Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I spent time putting on eye-make-up, plucking my eyebrows, carefully choosing clothes to emphasize my natural curves, mastering walking in stiff shoes with high heals, dying my hair, applying creams to reduce the appearance of wrinkles and increase the firmness of my breasts.
Tailoring myself with the myriad of girl-conformance grooming accessories would probably take longer than the average commute even after I’d refined the required skills.
The thought drifts away like steam through a bathroom window while a large towel wipes water from my skin soon covered by soft cashmere. Thankful that I don’t need the social proof, approval, conformance provides though I’m possibly a little lonely.
In my valiant steps to curb my consumerism, mend my waywardness, I partake of old-fashioned passtimes such as darning socks and spurious knitwear. Mumsie taught me how to darn. Darning wasn’t a syllabus item on the compulsory (for females) Home Economics course provided by Chipping Sodbury Comprehensive school. A lot of useful home economics were omitted from my Home Economics education. It wasn’t comprehensive by any stretch of the imagination.
Recently I’ve added ‘Brickette‘ making to my many economic home skills. Here’s the recipe
Borrow a brickette maker (I failed at this first step – I bought one)
Use a large (not plastic) bag to collect the shreddings from the confidential document shredder at work.
Empty the shreddings into a large waterpoof container (Bucket!)
fill the bucket with wate
Leave the shreddings to soak for 3 days
Scoop the soggy shredded paper from the bucket into the bricket maker and squish into a brickette
Leave the soggy brickette in the sun tor dry-out. I’ve placed my first brick in my log-store
Three days to make one brick. I only have one bucket. I wonder how many bricks I’ll be able to make this summer? I wonder how well they’ll work as fuel on the woodburner. Apparantly it is possible to make brickettes from tea bags…
At the Chipping Sodbury finishing school for young ladies of good stock Mrs Thompkinson-Smythe’s ‘Floral Art and Table decor” course skills had transformed the graduation Marquee into a heavenly garden. Amelia Penrith-Perkington steps up to the Dahlia festooned podium to recieve the class graduation award for “Lady most likely to Marry an Arabian Prince”. Alemia’s successful final year project in International Etiquette and Arabic stock had given her the edge over Maria Fountaine-Diddly who’s sister had already bagged a Shiek. We see a flash of red from the underside of Amelias 4 inch heals confirming that she has chosen just the right pair for the occassion. Like a lipizzaner she gently swings her mane (24 shades of honey blonde) removing strands from her eyes and the hinges of her Jackie Onassis sunglasses.
Despite being under canvas Amelia keeps her Jackie O’s balanced pertly on her nose to hide the unexpected bruises from the recent cornea-corrective surgery. She hopes her fellow students, and tutors, will forgive her for this little faux-pas. Failing to use the Jackie O’s as an alice-band to hold hair away from her face is a level 1 style error. Terribly middle class. She regrets that the eye-corrective surgery happened so soon before graduation, but it really did have to happen before her coming out party. Relying on an emergency back-up pair of spectacles for unanticipated contact-lense catastrophes just isn’t acceptable now that she’s nearly 18.
Amelia winces as she recalls how her hair had betrayed her last summer by flicking a contact lense from her left eye while riding in Al-amir Sagria’s Jaguar XKR convertible. This had not been a problem on the drive to Newquay. Unfortunately, when they arrived at Jamie Oliver’s ‘Fifteen Restaurant’ Amelia had used the wall mounted urinals in the Gentlemans washrooms as a hand basin. Not an ideal way to prepare for the first course of moule mariner. Puking on the champaign ivory leatherette seat covers, just before Honiton, had not made for an idyllic end to the evening. Like silent lightening the Shieks people replaced the car. Amelia released a sigh, without letting her shoulders drop, at the thought that these traumas were now behind her.
As she turned to the podium Amelia caught a glimpse of the Govenor, Mrs Burke-Forster, texting! During the acceptance speech! Luckily, Mrs Burke-Foster finished her message before the applause and wolf whistles from some bizarre local people draped across the school boundary walls outside the Marquee, had stopped.
