wendy house

Sheffield city centre on a cold, wet March evening hosted this advert, selling shorts.

Pressumably the advertisers believe there is something in this image that will make women want to buy their product. Something aspirational and attractive in this image?  The unusual placing of the arms, the lack voluptuousness?  The image firth made me want to cry with pain then scream with anger. I wonder why the advertisers didn’t try adding the humour with a topical retro 1970’s theme and spread her across the bonnet of a sports car implying if she purchased these shorts she could get fucked by men who can afford a good sports car.

Oftentimes it feels like the 21st century redefinition of feminism is an appropriation of examples of freedom of choice that in actuality maintain the role of women as slaves.

brrrrrrriiiiiiiinnng brrrrrrriiiiiiiinnng

wendy house:  Hello!

BT operative (BT-OH!):  Hello,  is Mr or Mrs House available

wendy house: my parents don’t live here

BT-OH!: Do you pay the bills?

wendy: Are you selling me something?

BT-OH: this phone number is a BT phone number and we have a special offer on Broadband

Phone sales people often want to talk to my mother, dad or to-be-arranged-husband.  It will be sad when my reply is ‘my parents are dead’ until then it’s mildly comical.

Today we listen to internationally* celebrated behaviour therapist Dr. Amelia Prank-Hirst present the key canons of her best selling clinical text book on effective handling techniques for your pet human male – ‘he’s just a man’ 

This lecture was performed for a small group of international psychiatrists and legal specialists in the back garden of Doctor Prank-hirst’s modest wooden wendy house on the outskirts of downtown Stockholm.  The meeting is more commonly known as the ‘Stockholm stand summit’ (SSS).

From this lecture we learn that men

• are irrational (hard to understand).  We are advised not to waste time trying to make sense of the complete gobbledegook that pet males are prone to spew.
• have trouble standing up and require physical props.  Pet owners have tried many kinds of physical props but the most effective prop is the pet owner themselves.  I was particularly impressed by Dr. Prank-Hirst’s commitment to re-inforcing her hairstyle to add the versatility of extra height to her male-support function.
• should not be aquired for christmas or any other gift-giving ceremony unless you are confident that the recipient has sufficiently strong back-bone and arm-muscles to deal with the male’s unability to stand alone.  Several nations at the SSS are considering introducing a pet-ownership licence schemes to ensure owners have the strength to manage a pet man. 
• need a nocturnal external heating system.  Several heating systems have been proposed.  Currently the wood-burning stove is recommended as an excellent souce of renewarble energy.  Possession of a heating system is likely to be a requirement for people taking-on pet males in the legislation being developed at the Stockholm summit.
• require love.  There has been some debate around the nature of love that is required by male pets,  with specialists proposing that food, alcohol, TV remote control constitues the necessary basics and the provision there-of could be described as ‘love’.

I’m sure we’ve all seen the results of these simple behavioural support guidelines not being followed by owners of males – gangs of men wandering the streets at night,  shivering,  falling over, hanging around in fast-food joints and pubs.  

Tammy Wynette sang stand by your man

* In the style of Scarlet’s advertisement reviews.  Scarlet has not condoned any of the views expressed in this post

by Magnus Mills

Highly recommended for people who love watching the social dynamics of the British workforce.  This book was a Birthday pressie! 

4 smiles: Ratings explained

What is the book about? 

A story of gradual social change within a nationalised industry featuring, tea, cakes, chat, meetings and canteens.  We watch the gradual decline of a national treasure – the scheme for full employment – through the eyes of an unnamed employee.  Reminiscent of the decline of the national mining industry,  national car industry,  and the NHS. 

The reader gradually learns how the scheme works through the daily experiences of one employees.  We meet his colleagues, supervisers, and learn about what employees should do and what they acutally do.  The manner of storytelling reminded me of Kafka’s ‘The Trial’, as the protagonist appears to accept and observe all that goes on around him.  The short sentences, descriptive focus, economy with works, make the book very easy to read.  I wish I could write that beautifully.

