My Illustrative Life

Went shopping. Desperate quest to find things I can comfortably, appropriately work in.

We did the charity shops first, of course - they’re cheapest, obviously, and sister has a list of movies she’s after and, as long as you don’t mind vhs (and we don’t; the quality is far more homely and the price jes’ cain’t be beat) there’ll always be something you’re after. If you share a similar taste, I mean. She was irritated to see three or four titles she bought last week on dvd - price differences of 49p vs £7. Bummer!

Since she was buying, having birthday’d last month, we found a treasure trove! CHECK THESE OUT:

I can remember HANKERING for these when the movie came out. Gosh I did! And then they were - FOUR, all for 49 pence each. Boggling. So we bought them all and re-donated the videos. If you want to own or watch Spice World (and really - why wouldn’t you? No seriously. It’s a flippin’ funny film), shimmy on down to the BHF in your local town and see if it’s the one we went to.

We’re keeping tea in them, by the way. Different varieties of tea. Very Bri’ish. Maybe not quite GIRL POWER, but, I am a girl! And tea gives me power. So, it works.

I did OK, actually. Shopping. In the charity shops I did appallingly, there was nothing. Well, no, actually! There was a really fantastic (baffling) Morris Dancing display, complete with GIANT (fake) MAN and a.. dragon thing? With a white cloth in its mouth, that could bite. And then a hobby horse with a SCARY FACE that did a truly invigorating dance. It was aces. Pictures and film to follow, look forward!

Shop-wise though I was despairing. Despairing so that when I saw a 60% off sale in GAP I went in. I really hope that they haven’t any horrible scandals that I’ve missed, because I found two shirts that look pretty great and lie pretty light, belting though they need. And the sale really softened the financial blow.. unpleasant, but not exruciating. You’ll see them sooner or later. I often forget that an important part of my personal dressing character is “explorer/archaeological adventurer”. Take more care to remember your full inner library, girl!

Also found a summer hat (oh man, I HEART SALES). Haven’t had one of those for.. too long to remember. Probably because this one is a men’s size L (L for LARGE).. small body, giant noggin! I should really look more strange than I do. It must be all the hair. But! Folding Panama! Yay! Why should a man-hat make me look so like a young French orphan girl? Perhaps I just imagine it.

Finally: a £1.99 loan from sister sorted me out with this - the perfect way to ease myself into being a little braver. A little material girl solidarity. Thank you Madonna! Thank you for the many trails you helped blaze!

Stella McCartney + Comic Relief 2009 Madonna vest via Scope, I think. There’s a Morcombe & Wise version going here, if you want it!

Shit, someone employ me once term lets up, please. No-one needs a dinner lady when nobody’s at school!

Every now and then my sister comes in and says, essentially, “I’m going to a birthday party, I need you to draw me a card, I have to leave in two minutes”. So, I do it, because why not? It is a challenge.

All her buddies are turning eighteen this year, so, here we go on the one this time:

I don’t know why I am so RUDE

Well, yes I do, I just like drawing nude dudes. Non srs powermuscles ones, I mean. I find it cheerful.

Here is the old (”Classic”) version; ‘the bathing suit’:

Here is the new (”boring”) version; ‘the Chick in early 90s gritty cartoon’:

And here is my (”I just drew this in Pixen whilst waiting for my communication technology to work”) version; ‘wrestling is a Greek thing, right?’:

I celebrated the close of my first year of blogging last week, but the first real post post that I wrote was actually published on the twenty eighth. So I have four days to go, til then. Since my gent’ll be here for the next few days I may well be disinclined towards posting anything then, so consider this the partypost, kay?

My first real post was about The Tribe; a show I loved when it was first shown and I was eleven-ish, and which I had just started re-watching a year ago. I still love it, and the feeling only GROWS.

So that’s what was up a year ago. What is up today is that I got an email from Hervia that they are having an up to 70% off SS10 sale. And I am filled with COVETOUS WANT.

I really don’t have any spare money, though, so to dull the pain and on a sudden stroke of it-all-comes-together I decided to assign as many pieces as I could to a Tribe character. The aesthetic philosophies are similar, I think. Awwww, here goes!

All pictures wither from TribeHeaven or Dwayne Cameron’s (Bray) personal site (uh, hope that’s cool?)

Some of these may be tenuous, and some you may think are stinkers. You just don’t understand my vision. Click to buy!

Kay, first, this one was easy: Ebony.

This is a girl who knows how to wear red leather, and also when: always.

For the lulz: Lex!

Pretty flippin’ obvious, if you know the show even a little (if you don’t, well, you should learn): Zoot

I’m pretty sure that Tai-San wore tangerine at least once.. This picture at least has the turquoise, and the spiky.

Trudy had a tiny short fringe through the entire run of the show, I think. The very low vamp and toe cap (? I had to google for shoe terms), with the little prissy hole, echo that to me, and the colour halfway between brown and gold suits Trudy’s insecurity and power trips.

The lilac colour is on The Guardian’s scheme, and the wax-style seal is representative of his grasping for that orthodox, cultish, heavy-formality type of power and organisation!

I always did think that the Technos did at least have snappy dressing going for them, if nothing else.

Nothing, I mean nothing, will ever be as ungodly fug as Bray’s knitted string vest, as seen here. I hate it so much that I almost (not quite) love it. It shocks me offensively every time I see it.

But even when he wasn’t wearing that thing (Amber must have really, REALLY loved him) he was wearing some pretty goony, earnest prep-skate-hippy stuff.

I was going to give him this:

But that harkens clearer to another Dwayne Cameron (goony) role -

And then I saw this, with the right slate-something/white-ish beige colour scheme, and decided that even if it wasn’t totally gross, at least it was weird, like a lace-up vest knitted with string that has apron-straps over the shoulders UGH UGH AUGH WHY.

Amber, my very, very favourite (and how I despised her on the first go round, unable to tell ‘incredible badass’ from ‘goody two-shoes’) has worn a lot of things, and I would put any of them in my own wardrobe in a second. But this was what had the most visual similarity in the collection - matched to Eagle-Amber the resistance leader. Man, just typing that makes me want to wave flags.

