wendy house

Attempting to conform to current femininity fashions such as displaying large breasts is both

• expensive – financially and emotionally
• dangerous for your health – mentally and physically

The UK for-profit organisation that supplied most of the PIP breast enlargement implants (made from industrial grade silicon) does not have the resources to rectify it’s mistake by removing the 14,000 implants and ‘reconstructing’ the deformed breasts. The NHS will not remove implants until after they have malfunctioned. That means that they will wait until the woman is injured before they will take safety surgery – they will not repair, they will just remove the leaking implant.

The mainstream media covers this from a ‘faulty goods’ supplied perspective, acknowledging that the recipients of PIP implants are experiencing distress and pain and that PIP was naughty for breaking the law and not using medical grade silicon. None of the mainstream media I’ve found has dared to comment on the socio-cultural environment that first drove these women to choose the physical pain and risk of major surgery to change thier bodies. This is a critical causal precursor for the existence of an industry that makes money out of mutilating women, a critical part of the story. Removing this industry would remove the possibility of faulty goods in the first place  – remove the pain and the risk.

Meanwhile, the internet provides alternative news style stories, for example, The London Feminist refers to the illegal practices of the Harley Medical group and how they explicitly leverage (illegal) advertising to promote their for-profit services. It’s good to find intelligent, well researched, alternative news stories but sad that feminist perspectives rarely seep into mainstream media storylines

Today this tragedy, one of many perpetuated against women, leaves me feeling:

• Sadness for, and anger on behalf of, the many women around the world who were given PIP implants in their attempt to conform with current fashion.
• Relief that I chose to accept the lesser risk of ongoing abuse for not aspiring to conform to femininity fashions
• Guilt that I am surviving without the fashion trappings of femininity when others are suffering more than I….

The flashing fairy lights above her head revealed a deep pink highlight to her long, gently curling, raven hair. Watching her unnatural colours in the flashing light had a fascinating quality like watching the flames in an open fire. Her dress was the uniform of the masses of young girls I see in the shopping centres – a hint of a skirt from which emerge thick black tights tucked into biege Ugg boots

She held the kitchen party’s conversational court. Either side stood a woman at least twice her age oriented towards her as-if basking in the glow from the jewels of pink light reflected from her hair. I resisted the temptation to curtsey as I moved forward to introduce myself to the group. Once introductions were finished she continued to chatter vivaciously

girl: In our new house we’ll need a small room that’s just for my clothes – a walk in wardrobe really. I’ve got 70 pairs of shoes

I AM a girl!

wendy (dumbstruck, then): in a whole year you only need wear the same pair of shoes 7 times, at that rate, they will last for years!

girl (proudly):  oh yes! I started work at a fashion house in London 2 months ago and I haven’t worn the same pair of shoes twice  yet

wendy (trying not to sound sarcastic): a fashion house? that does sounds stylish, what exactly do you do there?

girl: I’m an events coordinator, basically its about making a fuss, I make sure that the fuss happens at the right time and place

(group giggling)

wendy: are you looking for a place to store your shoe collection in London?

girl: yes, I went to cheltenham college. I just love cheltenham, but it’s too far away from London to commute

wendy: Is London an expensive place to live?

girl: Mummy’s buying the house, aren’t you mummy? so it’s quite cheap really

If she was any less sincere she’d be auditioning for a lead part in Absolutely Fabulous

Whenever I work with a company for the first time I spend some time getting to know the public face of the company by looking at:

• Their website design and content
• Their products and services – using them if relevant
• News agency copy about the company
• What my friends and family think of the org
• Biographies of key staff – if public

On one of these forays I read this in a job description

“A pragmatic realist, rather than methodology evangelist outgoing, confident, enthused energetic”

I read this job description statement as actually saying

“don’t tell us how to do things well, just get on with what we told you to do, don’t complain and look happy while you’re doing it”

This didn’t sell the job to me…

Because you

• can – Youths loot themselves £100′s worth of shoes and phones during riots
• are selfish – Bankers take £10,000′s  bonuses from public funding because size really does matter
• are worth it – Women pay £10′s for  products to make themselves more visually pleasing

PS 41 word post before the PS

Facebook is determined to suggest that I buy high healed shoes, loose weight and look younger. Sometimes all 4 advertisements are about weightloss. I always mark them as offensive because I have a healthy weight and lack of obsession with dieting.

Perhaps facebook should include BMI (Body Mass Index) as a field in people’s personal information so that it doesn’t irresponsibly promote dieting to people who are underwieght.