It gives me great pleasure….
Another writing exercise focusing on using another person’s voices. This time, imitating the style of another writer. I hope people who know the writer I am imitating will recognise the style
In a corner shop, the assistant is out back in the stock room. I stand in line behind an elderly man. He looks at the racks of newspapers. The cover pages of every newspaper show pictures of Sian, a girl who’s body was recently found nearby. He turns around smiles at me
stupid women getting themselves killed
How do you reply to a statement that blames the victim, that blames the victims by virtue of their gender? I paused, thinking that even if this comment was made in jest, I cannot find a way to make light of it’s mean perspective. The man watches me and starts pulling facial expressions that I cannot interpret. Facial expressions that feel agressive. There is nothing I can say to him, honestly, without giving away how mean I feel his statement was. He follows up with a loud, clipped comment
Pardon?
I didn’t say anything
I wish I’d never spoken to you
My silence appears to have redirected his meanness to me specifically, probably fulfilling what I think is a mysogenistic outlook. I wish he hadn’t spoken to me, I resisted the urge to agree with his unnecessarily nasty statement. The shop assistant returned, the man settled up his bill and left. After I’d made my purchase I noticed the man had left his walking stick by the till. I picked it up, ran out of the shop found the man and silently gave him the stick.
thankyou, just goes to show…
Again, I didn’t understand his statement, there was nothing I could find to say. I suspect people with such mean spirits lead very lonely lives where people they talk to feel the need and right to reply to them with equally mean comments.
In my teens I used to puke and pass-out during the first hour of my period. I sought advice from my local, male, GP. I can summarise his advise as
tough shit sweetheart, that’s what its like being a girl, shut-up and put-up
I learned how to predict the start of my period and find a quiet place to ‘lie down’ so that I didn’t fall-over when I passed out or upset observers. I talked to other girls and found that my experience was actually extreme.
A second opinion from a female GP, who treated me with a little more consideration, offered no further techniques or strategies for reducing the pain and impact. Her only words of consolation were that with age the intensity of the physical reaction would reduce.
My last fainting was in my late 30′s, so it looks like she was right. The pain is still overwhelming, more than the pain of breaking my bones. But at least there’s no puke to clear up and I can generally manage without having to lie down lest I faint.
Watching American Gigolo for the first time, when it was released, was fascinating. Mainly because of the reversal of commonly portrayed role gender roles. A man as prostitue, beauty and clothes obsessed, victim of clever people, concerned with making other people happy. The camerawork was also extremely good.
Sharleen Spiteri is a beautiful woman. Conceptions of female beauty have changed dramatically since the 1990s. Few mainstream female pop-stars nowadays would have the imagination and pluck to dress in a way that doesn’t emphasize her sexuality.
Sometimes the everyday barrage of pressure to conform to gender-stereotype through jokes, advertisements, news, and everyday conversation, that re-affirm the female role as
trivial
survile
productised
dehumanised
gets me down
This sea shanty by the outstandingly talented ‘the Decemberists‘ can lift my mood, let me sing and dance, let me hope for the some form of justice. Though in reality I doubt such a well established system of abuse as the Patriarchy has developed will change for the better in my lifetime, at the moment things seem to be getting worse
As Christmas approaches the House family excitement is ramping up. Tonight we are working on developing an integrated, complimentary, achievable set of new years resolutions. I’m always impressed by my young niece’s exhuberant ambitions and I do try to encourage her as much as I can:
Apparantly she ‘takes after’ me. A singular vision and healthy disrespect for social conformity mixed with a deep affection for people, and creative spelling. She is such a sweetie. Hoorah!