The Amber-Bray love ring (or should I say the Amber-Sasha-Amber-Bray-Amber-Pride-Amber-Bray-Amber love ring? Whaddeva, I’m a romantic. The Amber-Bray love ring.

Well romantic as I may be, I have always though that that ring was pretty unattractive. It reminded me of one I’d got off a magazine, and I appreciate that it was given to a thirteen year old by her father, so it’s not going to be Tiffany’s, but.. ehhh. It’s so HUGE.

This ring is huge too though! And has Amber’s signature turquoise, and a knobble, and silver, and a symbol on the ‘face’.

It also has the white of Bray’s heinous vest. Of course.

Bonus! What did Zoot and the Locos wear to do their exercises? WONDER NO MORE!!

You’re welcome.

I just want you to know that even though having weighed the fact that I’m not belittling anyone, or insulting anyone, or demanding anything and that hearing someone say that they also have these problems would have meant something to me when I was younger (or now, actually) - and the encouragement to bite the bullet from my honey and some of my fine twitter peeps - posting this makes me feel very very guilty. Because.. the stereotype goes, women are supposed to ‘want’ to be ‘thin’? Because being ‘a thin person’ I have, like, the metaphorical official celebrity/body image media seal of potential approval? Because of fucked up insecurity-sells ingrained societal bullshit, basically. I would never, ever, ever post this unsolicited in size acceptance forums. I’m not including demonstrative pictures because I’m wary of becoming ‘thinspiration’. If I sound like a major jackass? Please, tell me. Right. Here goes.

Let’s talk again about how I hate summer clothes, shall we? Because they don’t fit me? Good. That will be fun.

I am never going to try to convince anybody that people individually and ‘the fashion industry’ at large treat thin people (or genetically average short people) worse than fat people*, or people with bodies that otherwise differ from the so-called norm. That would be ridiculous and cruel. I’m not suggesting that my problems are worse than anyone’s. But since this here is my space, I do get to tell you about how it sucks to be too small to find clothes that fit. You can listen or not, as you please. Please beware of triggers if you’re susceptible; female body image stuff can be volatile.

The gist of it is: it sucks to be too small to be able to find clothes that don’t say to your body “Oi oi, fellas, you’re not quite right here. I think I’ll swamp you and drag you, and make you feel like you’re treading water in your own garments.”

Going on clothes alone - the societal judgement aspects can probably wait for another day, I am way to zoned out to dip my toes in that acidic pool just yet - I’m pretty sure we can all relate to not being able to find an item of clothing that fits. You know, that doesn’t restrict or choke you, doesn’t bunch up in uncomfortable places or blouse out where it would feel and look better to cling, doesn’t need to be tugged down or hitched up, doesn’t get in the way of your other clothes, doesn’t ride up/down/around.. clothes that work for your body and your psyche, not against them.

It’s hard for an industry to predict, of course - people are of all different dimensions. And it’s probably hard for most people a lot of the time- truly, I don’t forget that.

But I’m talking about me, and I know for a fact that it’s hard, for me! Very almost ALL of the time! So quit rolling your eyes and let me vent, OK?

No matter how much I like and enjoy and feel lucky and thankful to be in the body that I have - and believe me, I do - the fact remains that mainstream, highstreet clothes (or.. any clothes I have ever found when I say a thing “fits perfectly” I mean “it doesn’t cause me extreme irritation the minute I put it on” aren’t made for me. It’s worst in summer, because nothing is as stretchy and forgiving as a knitted sweater (FUCK T-SHIRTS and their rigid ways!). And that pisses me off! Not that I feel personally slighted, exactly - I know it’s not done specifically to defy me. Nevertheless, it does defy me, and puts me out, and like any thwarted warlord that makes me shout.

When I was in the first few years of high school, it was just that I was littler than the average range of women and teens, so to find clothes that didn’t make people mistake me for an actual nine year old - I also look young in the face, yay you may think this would be flattering or whatever but when you are twenty two and multiple (multiple!) people TELL YOU they mistook you for twelve, well, get back to me on that, and try not to look sour) - I mostly wore tops designed for kids aged four to six, so that they were tight and my belly showed. “Like a teenager”, 1998 - 2001. That just.. didn’t feel good, you know? When all your friends are talking about their bras and buying things from the shops in J17 spreads and saying “I feel so fat” like it’s a badge of grown-up womanhood’s honour.. “Hey, look at me, I’m a tiny stunted juvenile weirdo”. Only I didn’t HAVE to say look at me, because people were already saying “you’re so small, wowww!” and “she’s so thin, look” and “God, you’re so skinny, it’s not fair”, and “whisper whisper whisper *point*”.

No, it isn’t fair - I can’t do anything about it any more than you can. It’s not my fault and it doesn’t get me anything. It doesn’t mean you don’t hear the adverts saying “you could be slimmer!” or that you don’t have to teach yourself not to think “I look bulgy” or “I should be more streamlined” - because literally every healthy body has some skin or fat on it that can form folds no matter how small, and folds, sez lying traitorous ladymedia, R BAD. You get quotes from Gwyneth Paltrow** or Eva Mendez*** about how “even I feel fat sometimes” and people become so scathing - yeah, I am a little too, because that’s a cack-eyed harmful way to say it when you’re in the public eye (and lauded as being so beautiful). But I understand - the current capitalist world is built to make everyone feel like they aren’t good enough, that every bloat is death fat, that if you fail at meeting these mad stats of perfection for even a second then you fail forever. I remember thinking that way. There’s no haven for thin people in the world of celebrity diet judging; every one of us needs to work honestly at making our own republic of heaven.

The only times I heard about those paragons of thinness, professional models, back then in school, was when people (real people, TV, magazines) talked about what a bad influence they were what with their attractiveness and necessary eating disorders and all - because people can’t naturally be that thin!

Hearing that your natural body essentially enforces the patriarchy and apparently causes your peers to feel inescapably inferior and that you’re unnatural and freakish is, actually, not all that fun. FYI.

