplicitous behavior is normally revealed with an exclamation of ‘but I thought YOU were a feminist!  followed by citing my behaviour that fails to conform to the exclaimers perception of what a feminist should be or do. 

Common sources of this apparant inconsistency are my

• lack of awareness of that behaivour’s genderised nature.
• lazy, lack of, self-censoring of the bad genderised habits I picked-up through a miss, or mr, spent youth.
• use of irony, sarcasm or subversion has not been recognised by the exclaimer.
• temporary excursion.  Excursion from being harrassed for failing to strive for conformity to the current definitions of feminine ideals,  to being praised and harassed for aligning with them.  For example,  I’ll have a manicure, wear shoes with heals, wear a pretty dress, possibly use some make-up.

The exciteness levels have been raised from the bog-standard, yet rare, red to the yet-more-rare blood-red level. 

Defining characteristics of blood-red excitement level are

• Foul mood [insert a liberal dose of varied expletives here].
• unanticipated menstrual timing adjustment.
• optional clothing stains due to unanticipated timing adjustment.
• the level automatically reverts to the red level after a period of approximately 60hrs.

Today I am focussing all my emotional energy on striving to achieve the dizziest heights of most strikingly ordinariness.  The cats have already fallen into snore-laden sleep. 

I’ll let you kno ho it goes, though it ont be anything special, so maybe I ont let you kno ho it goes.   e’ll see if its orthy,  after a bout of affly indecisveness of extremely ordinary proportions and hacking my mini-hammer on the wwwwww key.

when smell of book,  or smell of plastic just isn’t enough for the women in your life,  try smell of car …

Sunday Times and  online Times article ‘Sex and the Sixities’  by India Knight includes the following rousing calls to womanhood:

“the essence of modern womanhood, the one hard-to-define component that makes us all want to cheer the loudest…“  is  “…possibility that we may, at 62, perhaps look like Helen Mirren in a bikini”

“a 62-year-old woman looking hot – properly hot, not “hot for her age” or hot as in “fanciable, even though you know you shouldn’t” is a thing that simply can’t be celebrated enough.”

‘Mirren in her red bikini says more, more succinctly, about what women want and can achieve than any amount of turgid feminist preaching ever could’

Gosh, I don’t think I know people who think spending time and skill to dress for the occasion is shallow,  but India thinks that view might be held by some Times readers because she considerately quashes it “if you think that’s shallow, I would humbly posit that you understand nothing at all about real women’s hopes and ambitions.”  Trying to following India’s humble reasoning,  leads to the suspicion that if I don’t want to look like Helen Mirren in a Bikini then I may not be a real woman,  Ooops!  I think I may have fallen over.

Apparently the social construction of ‘woman’ once meant “no longer being “a girl”, which translated into bad clothes, bad hair, bad make-up and, if you were especially unfortunate, a bad figure.”  and “Worse, having reproduced meant that in the eyes of society you no longer existed as a sexual being“. It seems that India believes promoting yourself as a ’sexual being’ , sexbot, should be an aspirational goal for real women and it is equated to looking young. If you don’t look sexy you look old.  Whhhooooops!  I definitely fell over this time.

India’s view also implies that, normal, aspiring real women have no financial or legal obstacles to not looking youthful and sexy because ‘deregulated’‘ ‘minor surgical procedures’ are ‘nothing that is outside most people’s league’ .  It is all part of the groundwork for achieving ‘a triumphant assertion of easy, carefree femininity’.  While fake women should embrace the freedom and “life-changing power of hair dye“.  As a self-identified, terminally-fake, woman I  ”might know better if they [I] made an attempt at living in the real world“.  Maybe downtown Reading is actually a figment of my nasty, demented, Ivory-tower, imagination?  Deary me,  I  must get out more and take my zimmer-frame.

If ‘looking good’ is primarily equated to looking youthful and sexy I have no intention of developing an interest. or skill, in it.  When looking good is constructed to promote wrinkles and twisty silver hairs ideally with a dash,  or spring, of surrealist creativity,  then I’ll be swinging my funky-stuff with the melting clocks but not with the people who aspire to portray themselves as sexbots.

For now,  if I place myself in India’s analytical framework I find that I am:

• Preaching (turgid?) feminism.
• intelligent, a blue stocking.
• a frump because I don’t pride myself in being fashionable.
• Living in an ivory tower (in Reading). 
• not recognising the equivalence of the value of having a face-lift with the right to paid maternity leave.

At least India has clearly given me the escape route to achieve real-woman status that luckily I can choose not to aspire to,  I must

• maintain my already abundant confidence.
• promote my sexual potential. 
• develop and interest in whatever the current fashion defines as looking good.  
• have minor surgical procedures so that I can look good in a bikini. 
• Die my hair.

Unlike Alan’s outstanding advice I wont be aligning the value-set outlined in India’s article.

* the sound of me and my zimmer-frame colliding with the ground when dropping out of our Ivory tower.