The TV is brimming with commercials for perfume occassinaly pausing for a Drama show, Quiz show or the chat show that hangs on to the old school branding of ‘the news’. The commercials all seem to contain
artistic images
scantily dressed young heathy people
shadows and strong directional lighting
swathes of chiffon
kissing and caresses
water
last scene including a bottle or a few spoken words, normally the name of the perfume spoken in a French accent
I’m looking forward to when someone innovative and brave steps away from the formula. Lets see some wrinklies wielding power-tools in a well lit garden shed.
‘Eaue de Woodshed‘ bought to you by the gardner and Black and Decker.
the girl with the dragon tattoo over 500 pages by Stieg Larsson in his first novel.
A good read for people that enjoy an investigative story with some dramatic twists without details of emotional complexity or strings of fancy adjectives. I finished this with about 6 hours of reading. My interest was held firmly for the first 4/5ths, then I had to work at the last fifth. The last fifth made sense and tied up a lot of ends, but felt a bit too much like being ‘tidy’ in a fairly predictable way.
Surprisingly, most of the online book reviews that I’ve read (The Guardian, The Times online) seem to focus more on telling the storyline and speculating about the late authors likely influences. They didn’t really give me sense of the strengths and weaknesses of the book. Unlike Alfred Knopf’s The New York Observer review. Knopf states the books popularity in Europe then makes an upfront fairly negative evaluative comment for the US audience - ‘Thebook is terrible, but there’s certainly something to it’. Knopf uses lovely words like ‘preposterous’ and ‘ridiculous’ to describe the incidents and storyline. This wasn’t my experience. The book storyline was nothing more preposterous than a combination of Joseph Fritzls story with Nick Leeson bringing down Barings bank with the connection strategy being a journalist. Believable. But Knopf does have a point. There were times when the storyline or characters shifted from plausible to a comic style, exaggerated characterisation. Both good and bad guys appeared to have super human abilities. For me this was actually a strength, I was rooting for the heroine to pull fabulous, unexpected, stuff and she did not disappoint. I wanted the bad guy to be a cunning, nasty person with no redeeming features. Stieg delivered.
The book’s Swedish title was ‘Men Who Hate Women’ and book sections start with surprisingly low Swedish statistics that describe violence against women and its impact. At first I wondered why, then I realised that the girl is probably supposed to be some incarnation of a feminist hero. To me, she is clearly a male construction of a feminist heroine. Not an everyday hero. She is a difficult to recognise extreme character. It felt like a shallow deptiction. She reminded me of the well meaning outlaws in US westerns, betrayed by the system they operate outside it. Masculinised roles resorting to violence and activities outside of the law to achieve their own ends. The book had an angle that appeared to celebrate the international crisis of violence against women by making it into the core theme for a piece of entertainment.
Knopf’s assessment of Stieg’s writing style ‘Tocall the dialogue wooden would be an insult to longbows and violins’ suggests to me that Knopf”s not spent much time in the company of Scandinavians. It doesn’t recognise that there are differences in the way they think, see and value things. Steig doesn’t provide long adjective strings and rich emotional descriptions. Steig tells you what is happening and lets you bring your interpretation to the framework he supplies. I found Steig’s writing style engaging, though the last part of the plot lost my interest.
I wont be reading the next 2 books in the series, 500 pages of a shallow cartoonish, masculinised heroine for womanhood was enough for me.
Spoken by anyone other than Jane this might not have seemed so suprising. Jane adored France. Studying business studies in French, recently returned from a year’s work experience in Paris. I listened, hoping my silence would draw out answers to the whirlwind of questions running through my mind.
Jane is one of the most beautiful young girls I know, palest china skin, amber glowing eyes, natural ring-curls, high cheekbones and a ski-jump nose. Even in this anger she maintailed a doll-like beauty. Our silence continued. Jane clearly had something to say about French men, but didn’t know how to continue
Do you want to talk about it?
Tears fell. Even for the most skilled coordinating crying, breathing, nose-blowing and conversation, is a tricky operation. Jane was skilled. I listened.