Now I am big enough that I can wear clothes designed for average-range adults, by which I mean that they will not actually fall off of me if I put them on (and tall enough that I’m only an inch or so below the upper height requirement for ‘petite’). And that’s pretty nice! But it would be nicer if every shop carried ‘my size’ (they don’t; it’s nice (SARCASM) to know I’m still small enough to be weird), and hey, let’s go crazy - it would be SUPER nice if ‘my size’ fitted my lumpen protrusions in so that I could WEAR ‘my size’ instead of a size up which leaves me swimming and feeling like goblins are grasping my shadow. The back width, the arm circumference, the waist; when these are too wide, the excess fabric gets in the way and grinds. And honestly, to avoid that.. I’d really rather not wear an item that fits in the places I have bones but otherwise makes me look like I’m trying to spill my fleshy privacy all over your desk. Comparatively small stature’d people can have lumps and bumps and shapes of variety too, y’know? Bravissimo’s band sizes go down to twenty-eight, if you get what I’m saying.

Look, I’m not saying that this is the worst problem ever. That there are such things as the concept of “fit” and “clothing sizes” at all tells me I’m not capriciously making a mountain out of a molehill, though - you can feel it when something doesn’t fit you. It irritates all day in little ways.

Here’s some trivia: my Primary School nickname was “Titch”. Being small - but not medically small, because that would be a different matter altogether - is an unremovable part of my public identity nowadays; it goes without saying for me. Still not for other people, natch, but for me. It’s drummed in. I’m normal enough that I really can’t reasonably complain (berate me), but I’m too small for people I don’t know not to remark upon it. And for clothes to fit me! That’s what I’m talking about, right, right.

I guess by this point the being used to it works against me - I bring it (some of it) on myself: being a short person I should be buying from the racks marked “Petite”. My shoulder to waist measurement is fifteen inches. According to the internet, that’s shoulder to underboob on your average lady. Normal-people clothes are too long and shape-moulded in the wrong places, I really can’t deny that. But I have never bought anything from the short-person selection.

You see, even when they’re in evidence I have never taken Petite ranges seriously, because I have never passed a Petite rack or section that didn’t make me think “but I am not a forty-two year old physically graceful life-long academic with shoulder length honey brown hair who was born in Italy and is now married to an English (or, possibly, Welsh) policeman!”.

This lady that I see also wears minimal pink lipstick, and those necklaces made of coloured thread with small rock beads tied in various places; multiple-strand. She’s kind but stern, and speaks softy but with force, wears moccasins, and sometimes a headband. She’s middle-class rich and was a “bohemian” in her university years. I like her fine. She is nothing like me.

That is a trouble. I need to look harder if I want the right to rail against injustice knowledgably. I suppose I need to buckle down and do some in-depth research. It looks like Topshop has a short people range.. that’s made up mostly of tops.. which also feature in the normal-sized people ‘cropped’ range. Nice. Are they cheating by using the same garments for both(cropped for normal people, normal-length for short torsos?), or do they have a version that is petite-cropped too? Of course, either way, the size chart lines up crazy, they charge a minimum £18 for t-shirts embellished with old-t-shirt fake wear&tear, and everything I have bought from Topshop has gotten (non-purposeful) holes in quick smart. I wonder how easy it is to find petite stuff second-hand?

Wull, ’til I win the job lottery, guess I’d better get used to chopping the bottoms off of and sewing elastic into the back of my shirts.

That’ll look nice.

Fuckin’ clothes. What are they good for?

**I use the term “fat people” because that’s favoured by a lot of the pluz-sized size acceptance advocates that I read the most.
**This one from years ago I particularly, clearly remember, because I could see something wrong about it but I wasn’t sure what, and I compared my body to hers in the mirror afterwards
***I am actually not 100% sure on this. I like Eva Mendez, she seems a fun person. She was good in Hitch.

Yesterday my sister was watching a movie where someone went “It’s– it’s so beautiful!” and she said, “haha did you hear that? She was talking about..” And I said, “a peen?”

That was wrong, but I decided that actually, it was right.

So I drew it.

Yup! I’m wearing the same as yesterday. Sue me!

I didn’t really feel like dressing in something new just to sit and puzzle over tailoring my CV for the job I have my eye firmly on (please cross your fingers for me!). But that worked out for the best, because after finishing that up I needed a change of scene so I went and picked flowers. Which I’ve been looking forward to since I first spied this skirt - the pocket are so perfect for meadow-wandering! Don’t you think?

Please, enjoy these flowers as well!

After that wholesome interlude, I want to share some music with you. Which I don’t do that often, because it usually seems a bit pointless - who doesn’t know about the Misfits being awesome, or Faith No More or Cheap Trick of the Runaways or Elvis Costello or Suzi Quatro or Michael Jackson or the Pixies or Tom Waits or Kana? And when I am listening to things I don’t hear people talking about I kind of.. have nothing to say other than “this is really good, I like it” most of the time. I don’t know how to talk about music! If you read here regularly, you should know that.

But suddenly I have found a reason to talk bands with you guys!

Let’s talk Danish pop, shall we?

Of course, by that I mean “The Cartoons and Aqua were brilliant and I love them”.

I was ten when Barbie Girl came out, and eleven when Witch Doctor came out and they hit me right in the joy buttons. Even then, there was a little bit of ‘must pretend to like ironically in public’, but I asked for their albums for my birthday and christmas and I got them. At this point, my music collection was like so: Eternal; Boyzone; Spice Girls; [repeat].

They both found their way into my farm in the same way that they managed to fool most of the people most of the time (I’ll get back to that) - they wore bright colours! And had super-gimmicky prop-instrument-costumes! And they moved really fast and were exaggerated! Their videos gave me something to look at, instead of fourminutes of a bunch of guys standing on a dark stage kicking up dust and strumming soulfully. I hate boring music videos, I really do. And yeah, I genuinely like the sounds that they make - they’re unserious, and joyful, and sort of shiny-heartfelt. I like the volume and mania they have in their noise.

You may laugh, but the most important thing about these bands (once you get past the image, because I did need that to notice them) were their lyrics. I know, it sounds ridiculous, right? Ooh ee ooh ah ah ting tang walla walla bing bang.

But really. They’re both kind of filthy, if you listen. Filthier than ten-eleven year olds are used to, and filthier than you’d assume from the perky-perky toon-music and the perky-silly costumes and videos.

I’ll say right now that I have no idea if they wrote their songs or not - I know that the Cartoons mostly did/do covers. That doesn’t matter, actually.