As you know,  I don’t need the help of heels to fall-over and scrape my knee, uppity curbs are sufficient, it is a wendy-way of being…

Sophie King received £7,200 compensation for ‘pain, suffering and loss of amenity’ due to a broken ankle resulting from a fall when the heel of her newly purchased shoe broke.  The Guardian’s Ariane Sherine thinks Sophie deserved a broken ankle and should repay the damages.  At least one fledgeling member of the UK caring(?), medical, profession agrees with Ariane’s view that women should expect to suffer pain for conforming to patriarchal, consumerist, pressures to wear sub-standard dangerous products,  in this case,  high-heeled shoes.  Both the Guardian and medical blog point out that Sophie, the victim, was 5 ft 9.  The sheer audacity to be a girl AND tall without recognising that she expected to suffer substandard, dangerous goods, while maintaining her social obligation to conform to patriarchal ’sexy’ values. 

This is a classic example of the patriarchal approach to dealing with systematic abuse against women by requiring an adjustment to the behaviour of the victim rather than the perpetrator of the crime.  Legally referred to as ‘contributory negligence’ , infamously called-out in 1980’s UK when a man convicted of rape was not given even a custodial sentence by Judge pickles because the woman (victim) was negligent in her behaviour by wearing a mini-skirt.  Huh?! 

I’m glad that this time, the legal system protected the victim, Sophie King. 

Shoe manufacturers systematically target physically-dangerous (high-heeled) shoes at women, not men. It is a clear case of female-gender abuse.  A trap targeted only at female health.  On planet Wendy an insightful, talented, lawyer would bring a class action against the shoe industry for being the instrument of perpetrating systematic violence against women.

In paper letters English service providers have more than once assumed that I am a ’sir’.   Yet another example of the multiple daily affirmations of womans’ ‘in’ and ‘out’ of approved place.  

This is the first letter that has assumed that I am actually a group of men.  The letter is from Her Majesties Customs and Revenue (HMCR).  It is addressed to an accountancy company who are trying to complete my tax returns.  It was sent to my home address rather than the accountants address.  The person dealing with my tax return is a woman,  not a group of men.  I am disappointed, sadly not suprised, that the default assumption for letter addressing here in England appears to be - if you do not know a persons gender assume male rather than use the addressees personal or company name.

In the letter HMRC ask why I want to make a self-assessed tax return.  If they can’t get my gender and single status correct,  they cant get my name matched with my address,  and my accountants name matched with her address,  they haven’t given me confidence in their ability to accurately complete the complex mathematical calculations necessary to estimate how much tax I should pay them.   

Completing a self-assessment is a double-check of HMCR calculations. 

Without the aid of dyes, stains, or peroxides, my wonderful mop of hair has developed some ‘arctic blonde’ with sparkly twisty effects thrown in for good measure.  It’s a pure swishy sparkly pleasure for anyone to squint at first thing in the morning and the pleasure’s all mine because,  suprisingly enough,  I’m still single!

According to get Reading:

“She then fled downstairs and tried to call 999, but he grabbed the phone off her and punched her twice in the face.  She began screaming so he put his arms around her neck so she couldn’t breath“  she was “in fear of her life” and “honestly believed she might die”,

This behaviour is reported as ‘out of his normal character’ and he says

“He is dreadfully upset about what has happened,”

Whether ‘in’ or ‘out’ of character he chose to stop her seeking social support (calling the police),  punch her in the face two times and throttle her when she tries to get support locally by screaming.  He could have chosen to ignore her or do a silly dance.  It was his choice and he did choose extreme violence.  Evidently he ‘lost it’ (self-control?).  Lost it appears to be part of a socially acceptable storyline to excuse violence.  Psychologists label loss of control as a psychological disorder and use it to explain the curiously termed domestic violence.  

“perpetrators of domestic violence rarely receive adequate psychological treatment, because they are viewed as criminals, rather than individuals with psychological problems.“

In the above case the offender got a suspended sentence and fined the cost of a good night out,  60 quid.  No requirement for a psychological assessment or treatment with the fine hardly touching the actual expense of the social services his behaviour drew upon (e.g. Police, NHS). 

How safe do I feel in a society where the legal system thinks I can be justifiably (for 60 quid) be repeatedly punched in the face and throttled when I try to call for assistance if the agressor claims its not habitual and they regret it?    

viewer of my desktop background (vomdb):  are they yours?

Wendy: (?????) I took the picture

vomdb:  yes, but are they yours?

Wendy:  I don’t own the flats,  but they looked pretty in the sunset so I took a photograph of them

womdb:  are they your children playing football?

Wendy:  no,  but that’s my shadow behind the shadow of that tree

Young dude:  …and it wasn’t the people that you would expect who knew the most,  it was the young blonde scruffy girls not the older men in suits…

Wendy: Young dude,  your prejudices are showing

Not really a dichotomy or a catchy title.

Hoorah for Aliza Shvarts is probably more appropriate.  Aliza has created a work of art as a physical object constructed from her body and a discourse where the ‘truth’ of the discourse impacts whether the physical art will be displayed or not.  The Dean of Yale University says:

[W]e will not permit her to install the project unless she submits a clear and unambiguous written statement that her installation is a work of fiction: that she did not try to inseminate herself and induce miscarriages, and that no human blood will be physically displayed in her installation.