I was raped
it wasn’t my fault
he was an animal
I didn’t report it
I’d invited him into my flat for a coffee
who’d believe the foriegn girl
french police are men too
they’re all animals
The only real suprise to me was her bounding this experience to focus on French men. Alas, she’ll learn that rape’s internationalised without me pointing it out.
Walking to the train station I watch the car drivers sat in the rush hour traffic jams.
Mainly men in executive accessory cars. The BMW’s drivers wearing reflective wrap-around sunglasses as the drizzle obscures the light. Most of the cars are single occupancy. I see a few girls driving older, smaller cars.
On the train station I see this advert. A subtler form of the classic 1970′s advertising. The girl isn’t wearing a bikini and isn’t draped across the bonnet in high heeled red shoes. It feels like the world is stepping backwards to those 1970 values covering them in the gloss of a slightly different spin. I might have aspired to owning an Alfa Romeo if they hadn’t irritated me with this advertising campaign.
Why even try to sell new cars to girls when they can’t get the jobs to afford such expensive products. Adverts for men where girls are little more than entertainment and adornment. Popular TV programmes promote girls in this secondary role, reinforcing looking good, marrying well. I mourn the optimism of the 1980′s when for a few years I believed that things were changing for the better.
If you ignore details like during a job interview I was asked if I was sleeping with one of my job referees because the reference was so good. Obviously it couldn’t be accurate…. I didn’t get offered the job, my references were suspiciously good…
Or there was when I took my car into a garage to be serviced in 1993 and they asked me when my husband would be turning-up to pay for the service. Sigh. I guess things never really did change and I’m just staying sane by living in a dream world…
New year really started in the bathroom of a 3 star hotel 45 minutes walk from Notre Dame. Not midnight amongst the Europeans singing, hugging, kissing and drinking. A houseparty of strangers. A strange flavour of tonic water.
It wasn’t raining, but the clouds seemed to crowd right into the bathroom mixing with the steam where the taps ran water into the bath as quickly as it ran out the plug hole. I’d tired of scrubbing. Red and wrinkled skin from hours of soaking, foaming. Sometimes if was difficult to tell if this was real or a dream.
The effects of the spiked gin and salty tears were gradually wearing off, being replaced by a profound silence and a kind of numbness I’d never known before or since. I drank more water. Sometime I would have to leave this room, through the one door back to the bedroom. Have to look into his eyes and see all that had happened the night before reflected there. All his questions and apologies, all his needs and regrets had to be faced. There wasn’t enough room for me to run with the water down the plug hole. Watching the water spiral down I wished as hard as I could to either wake from this dream or slide out with the water.
Slowly, precisely and with the conviction normally reserved for reprimanding criminals I turned the taps off, rose, dried and dressed myself. Blew my nose. Drank more water. Closed the window. Composed, upright, dry faced. In the privacy of my mind I could hear the applause and cheering for a well excecuted restoration job.
the snow is cold and fresh, lets go out on the downs and make love, I really want to make love outdoors, please…
I knew the pull of making love in freshly fallen snow.
But not with him. We weren’t even friends, let alone lovers. Once I would have considered that all part of the fun. I’d learned the hard way that strangers with a sense of vitality, of living life to the full, seemed to come in a package that perversely included a need to possess, control. To own you in a way that breaks legal and moral boundaries, that breaks skin, bone, hearts and noses. I’m more cautious now.
Masturbate or find another partner, I’m not interested
wendy: I’ve got two eyes and I like to keep them peeled lest I start to loose things and fall over more than normal
lover: no, i mean you like to make love in the daylight, outdoors
wendy: that”s so much more than visual. Thats the breeze drying the sweat on your back, smell of the dew on the grass and the leaf mulch in your hair, the shiver from the scatchy snow on your buttocks. That’s not just visual, that’s living.
lover: that will take me a while to get used to
But he never got the chance to ‘get used to it’ because I wasn’t patient enough to be waiting for someone in their 40′s to learn how to make love out from under cover of darkness, sheets and comfort of artificially sprung surfaces. There are times when throwing caution to the evening breeze is exhillerating and worthy of a plunge
mary: rubbish, you are the least lonely person that I know, you just spend a lot of your time on your own
We met several months before. We both started a ‘mountain glacier hiking’ course. At 60 Mary was the oldest person on the course. She had not signed up as part of a couple nor was she treating the course as a mate-finding opportunity. How refreshing. I soon started to seek-out Mary’s company while hiking and during the rest breaks. I quickly tired of the chattering from other hikers, normally affluent couples considering what gear to purchase, what restaurant to recommend.