That is enough to make me a life-long convert, to be honest. I remember listening to this song, being eleven, and thinking, “I know I am hearing a song about oral. Nobody is noticing. I know that nobody would want me to listen to a song about oral. This CD didn’t have ‘explicit content’ on it. Nobody knows. They have tricked people by looking silly.”

Again - rape? The word “rape” in a song for me, an eleven year old? It’s allowed because they are a novelty band? Mind: blown.

‘They’re talking about fucking, aren’t they”, I thought.

Even as a ten year old, you could hear the satire in “Barbie Girl”. I thought it was aces, I mean come on, it was funny! So daft, so obviously venomous, so true to life. This satire about gender roles was at number one for three weeks, here. Mattel sued, and it was dismissed. That’s fucking landmark stuff! A pop band skewers the shallow, unquestioned ‘perfect life’ dream sold mercilessly by a toy company, gets sued, and wins. Feminist victory, gone unnoticed!

I like these bands because they make me laugh with what they say, and when they aren’t making me laugh they’re making me go “awww, that’s nice!” The way that Aqua crafted most of their songs into stories (and had the videos to back them up) mattered to me, particularly as pre-bedtime listening. Fairytale castles in songs with horse-feet sound effects in. Flippin’, rigging’d airships.

And I like the technobilly echoing depth of shallow that the Cartoons give. “Who put the bomp” is one of my favourite songs. I can’t help it! It just sounds nice, and the lyrics are sweet, and, I like it! They have a double bass disguised as A CARROT, you know? Give them a chance.

First: on theme!

Harsichord-sound. Pirates. Badass princess. Narrative progression. Someone playing their own dad. HURRAY!

They went there. “Giant lizard”!

I am always pro-band who use animation in their videos. Or rather, I am always pro-using animation. That’s a wiser statement.

Click here for the Witch Doctor video. CURSE YOUR DISABLED EMBEDDING!

I’m including this one because it has the official video included; it’s one of the weaker ones, I rekkin.

Maybe all bands, really, are dirty mouthed horrors. Eh. I still love these ones. I don’t know what it is about you, Denmark! But I like it.

Soooo I just watched Iron Liz’s first video review; the Sailor Moon RPG. And I enjoyed it, and it got me a-thinkin’. Watch first, then I’ll tell you.

When I was a young teen and pre-teen, finding my way on to the internet and making it my home, I came across mention of this “Sailor Moon”. Sailor Scouts, Sailor Senshi. I saw the geocities fanpages. I saw the rudimentary and the amazingly fine cosplayers. I saw stickers and plot synopsis-es and fanart and official art. I fell in wow. One of my very first eBay purchases was a vhs tape containing the first two episodes, dubbed into english, for eight pounds. I needed it.

I’ve always lived in villages and I was always a shy kid - and I didn’t know anyone with ties to Japan or who knew what anime was. So there was no-one to help me, but I had this great big needy desire to know all about anime, in general, and to understand this country where grownups were allowed to watch cartoons omg. I wanted to master this new way of drawing (yeah.. that never happened)! I’d buy any animated vhs I could find, unless it looked too scary (Guyver) and just watch it with this weird coiled-spring feeling. Part of that was just awe at the cultural shift - acceptance of illustration and animation and speculative fiction as everyday necessities! I wanted so badly to be involved in that that. But part of it was just: Sailor Mooooon. *0*!!!

The reason I loved Sailor Moon instinctively, I think, is that looking at a character lineup you can understand that the main characters are completely normally-coded girls. Girlish girls, who are girly, like girls are ’supposed to be’ and like even girls* who don’t want to be pigeonholed as ‘just a girl’ or ‘the girl’ can (perhaps secretly) like to be sometimes, too. But they’re also the heroes of the piece, completely and unapologetically. They are who the show is about, they are the Power Team, they fight the villains. They can be like a girl and a fighting hero at the same time, absolutely.

There doesn’t have to be a girl or two on the team, which is led by boys. There doesn’t have to be The Girl who the boy team visits every now and then to get potions or clues from, or whatever. There doesn’t have to be The Girl who leads the pack of boys (I love you, Marian, but you didn’t set me up so well for taking camaraderie amongst chix seriously) Girls in fighting teams don’t have to take on ‘masculine roles’; they don’t have to wear ‘masculine clothes’; they don’t have to not have girly hair styles and they can still look tough and in control when they do. They don’t have to change personality once they suit up. Curse you, Power Rangers, curse your dishonest remix-happy ways (I don’t mean it, Power Rangers, we are still friends I need you). Being a girlish girl does not mean that you are the team mascot or the team eyeroll.

Gosh, that was a relief to see.

“Femininity can not keep ability from me”.

That’s a beautiful lesson.

*And boys, obv! But I was doing that whole “talk about yourself whilst pretending to talk about people in general so as not to be all guts everywhere” thing. Sorreee.

Pictures pinched off Wikipedia

Desperately Seeking Susan is a film about a woman who hasn’t quite realised that her life doesn’t fulfill her finding herself through her idolatry of the romance gathered around a selfish free spirit, and amnesia.

It’s even better than that sounds, though.

When I was twelve or thirteen and staying up late to watch TV was still a relatively new and clandestine operation, I had the luck of being in a part of the country that received Channel Five. Channel Five (as well as showing the Tribe, natch) did (does) pretty great theme nights. I got exposure to Bruce Lee beyond what I’d seen on badly printed Market t-shirts from Five’s Bruce Lee Night (thank you), I was introduced, unironically and without peer judgement, to the Osmonds by their Osmonds Weekend (thank you!), and I spent a lot of happy evenings watching my VCR’d Science Fiction Night tapes. But the particular and relevant Five Night was (obviously?) Madonna Night.

I didn’t really know much about Madonna; this was about 2000 and she was a vague, other-people-like-her metastar. We saw her videos discussed on Live and Kicking by Zoe Ball and Lene from Aqua (”I couldn’t stop staring at her tits!”) and were generally aware that she was “important”. But I didn’t know anyone who was A Madonna Fan and when I asked, the next day, if my friend had watched Madonna Night she said “No, I’m not really into that kind of thing” and gave me a dubious look (Hi Laura!). So I was watching out of a sense of curiosity and out of enjoyment of the wow I am up late factor.