It’s like that other ultimatum directed at women in medieval times:  confess to being a witch and we might not kill you,  don’t confess and we’ll burn you alive. 

Rephrased as

Deny that you have rights over your body (to choose insemination,  to choose miscarriage) and we’ll let people see the outcomes,  admit to having rights over your body and we’ll make sure no-one can see the outcomes.

Outstanding artwork Alizia.  Whether her story about the construction process is a hoax or not is less important than the clear themes embedded in the reactions to her construction process.     

facilitator: we’ve split the groups up to ensure that each group includes a woman

why do you think this is? 

Perhaps to balance any biases on group achiviements based on the differential skill.  No group is systematically (dis)advantaged due to a disproportionate representation of women.  Is this reasonable?   

For me,  the bottom-line is that I am treated differently based on my gender in a situation where skills are more important than gender.  It’s reinforced gender differentiation.  I’d rather they just dropped it from the discourse and enabled us to focus on things that actually can and should make a difference.

Eventually I protested by taking my nail-varnish kit and cookery-books out of the pool resource and minced in my stilletos to the spar for a massage and gossip with a dose of well deserved shampoo. 

Or did I?

presenter:  a success story and she’s a woman!

possible implications of mentioning gender in this context include, but are not limited to,

1. being a member of the minority group, female, is not easy to identify
2. being a member of this minority group, female, shoupld be promoted as deserving of special treatment,  recognition,  etc
3. citing female gender as exceptional is a presenter-declarant of psuedo-feminisim.
4. The presenter gets twisted pleasure out of winding-wendy-up.
5. women demonstrating successful behaviour in this context is an expception and therefore noteworthy because:

society works to prevent skilled women from succeeding

women are less skilled

After over 40 years of listening to this sort of crap on a daily basis I’m amazed that I manage to get irritated by its commonality….  

Geoff Mulgan is partly on track when he aligns L’Oreal’s slogan with Nationalisim and values of low worth.  Oddly(?) Geoff completely omits what appears, to me, to be the obvious point that the message appears to be intentionally delivered to women. 

‘you’re worth it…’

…what are you worth?  Apparantly a shampoo..  ..or a moisturiser…

Is that really what women are worth? 

received in an email from a boy sent to a distribution list of mainly boys including the odd non-boy like me: 

we had a Soccer-game and it was great Fun (even 1 Female attended :))

can you see any problem here or is refering to a gender-based stereo-type based on predominant current behaviours acceptable?

Before opening my mail,  making a phone call,  or walking onto the dark streets of the rainy city I put on my invisible cloak of super powers bequeathed to me by my ancestors,  then,  as if by magic any subsequent communications with me are somehow directed to somone that isnt really me….

Wait-staff:  Excuse me Mrs.

Thames Water:  Mr.

Bus driver: you ladies remind me to point out where the mall is

British Telecom:  Mrs.

Who would have guessed my superhero power to mirror people’s gender-expectations right back at them,  its akin to being invisible except you can still be seen and are expected to pay your bills even if they are not actually addressed to you.  Sigh.

I’ll either have to get married,  start compulsive shopping, or have a sex-change operation to fulfill the expectations of the people whose services I use.   Luckily, pleasing them is not high on my list of priorities,  so I can keep my money,  self respect and decreasing carbon footprint.

A neglected building in downtown Reading still bears the title ‘Womens Information’. 

Has Womens Information emigrated to Australia, or become a Democratic Political movement in the US?

peperami sausage, John Smiths and 4 Eccles cakes can keep the menorrhea at bay

My Geordie friend called IPS a second time to make sure they were fully appraised of quite how insulting it was to be deemed inelligible to verify my passport photo because she had opted to stay at home to bring up her young children.   She spoke to a different person who told her she is eligible to sign my passport photograph.  

Do you think they’ll replace my passport?…  …its been gone for 2 weeks….  …will they send me a 1 year scatty person passport or the full 10 year reliable-person version? 

A professional person that has known me for at least 2 years had to sign my passport photograph to verify it was a true likeness. A Geordie friend of 21yrs that I met at Loughborough University did the honours. She’s currently a full time mum. It didn’t occur to me, silly me, that full time mum’s don’t count as professionals worthy of verifying identity. Even if they have British passports, clean driving licences, no criminal records, like my friend. IPS rejected her. She’s mightily insulted, that’s insulted that takes about 90 mins to fully detail . I’ll have to track down a friend that’s currently employed, even retired professionals don’t count because obviously they get unreliable and dishonest once they retire….

Actually,  this Telegraph article is used to present Professor Anya’s  personal opinion that  girls are genetically predisposed to liking pink in the context of reporting a comparative study, mislabelled as an experiment, comparing young adult male and female reported colour preferences.  The study discovered,  and hold onto your hats because you’ll be shocked by this,  that girls preferred pinker colours.    As reported, this study reveals nothing about the genetic vs socio-cultural determinants of this disposition.  The news article does not detail the implications of the research for any practical application,  there is no clear value proposition. 

What can we conclude?

People that want to play to the visual experiences of young adult girls should consider wearing more pink.  Use this knowledge wisely.