As you’ve probably noticed, I am repeatedly annoyed by the fact that Facebook perpetually ignores my responses to the controls it provides for rating these adverts. I tell facebook that I find dieting, and female conformity (make-up etc) advertisements offensive. What’s the point of asking me if they are going to ignore my responses. Given that they ignore my feedback the adverts feel like harrassment.

Visitors to earth from planet Wendy see the marketing of high healed shoes as institutionalised violence, targeting females. For some inexplicable reason hobbling, the risk of broken ankles, is an attractive female characteristic.

Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.

Erica Jong

The majority of females are complicit in perpetuating this violence. Visitors from planet Wendy are baffled by this complicity. Visitors keep their befuddlement under their stylish hats lest they cause offense, identifying themselves as targets for the near ubiquitous, rigorous enforcement regime.

What shoes should I wear to demonstrate my lack of complicity without attracting non-compliance social penalties?  My tastes rarely coincide with high street fashion. My criteria for yesterday’s shoe purchase trip, in priority order, were

• must not introduce a risk of bodily injury when walking – I can fall over without artificial aides.
• comfortable – definitely bouncy soles and soft uppers
• can be worn to walk 4 miles per day on sidewalks and in buildings
• please or amuse members of the public, work colleagues and clients when I wear them to work
• give the impression that I’ve dressed-up a bit for a trip to the Theatre, Garden or Dinner party
• colour should sort-of go with some of the clothes I already own. A fairly open criteria favouring blue, black, grey, brown, white and orange.

I’ve wanted a pair of red shiny, low-heal, soft soled shoes ever since I first read the Wizard of Oz. This pair of Kansas hoppers closed the deal in the time it took to try them on. I only visted 2 shops, RESULT!  All my criteria filled and MORE!

Waiting decades before finally meeting these shoes adds a special relish to our union

Unwrap the Edam, the cheese is on me!

“Truth is Beauty” cites the advertising slogan on the cosmedicine website.

Do they mean 1 to 1 equivance?  – Truth quite literally is beauty , nothing else is beauty, only truth.

Or are they talking about Truth being a subset of Beauty? – all that is true is beautiful and some other things are beautiful too.

Probably the latter, nonetheless I became more than a bit confused by the company slogan and name. Can you become more truthful through liberal application of cosmedicine. Is cosmedicine, medicine, with a cosmetic effect. Is this cosmetic effect what is needed to obtain beauty, and therefore (possibly) truth?

Why isn’t the home office puchasing this in bulk and applying it to all convicted fraudsters?  It’s probably cheaper than housing them in the penal system.

A strange mutation in body fashion can be seen in the windows of Reading’s large chain stores

Headless mannequins seemingly move towards you in a manner yet more creepy than the infamous Jackson’s mannequins

In the first Elizabethan era the fashion was to dress children in miniature forms of adult clothing.  With heads still attached, though Liz’s dad was keen on perpetuating headlessness

Since then, the English fashions for dressing children have varied greatly.  But generally there has been a clear distinction between styles for different age groups.  Youngsters are dressed distinctively. You could tell the age of a child by the clothes they wore. It looks like this dress fashion is beginning to follow the theme of  the first Elizabethan period, dress children as mini-adult and

Off with their heads!

(whatever age)

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.

Hoorah, I’d consider dousing my skin in that!

 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…

My Toyota.    I am a PC.    I Pad.    My Docs.   I be

Bee on TV

According to a UK Nivea TV advert 77% of women feel sexier when their armpits are shaved.

Hooray for the 33% 23% who do not derive their sense of sexiness from increasing their physical similarity to pre-pubescent children.

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.

I have old lady

• shoes (ecco)
• no-sholderpads (apparently the 80′s are back)
•  bras -because banana bras are back in fashion
• wrinkles
• natural arctic blonde highlights
• smile at babies reflex
• living arrangements (with two cats)

I wonder what comes  next…

Words of wisdom from  an almost stranger*.   In this case a marketing manager:

if you’ve recieved bad service,   just mention that you are a marketing manager with friends in the press,   your service will improve

I’ll definitely consider using a realistic variation on this tip, should the circumstances arise.

* 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, a local Reading resident  and Reading Police.

There is a branding, marketing, styling opportunity in the tea-cosey market which is woefully or wonderfully underdeveloped depending on your perspective.   This collection didn’t prompt me to part with £5.37  

My main tea-cosey was hand-made by my talented sister-in-law.    My name is sewn on the inside incase a moment of scattiness leads to my  losing  it (the tea cosey).   It fits on my head as snug as a custom-made hat.   That kind of personal tailoring does take some beating and these shop displayed tea coseys just aren’t up to par.