There was a bunch of documentary, talking heads type stuff which I don’t remember but also, as I think you have guessed: Desperately Seeking Susan! I watched it and I didn’t really get it all and I didn’t watch it again until boxing day 2009, but the reason that I did watch it on boxing day 2009 was that I realised when my beloved and I talk fiction and character motivation and costume design, which we do and always have done regularly, Desperately Seeking Susan was a source I repeatedly turned to (in my memory) to illustrate my points and clarify my thoughts.

Don’t you think that’s impressive? One watch, and nine years later I’m still using it as an example par excellence? And I mean various parts of the movie, not just one.

Susan!

Transcription: “Because the film is very much about identity, who somebody is on the outside vs who they wanna be on the inside, we decided to open the movie in a beauty parlor because that’s so much about female identity and appearance and transformation. I think in the original script the opening was actually set in a department store where she and her sister in law were trying on clothes. And ultimately it, in one of the many re-writes, it was changed to a beauty salon because i think that the idea of being remade - which is what beauty salons are about, you go in being one person and you hopefully come out having been transformed into somebody else - is really the essence of what the whole movie is about.”

Susan is more of a straight-up Makeover Movie than Billie Jean - the above clip from the commentary track (commentary tracks by writers and directors are basically the only sort of DVD extra that mean anything to me; they can be so fascinating and educational and inspiring. I recommend Larry Cohen’s commentary on the Q: The Winged Serpent DVD release if you’re into hearing about creative budget film shoots) says in as many words that this is a film about identity. Billie Jean, I rekkin, is a film about integrity rather than identity. They’re very closely related concepts, but they’re not identical.

You should watch this movie. I’m not going to detail everything that’s good about it, because that would take too long and rob you of the discoveries. But artistically and entertainment..ly.. it’s a really, really satisfying and enthusing film. And it’s written, directed and
double-starred in by women! And the main character starts the film by turning thirty, which I love. It’s never referred to again, and she has her coming-of-age teenage self-awakening plot and it’s positive, all the way along.

Anyway. I do have one element of this fantastic story that I’ve picked to epitomise the make-overyness and the pivotal themes and the wonderful, WONDERFUL AMAZING EXCELLENT work done by the costume designer / production designer (Santo Loquasto: your work was brilliant here. Looking up Mr Loquasto’s name in imdb, I just noticed that Richard Hell is in this movie. I missed that!). There’s a scene half an hour or so in, that goes like this:

(Actually first there are some scenes like this, skip the next two centered paragraphs if you haven’t seen the film:)

Roberta goes to meet Susan in her Susan drag and Susan gets held up, which means that the Very Bad Man currently looking for Susan mistakes Roberta for Susan. Which means that the Very Nice Man currently looking for Susan to offer her shelter against the VBM also mistakes Roberta for Susan. And Roberta falls over and hits her head - which means that by the end of the scene, Roberta mistakes Roberta for Susan.

Left: Susan-Roberta! Right: Jim (the Very Nice Man)!

This is the outfit that Roberta wears for this scene.

Oh my GOODNESS, it is so spot-on!

It’s so patently an ita-loli approximation of Susan-clothes I could choke. It’s someone so keen to get the look (and you can’t be that keen without wanting something of what the look means, on the inside) but lacking the tools, someone uncomfortable with who they are and where they’ve been going but not completely au fait with where they think they want to go now, either. It’s so vulnerable and unconscious-self-conscious, it makes my heart squeeze for her. I get that; that’s probably what I did get from this movie when I watched the first time around. This outfit tells the whole story of the film! People say that the clothes don’t make the woman, but mortar doesn’t make a wall. It just really helps to hold a lot of them together.

First of all, don’t even ask me what’s up with that little acorn-bag thing. Gosh that looks annoying. It can’t relax into you, it’s just going to be hitting you awkwardly whenever you walk (like Roberta’s current constructed identify?). It’s non-identifiable (like Roberta’s current self?). I kind of hate it. No, I hate it a lot. I guess that the reason it’s round and rigid is so that it can roll away into the water when she hits her head (taking ID with it), so there’s that. Beyond that I’m not going to touch it, because I would just be mean about it.

The colours aren’t strong or pure. Lilac is a powder colour, it’s decorative and passive. That weird red-peach on the sweater is vague and indefinable. But red and purple clash, and that’s a bold confrontational mix. That’s the Susan. That and the jacket, which actually belongs to Susan.

The sweater has the collar cut off, which is a little bit tough and rebellious, in a studied sort of way (yeah, I do it too and it makes me feel better), but.. I think she’s wearing it over a lady-collar shirt. The kind which you get to wear at school during summer if you choose not to wear a tie. Or I did, anyway. You know the style I mean? Even if it’s a normal collar, it’s a soft purple and raspberry-striped shirt in that 80s-weight cotton, which is the least rebellious fabric I can imagine. Florals worked for grunge, because you can subvert something so veryvery delicate and girlish (flowers!), but you can’t subvert innocuousness. Innocuous things have, like, magical negative power. They’re the antimatter of cool.

Having noted the shirt, even the punch of the purple/red combo is lessened. If you’re co-ordinating your aesthetic break-out with your existing sensible-person shirts, you’re not really breaking so far, huh?

The trousers aren’t wide-legged, or flared, and they aren’t tight. They’re just.. there. They aren’t baggy but they aren’t slim-fitting. They’re just crinkly and probably let air circulate a bit. They’re high-waisted but they’re worn with a baggy, airy sweater that hits at the hip-bones which blocks any flattering or enhancing they might have done. They aren’t even actively ugly or frumpy. They’re just there! They don’t tuck into the boots with an interesting pouf over the ankle, or fit neatly! THEY ARE JUST THERE, plopped there. They go loose at the knees. They have no aggression, just an air of sitting obediently, waiting for someone to say “..Yes?”. These trousers are Roberta, as she was in her life before and during the start of this film.