At 60 Mary’s love for her terminally-ill bed-ridden husband was not stated, but it beamed stronger than a lighthouse. She recorded our hiking sessions, the beautiful scenery and laughter, for him with her new digital camera. He could feel part of an active interesting life because she sought this life out and carefully bought it back to his bedside with love. What a fabulously generous heart.
I fell in love with Mary. Not the love that hungers for sexual validation. Not a love that needed to be returned. There was deep peace in her company. Knowing this I invited myself to her home in the foothills of Mount Ranier. The home she had built with her husband before his death so noticibly stepped towards him.
wendy: can I help you gather the leaves from your garden?
Mary: yes. they will fall as fast as you’ll be able to gather them
After a morning gardening, mostly in silence, we went inside and Mary finished the home made french onion soup. She talked while she stirred. Talked of how her father raped her and how the authorities didnt believe her story. Talked of how her sister committed suicide. How she left her bilogical family and built her own new family. How she worked to help abused children and beaten wives. Clearly she has known and seen more loneliness than I could feel.
The cedar dappled autumn sun played on her face. No tears, no frown lines.
It seems we have both found some form of peace amidst life, in the silences
young boy: but I love you, please.. …if you wont even give me a chance to prove how good a boyfriend I’d be for you, I might as well kill myself now
young girl: OH P’Lease, grow up, I dont negotiate with emotional terrorists
Within 3 hours he had written-off £4K of boy-racer Suzuki motorcycle to keep his threat promise. He gave her name and address as hss next of kin. She hadn’t had the chance to enjoy freedom from his persistent lobbying for access rights when the police notified her of the accident. They certainly added dramatic effect. Raised the terror levels. How long before his capacity for violence, obsession with her, will put her in hospital?
As his confidence grew he followed me into my favourite local pubs. I first noticed him when I left the ladies room. He was leaning against the wall. As I walked passed I heard him quietly sing. Like you hear leaves rustling, just there and natural. I thought he was a gentle natured giant singing a sweet song. Nothing ominous, as our eyes met, smiled, he stopped singing as I blushed.
Soon after I started noticing him everywhere I went. I’d catch his eye across a crowed room, hear him singing as I left the ladies room, bump into him at the bar ordering drinks. We barely spoke. My friends told me he was a prop on the high-school first rugby team, not a man of many words. He used a few of those words to prop-position me, a few more to tell my friends and the rugby team, we were dating.
As if saying it would make it so
I politely turned down his prop-positions, told my friends that I had not dated him, had no intenion of dating him. I didn’t think that neanderthal was your type……normally it’s the hookers you have to look out for, you can see the props coming… close friends didn’t buy his story. Persisiting, he started turning up at my home, writing letters, song lyrics transcribed followed by some of his own mechanistically pornographic explanations of why I should date him.
He didn’t understand a polite assertive no, I’m not interested
He didn’t understand a screaming, swearing, spitting version of **** off and leave me alone
I moved home, moved cities,, moved home several more times before I finally got away from him. ‘Where do you go to my lovely is probably a beautiful song, unfortunately I’ll never really be able to hear it as beautiful.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I spent time putting on eye-make-up, plucking my eyebrows, carefully choosing clothes to emphasize my natural curves, mastering walking in stiff shoes with high heals, dying my hair, applying creams to reduce the appearance of wrinkles and increase the firmness of my breasts.