Unlike the majority of modern novels this one focuses solely on work contexts.   The action, and sometimes inaction, all happens on work time, in work venues.  There is only one female character named and present in this workplace.  The scheme is currently, predominantly, a boys world of work.

Is the book boring?

Unlike Kafka, the story is full of situational humour that Mills gradually reveals like clues in a detective novel.  Other reviewers describe the humour as ‘Deadpan humour’.  For me the funniest part is what the scheme for full employment does,  how it delivers value above and beyond full employment.  Many of the reviews I read actually gave this away rather than allowing the reader to discover it within the book.  I am glad that I didn’t read any reviews before reading the book.

The red arrows jet display team have selected a female pilot,  for the first time,  in 2010.  This is NEWS.  

Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, in 1928,  she was
the second person to fly solo across the Atlantic, in 1932, and the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California, in 1935.

Why do we think women were excluded from the Red arrows before 2010?  There is an elephant in the news item.

She ignored me. She blames me, but we both argued.  It takes two to argue. I drive from work straight to the hospital every night since the misscarriage and she lies there with her back to me.  She ignores me,  even when I shout at her she ignores me. She hasn’t spoken to me since the misscarriage.  She blames me, she lost it because of the stress.  I was stressed too, I hurt too.  She thinks she is the only one in pain and she just doesn’t listen to me, even when I shout. Bitch. At least she’s still there, at least I’ve still got the bitch.

.

Person At Party In Garden (PAPIG): is [chap] coming to the party?

Wendy:  I don’t know,  I think he might be out of the country,  he was in Australia on Monday

PAPIG:  is he YOUR man?

Wendy: (calmly spills drink over wasp while gatheirng composure)…no, he’s not my man…

PAPIG: I thought that was strange…  …I mean,  your man being out of the country

Wendy: Oh (signifying a brain-stall prompted by the assumption that I possess a man that is averse to leaving the country)

Jumping onto a crowded rush hour Paddington train I slump into the one remaining isle seat.  Resting my brow against the seat infront. Breathing slowly, eyes shut, shut-out the crowded world.

Boy in window seat (BIWS):  are you alright?

Wendy:  yes, I’m alright, thankyou for asking, you have a kind heart

BIWS: bad day at work?

Wendy:  time of the month, normal pain, nothing to worry about I’ll just close my eyes and drift away

I surf the pain to some other consciousness, completely missing the train journey…. ….and almost missing my stop… 

At 16yrs, the first time the pain stole my consciousness was from a chemist queue. I clutched a packet of unpurchased pain killers.  My unconsciousnes chose to examine the shop floor.  A  kindly woman carried me to the local Health Centre.  I woke in her arms and gifted her the contents of my stomach. 

At the health centre I begged the Doctor for pain killers.  He said pain killers were not warranted because I’d just puke them up. That the pain was natural.  He prescribed lying on my back until I felt able to walk.  Then I should go home. 

With his words the pain merged perfectly with incredulity.  Not offered a glass of water to swill the bile from my mouth.  I could taste the incredulity.  Stung by the indifference of professional caring staff.  As soon as I could I slid from the trolley and stumbled out of the Health Centre.  To the chemist shop.  The kind lady who’d carried me had gone.  No-one knew her name.  No-one to thank. 

Thank you kind lady.

Since that day I’ve learned to accept, immerse, and surf the experience to unanticipated, inarticulable ways and places.  PMT and Cheese. Mmmmmmmm…

Words of wisdom from an almost stranger*. in this case a local Reading resident :

“don’t go there, its full of orange girls”

A little questioning established that ‘Orange girls’ wasn’t a reference to employees of a phone service company or a womens theatre group.  Orange girls are girls that choose to use recognisably fake sun-tan.  Evidently the fake tan looks rather orange.   The use of fake tan is associated with lifestyle and values that are somewhat superficial. 

* Past tips provided by Alan the hairdresser.  Lucia the hairdresser, an anonymous manicurist, a Jackson’s sales assistant, a bus stop philanthropist, a mini salesman, Windows Network Diagnostics, Flat Eric and Reading Police.