It’s all in the body language too, you can’t ignore body language when you’re character designing or costuming. The Fug Girls are always complaining that people have ruined their great dresses with slouching and people like Grace Jones pull of the wackiest stuff because they wear it so fiercely - this outfit could work, if the person inside of it was comfortable with their/its awkwardness. There is no dearth of bloggers who have run with waif-chic and granny-chic and make their pigeon toes and rounded shoulders a matter of personal trademark. But Roberta has fear in her physicality, and the fear that’s written in her wardrobe bounces it back complimentarily.

The mass of scarf in her hair is arranged so precisely, and the curls she’s done herself are so soft and arranged so softly. Here’s the real Susan in this same scene:

Difference, right? One’s Done, one’s just done. The difference between constructing a persona and living one again, yeah? Susan wakes up, gives herself a blast of supercool just by looking at herself in a mirror or shiny surface, and leaves to hang about town or maybe do petty crimes. Roberta prepares herself, practices before the (full-length bedroom) mirror, arranges everything just-so, and steps in. Then she leaves, for the purpose of learning-by-voyeurism ad waiting to be told if she’s doing it right.

The Susan jacket isn’t even a match for Roberta’s Susan outfit; amongst the fit and the colours it floats and hangs. Every shape from Roberta’s wardrobe is soft and giving (as in, it gives in if you oppose it, not that it is a gift) and the jacket doesn’t have a harsh enough presence to make a real statement against them. It would have been simple to make The Jacket be one that’s worn by Susan but wears Roberta, but instead Loquasto (I think) designed this one that is worn by Susan, and doesn’t even bother to wear pre-amnesia Roberta. Because: which rock star cares about wannabees?

The whole thing works just as well if you consider that she’s also wearing this immediately after she bangs her head, and the amnesia and complete identity crisis sets in. She literally doesn’t know who she is, but thinks/is helped to think that she might be (and then is convinced that she is) Susan. She doesn’t know how to be Susan, and she’s nothing like the image of dangerous flightly Susan that Jim has been told to expect. She’s not-Susan, just like her clothes are telling us-her-him!

Would it be going too far to draw comparison between unconscious-Roberta and primordial ooze? These clothes and the curled hair pool about her shapelessly, ready to form.. a new life! The Pokemon Ditto is a pink blob, which can take on the identity of any Pokemon it faces. Hmmm. Maybe this is overthinking? I mean, it works, but maybe I have just made it work and am being unscientific.

There’s a lot more to say about this movie. But I’ma let you watch it and say it for yourself now. This was the real “Makeover” nucleus of the film, in my opinion, because this was the outfit that was designed (both meta-wise and in-movie) for the specific purpose of transition. Roberta’s continued evolution was organic and intuitive - not “A Make-Over”.

On the subject of the word “bitch”:

I am one of those who tries to convince those around her that “bitch” is not an acceptable word to use when not speaking of literal female dogs (or, I guess, in a clear ironical sense). As a derogative, it’s a sexist term that exists to belittle people based on [either: femininity or membership of ‘the female gender’].

I find it hard to deny that it isn’t a word with its own special, nuanced meaning though. I mean, I do deny it, I encourage people to say “spiteful” or “vindictive” instead, since that’s the closest I can get to how I’ve encountered the word used viciously. But like I say - it’s the closest I can get. It isn’t the exact same. “Bitch” has its own definition/s because if it didn’t, we wouldn’t have used it so widely.

I’m thinking about this because the other week I was considering my favourite character from one of my favourite book series. I was thinking about her in terms of blog post, because that’s a useful thought exercise, and I was letting my mind run ahead of me loosely and lightly describing her character at the start of the trilogy as opposed to at the ending; I caught myself running out bitch. Descriptive.

The character is Malta Vestrit, of Robin Hobb’s Liveship Trilogy. Which is fantastic, you should read it. If you’ve read this series, you’ll know what I meant when I stumbled it out - she’s horrible and petty and spiteful and vindictive and spoilt and mean and selfish and thoroughly invested in traditional gender roles and sparky and hateful. She debuts at age twelve, I think.

“Bitch” as I know it, and I’m talking non-reclaimed, perfectly describes her. Which is fascinating!

Wikipedia says:

The Liveship trilogy is gorgeously, wonderfuly written, and the best kind of high fantasy in that it uses differently built, magically infused societies to put the spotlight on aspects of real life. Malta was raised in a port township that is isolated, and where though day to day life is matriarchal due to the main masculine profession being seamanship, the laws and relationships are still strongly patriarchal. Girls don’t go to sea or own ships, women take their husbands’ names, girls are to be married off, the most admired celebrity women are the Satrap’s concubines. She was also raised in a household where her father, who is from an even more radically patriarchal, class-based society and whom she adores, cows (so horribly apt, this word here) her mother and wields a lot of practical, decision-making power.

Malta is clever. She’s bright, and romantic, and passionate, and has a lot of diplomatic aptitude, and she fits easily within her society’s beauty standards. She’s good at being flirtatious and coquettish, she’s dramatic. She’s this great wellspring of potential person, and she was raised in these oppressive, ignorant circumstances which had absolutely no expectations of her.

When I started the first book I hated Malta. I could barely read her pages; I wanted to rush ahead because she caused such an outraged pressure in my head. Much like reading Umbridge, in HP&OOTP. By the end? I adore her (this does not go for Umbridge). Gosh, she’s a wonderful character! You see, the world changes in such ways that an awful, awful lot becomes actually required of her - and she rises to it! It’s not quick, or easy, and she’s still kind of judgmental by the end, but the blossoming of her character arc is a wonder to behold. It’s inspiring reading! Ahhh I heart these books. Come to think of it, comparing the way I felt about Malta at the beginning and at the end probably turned a few major cogs in my “actually, I don’t and shouldn’t resent all females at all, even though I am unhappy at my all-girls school, that’s interesting. Maybe I should investigate this non-hatred of all of my gender further” journey.

By the series’ end, she’s saved three-four entire ways of life, fallen in adult-style love, talked her way out of numerous situations in which she was technically powerless and definitely vulnerable, resurrected a dragon, kept people she despised alive, learnt the value of female community and community in general, negotiated with royalty, managed to find an emotional/ideological truce with the members of her family who she naturally clashes with, and impressed her native high society with her wit and societal balancing ability. The only way I can imagine her being called a bitch by then, is in the watered down, general anti-woman “I don’t like you” way (which as far as I’m concerned has no legitimate uses).