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 Vanish   ‘the worst time to discover a stain is during the Ironing’      

The ironing?

hmmmmm….  …my cunning plan to avoid stains and purchasing products (an iron and stain-removing chemicals)  is to  avoid ironing anything!  

Hurrah for wrinkles!

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.

When the smell of car,  smell of book,   or smell of plastic  just isn’t enough to please the peoplewho come  within sniffing distance  of  your life.    

When you long for the-day-after-a-night-in-the-pub smokey scent in your hair,  

Try the new tobacco scented shower gel

you know it makes scents.

Not a euphemism for light sabres.  

Also known in the US as ‘Energy bars’.    Not a way of describing the throughput of electricity to an electronic device.  

High sugar-content (energy) biscuits in a bar shape marketed in the US as a lifestyle accessory for highly active  people (Walkers, cyclists, etc).    Similar products in the UK  appear to be marketed as breakfast bars and stocked next to the breakfast cereals in supermarkets.   I suspect they are breakfast replacements for fast-moving executives, children and aspiring anorexics.  

I’m trying a few as possible lifestyle accessories for my GREEK SAILING HOLIDAY.   Huuuuurrrraaaahhhhh!

A  local Holland and Barratt shop lured me in with this ‘Love bar’.   I subsequently discovered that the advertising is naughty  because Gillian McKieth cannot legally call herself a Doctor in the UK.    Her Dr. qualification is reportedly from a correspondence course with a non-acredited US University.   The Guardian reported on her naughty non-truths and misleading product information back in 2007.   In 2008  she’s still using the title Dr. on product packaging and making questionable claims about  their ‘health’ impact…    

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’ 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.

I’m sorry sir,  

we have just run out of subtlety,  

will a double dose of concise frankness do?

It’s 70% off.

Thimbleby and Shoreland, founded in 1901, maintain an auction house on the impressively named Great Knollys Street in downtown Reading.   Thimbleby and Shoreland  declare themselves:

the leading international specialist in the sale and valuation of horse-drawn carriages and related items, hosting the world famous Reading Carriage Sales

Recently they auctioned ‘THE DAVE SCARROTT COLLECTION OF TRAPS, LURES and SCARERS’    As you’ve wisely deduced,   I couldn’t resist taking a peak at such a curious collection.   The Auction brochure reports:

THE TRAP MAN

A motor mechanic by profession, Dave Scarrott started this unique collection quite by chance some twenty years ago when he was offered a couple of traps by a friend. From those small beginnings his passion grew to the extent of the present collection with interesting and rare traps and other artefacts having been sourced from all over the world.

The family have lived in the South Oxfordshire area from time immemorial and Dave will be the first to admit that his unusual hobby ‘is in the blood’ and he makes no secret of the fact that his great uncle, Jack Scarrott, was a notorious local poacher. It was a way of life in those early days with a large family to support and no social security! So notorious was he that the Kirtlington Estate saw fit to appoint him as their head game keeper and use his skills to their advantage, thereby killing two birds with one stone!

Dave and his collection have been a familiar sight at most local shows and it is undoubtedly one of the finest single collections in the country. The decision to sell has not been an easy one but has been forced on him due to illness. Unfortunately therefore, his days of travelling around the local shows are over, but rather than just ‘shut up shop’ Dave has reluctantly decided it is time to call it a day and move on

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?  

A ‘prince of quacks’ in Queen city.   Dr. Roy Pierce’s medical elixia appears to be an exemplar of ‘medical quackery’.   He created,   marketed and patented the ingredients of a range of ‘medical’ products.   There is a wonderful humour in the well-maintained barn-painted advertisement for this phenomena (medicine quack) of the wild-west.

“The combined science of citrus and ginger”  

Citrus is Science?  

Ginger is Science?  

These two ‘Sciences’ can be combined?  

Its enough to confuse a person into tripping up and bumping her nose on the floor.   Do they mean ‘good effects’   the good effects of citrus combined with the good effects of ginger?   If that is what they mean then I can continue walking without a nose bleed.   I can’t be sure.     It gets worse.   Exfoliating body scrub?     I can scrub my body without exfoliating it?    Sometimes I can be so pathetic without noticing it.    

science = good effect  

I’m a visionary  and I’m not refering to my outstanding collection of eyewear.   Apparantly, according to this visionary philosophy, espoused in Sephora, wearing make-up is optional.    An amazing revalation.   I’ve been a visionary for decades and I didn’t even realise it.   Thanks Sephora for pointing this out.  

No wait!   read the small print.    

Optional make-up  is only legitimate if you have  a skin problem that needs intense treatment.   Darn.   Maybe I’ll have to develop a skin problem to qualify as a visionary… …or a legitimate US female.