1984 involved discovering life outside of the southern 1968 Wimpy housing estate of my youth.  Catching National Express coaches to join demonstrations supporting the miners strike.  Being picked-up by the police on the main streets of Birmingham city centre under suspicion of being a prostitue*.   A friends suicide, numerous confidences of experiences of rapes.  According to the Birmingham rape crisis centre in 1984 an estimated 1 in 4 women were raped by the time they are 21 years.  There was a fabulous music scene in Birmingham and it attracted many upcoming artistes from around the cournty to the smaller venus.  The midlands had soul.  

In Birmingham Swansway played ‘Soul Train’**

(warning: this video includes Sax)

* girls not accompanied by a men walking outside after dark,  the only possible justification for this wreckless behaviour was prosititution

** the video ends before the eerie last notes of the song….  I bought their album ‘The Fugitive Kind’ which is exceptional way beyond its recognition.

“If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it“ 
chorus from ‘Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)’ by Beyonce Knowles

Is Beyonce singing about

• mobile phone ringtones?
• a runnaway bullock that wasn’t tethered securely by a nose-ring?
• a single lady,  as the song title implies?

What a plucky lady Beyonce is,  if she isn’t treated well (which appears to be equated with being invited to be a wife)  then she moves on to find another chap who pressumably might ‘put a ring on it’.  Why does Beyonce appear to refer to herself as an ‘it’ that should be tethered by the putting of a ring?  Even with her plucky  ‘I can find myself another man’  attitude she still appears tied to the idea of being a male’s chattels.  

This fully trained corporate server IT specialist spends her spare time decorating newdspaper pages purchased for the coffee room of a forward thinking,  diversity aware,  equal-opportunity-implementing corporate office. 

Well done that IT specialist for making your spare time work for you by selling views on your hardware that conforms to current male tastes in buffer stacks.  With your good IT job you can probably even afford to sculp your hardware to keep up with evolving fashions in male tastes.   How clever you are. 

I wish I knew how to manage the deployment and maintainance of multiple mail servers.

These are the search results produced by Googling  ’Women’  and then ‘men’ on International Women’s day (8th March 2009).   

What do you (not) see? 

How much tea did I consume while restructuring my budget for health, beauty then pregnancy and applying for a job as a naughty hot cheating chatty woman ?

Unenlightened person (UP):  As a favour, can you give my friend, the IT man, feedback on the website we’re developing?

Wendy: I can talk to him about what’s possible and provide something even if its just first impressions

UP: Oh* thank you he’ll be so pleased.

Wendy: no problem

UP: …especially since you are a woman…

Wendy: Oh**…   …why?  (demonstrating outstanding facial muscle, vocal tone and body posture control)

UP: He normally only gets feedback from men

Shall I tell the IT guy that the website lacks sufficient:

• PINK? 
• flowers in the design?
• promises of chocolate in error messages?
• links to bargain shoe-purchase websites?
• links to sign-up for escort agency work (and I don’t mean the classic Ford car)?

HahahahHAhaHAHAHahahahaha (the sound of manic laughing fading into the distance)

Perhaps not.  I’ll stick with giving useful advice which, you will be shocked to discover,  has sod-all to do with my being biologically female.

 * Signifying surprise that I didn’t start negotiating a fee

** Signifying an fake-innocent lake of understanding of why advice for this website might be different based on gender over website design knowledge and skills

Despite complaints, this advertising was passed by the advertising standards association as

 inoffensive

Apparently, advertising campaigns that are aimed at excluding women, portraying women as trying to be men, are not demeaning to women.   Insipid Missive provides a thorough collection of comments describing the history and arguments for the campaign with a couple of comments against.  

I wonder if Nestle are planning to release a version in white chocolate and advertise it as ‘not for niggers’ with advertisements showing people of colour called Winston having trouble pronouncing the English words and difficulty removing the wrappers,  then defending the campaign as so obviously not true that its actually funny.  It would probably improve their sales to the BNP.

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.