The interesting thing is how clear to me my reflections on Malta made the fact that “bitch” really is a misogynistic word, because it describes female products of misogyny - and puts them down, unconcernedly, for the failings that their culture and unique circumstances have forced into them.

I think that that’s a pretty good reason for saying spiteful or vindictive instead of bitchy; it covers the same reactive bases, but it doesn’t punish or belittle a person for the fact that they live in a historically screwed up society.

Fiction is so cool.

Why thanks, Gillette & Venus! I do. I don’t need your product for it, but thanks for the email!

So, I’m just throwing this picture out here again, a) because I can, and b) because it makes me uncomfortable but I think it shouldn’t.

Now, I’m not implying that all ladies should eschew leg shavin’ or whatever; the email very strongly implied that to feel Goddessy and whatnot that I need their product. And whilst I appreciate capitalism and advertising and all that, I also think that companies don’t have tabula rasa on social political issues.

I wore green today. Partly because I’m thinking about Robin Hood a lot recently (not excited to see the new movie; very interested in thinking my own thoughts about the legends) and partly because where I live there are a SHITLOAD of Conservative “FOR CHANGE” (ugh seriously?) banners on just about every road, and a tiiiiiny Green Party rectangle on one single bridge, which I only saw because I get lifts to work in that direction. GREENS GREENS GREENS! Plus, I have been watching through all of the vlogbrothers videos on the youtube. Which star John and Hank GREEN. Oh, and it’s Earth Day!

Mostly though because I really like this shade of green! It’s punchy!

GOSH IT’S SUNNY!

When it is warm enough for shorts and my mum getting sunburned in April, something feels off. But something also feels that it is necessary to spend weekend days in the garden on one’s belly.

So, I did. More on that, and the shorts situation, later. I had.. let me see.. four books and two newspaper supplements to read Garth Nix’s Lord Sunday (thank you, beloved!), Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely’s New X-Men “ultimate collection v.1″ (because I only have spotty issues here and there from the Morrison run due to not always being able to get my hands on Essential X-Men, but what I have is SO GOOD), Hammer Films: The Bray Studio Years (birthday present! Excellent!), Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat: Calvin & Hobbes Collection (because my sister’s school was THROWING AWAY TWO HUGE COLLECTED C&H VOLUMES, CAN YOU BELIEVE, ARE THEY CRAZY), supplements from the Independent so I figured I would be doing not-much on the outwardly creative front. I figured wrongly, though.

I mentioned on twitter that I drew a princess doing carpentry earlier, and that I liked it a lot. I can’t show you the one I meant then, because it’s on a birthday card for my cousin (I don’t think she reads here.. D:), but I can show you the ones I did afterwards. It’s so pleasing! Fancy calm dresses and destructive physicality. Yeuhhhh.

I gotta look up non-euro-fairytale style princesses. I would like to make the Princess’ Woodcutting and Carpentry School open to international students, very much.

Third princess referenced from a shot of Mohammed Ali Chopping wood; the two-princess saw’s from a picture you get if you google image “two-man saw”.

Sometimes, you notice patterns.

And even if you don’t mind - or even like - the individual examples..

The trend (inclusivity and exclusivity) can really get your goat.

When this happens to me, I foight tha powahhh by setting up the H.M. Armed Forces: Enemy Fighter I gave my sister for christmas and doin’ this.

All I’m asking for is a little equality, world. I realise I shouldn’t have drawn him white.

—

Doodlebugs! Idle pen-movements whilst watching the StarTV Transformers dub and my X-Men VHS tapes.

For some reason I can only draw moomins if I make them really old and sinister!

“Life drawing” hahaha NOT EASY FROM VIDEO

So what happens if you’re drawing someone whilst gaming..

And then they start to be DEFIED by the controls and endess credits in place of story?

They like you to stop drawing, that’s what. :]

I’m offline! But I wrote this BEFORE I went offline, as a PLAN. Enjoy it now! Whilst I am not here!

“Naughty schoolgirl” is a concept that has been so porned out that it barely exists anymore. “Naughty schoolgirl”, someone will say to you, and your mind will reply “augmented woman in her late twenties wearing a bandeau “skirt”, fake tan, and white shirt tied so tightly I fear she may suffocate (on the shirt OR the cock you’re implicitly permitted to stick in her, come to think)”.

You know what? That sucks. Schoolgirls deserve to own their own sub-genres.

When I was a school-going girl and a Guide, in my early teens, my troupe picked the theme “St Trinians” for the parade we were in. We all wore rolled-up skirts, and tied up shirts, and ties tied around our heads or inappropriately loose. We wore knee-socks and fishnets and carried hockey sticks, and most of us had never heard of St Trinians before. This was the movie-verse St Trinians. Not nu-movies. The 50s-60s-1980 movies. I wore bunches.

It felt powerful and silly and fun, and I didn’t feel like I was giving anyone the right to touch me or fantasize about me or show me their genitals. I didn’t feel fake, I felt permitted to try out ‘loose’, in a socially permissive and/or “so in control of the situation that I don’t have to be in constant overwhelming control of myself” way rather than the hurrhurrvagina way.

Ronald Searle’s original St Trinians cartoons or comic strips, by the way, are really really good. You should read them.

Actually at the end of said parade, at the fair, a grown-up man I sort of knew (I think he was someone’s dad? maybe someone who knew someone I knew?) said to me, “Oh, I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on”. I don’t know if he meant “those dress-up clothes” or if he was purposefully implying he had seen me naked, but either way I felt like I wanted to punch him in the fucking face. Because whichever he meant, his words suggested that he might have seen me undressed, and I thought: how dare you do that to me. I did not want to hear about sex, in any way, from any guy. Especially an adult. Especially in such a brusque way. Especially when I was wearing an outfit I knew, vaguely, was sometimes used to mean “slutty!”.

If you don’t get this, or if you feel inclined to say I was asking for it, maybe imagine that you’re wearing an outfit you really like and often air, and then you get a CC’d-to-all-your-friends email showing someone who looks kind of like you, wearing that exact outfit, having something done to them that you’d never want done to you. Or imagine that you move to a new place, where you discover that your name is the same word as the locals use to mean “worthless” or “fucking disgusting” or “fart” or “incest”.

I didn’t punch him, I looked hard at the nearest non-human object very hard and pretended I hadn’t heard. I had no power there.

That was probably about ten years ago, and “naughty schoolgirl” has really gained momentum as a thing since then. What are real school girls going to do, when their forays into rule-breaking and cheekiness and physicality and their own relationship to their own sexuality* are already telegraphed, loud and clear, in town centers and internet side-bar ads and on tv and in magazines (I hate you, Nuts and Cosmo and your ilk) and in the general consciousness, as being a message of “yes, you may fuck”?

*No. Just because someone is exploring themselves and the power or effect they may or may not potentially have (and if they like or are comfortable with it or not), it does not give you permission to be a leering douche. If someone is dressed “sexy”, it does not mean you get to say HAY BABY, I SEE YOU HAVE SEXUAL CAPACITIES!!. Act as normally as you can towards them, and that will tell them what they want to know. Be respectful. Don’t assume that they want anything from you. Especially? Especially if they are or might be underaged. Gee whiz.

I started thinking about this because of this picture in the paper:

It’s Hit-Girl, from the film Kick Ass,which I do not think I would enjoy. I don’t like the comic and I can’t get behind eleven year old murderers played for awsums. I do have a soft spot for Nic Cage though. THEY’RE IN MY EYES!. She’s played by Chloe Moretz, who was born in 1997 (and who’s gonna be in the (actually really positive-sounding) re-make of Let the Right One In. Go Chloe!). So she’s twelve or thirteen in this picture. Do you see the differences, between Hit-Girl here and the average current “naughty schoolgirl”? Yes. Yes, you do.

This picture reminded me of another comicbook (as you wish, Stan Lee!) depiction of a schoolgirl gone wrong. Here’s Jenny, 15, from Grant Morisson’s excellent (excellent!) book The Invisibles. She appears on two pages as far as I can tell (does she return? I haven’t read every volume), and she’s pretty darn enjoyable, as a character.

Okay so I said above that I can’t get behind killer kids, true - but forgive me my over-generalising. Hit-Girl’s essentially a real-world fictional kid, albeit a highly skilled one, and she’s gonna have to live with being a people-chopper for the rest of her real-world fictional life. Jenny’s metafictionally one of the last survivors in a post-apocolyptic Enemies Exist world, born of a psychically well-protected mind being tortured. That changes things up. Am I a hypocrite? Bollocks.

The thing here, is that these are two internally enormous, badass, power-reaching characters who know how to do what they’re doing and who don’t do just what they’re told (or what we as viewers know they’re societally told), who are nevertheless currently encapsulated by the school uniform. They don’t fit, level-one semiotically; it’s still understood that school uniform means “be good”. That’s why school uniform, and the “schoolgirl” part of “naughty schoolgirl” matter: the goodness is there to be subverted. Whether you’re talking sex-play, or violence, or anything else.

>>Other objections aside, it is SO LAZY and missing-of-the-point to turn the school uniform into full-on erotic decoration. If you make it into a straight-up string-stripper outfit, you lose the reason you were interested in the first place! You lose the character, you lose the realness, you lose the honesty. All you’re left with is “isn’t screwing hot?”, which, wow. Fascinating.< <

Jenny and Hit-Girl’s skirts are short, and we can see Jenny’s knickers, and knee-socks have enough cultural-sexual baggage already that they can mean ’saucy’ by themselves - these outfits aren’t completely unsexualised or unsensualised. Like I mentioned, we tied up our school shirts and rolled up our skirts in the Guides parade (we rolled up our skirts in school - that’s a pretty culture-wide experience). I’m not arguing for the sterilisation of teens, image-wise or biologically!

I think that the photo of Hit-Girl is a good one, and I can dig those two pages of Jenny in Invisibles. Not in any way because I want to exploit them sexually, but because I can sympathise and empathise with these pictures. That’s a lot of what fiction is for, I think - more than just entertainment and escape. It’s not quite identification - it’s understanding what characters, as constructs before/as well as people, mean; Hit-Girl here and Jenny are about bursting out of your chrysalis - saying YEAH FUCK THAT, WHATEVER! and going really, really fast at your own discretion. Being aware of the body that you’re in, what it can do and what it means to you. Feeling that anybody who wants to appropriate any of that can go blow away to nowhere. They’re about moments of realisation that you’re god of your own damn universe, and you make the rules for you.

It’s easy to see how those sorts of thoughts can segue (for teens or between consenting adults interacting with this sort of imagery) into “let’s do it”. They don’t have to, but they can, and that’s fine! That’s nice, even! Know yourself, enjoy yourself, use symbols that you like or that speak to you (I’m not assuming I need to give permission here, I’m just hopefully making it clear that I’m not trying to somehow deny you permission to do what you want in private. I don’t want to know about what you do in private (or public, if it’s shaggin’)).

But these feelings, grown organically, are too necessary and vital to have them publicly and almost overwhelmingly equated with misogynistic, performative, no-strings intercourse.

‘Sex’, a lot of people seem to forget to remember, is not about what platonic-I can do for platonic-you. It’s not simply about places to put penises or things in vaginas. First of all, it is about what platonic-I can do for platonic-me, and basically, the rest of the world has no rights to that.

It just thinks it does.

No, Jerkface, she can’t. But you can empathise, or sympathise, or just allow her to enjoy it without trying to make it all about you. EMPATHY AND SYMPATHY. Do you speak them?

I kind of like Lady Gaga, maybe. Her costumes are often sexually coded, and then she outright says to her fans “it’s okay not to have sex if you don’t feel like it, no matter how you feel like dressing”. Anti-rape culture. That kind of stuff needs to be said.

So that’s what I think about “naughty schoolgirls”. That people should leave them alone, for goodness’ sake, and let the real ones be able to think that they (re-)invented the trope. Because you know what? If they did, they did.

I’m not ashamed. I’ll say it. HOLY CRIKEY DARN, I am so psyched for The Runaways (band movie, not comic, or comic movie). Eeeeeeee.

Anyway when I was in bed this morning, watching the (puny) DVD extras on the Dark Angel season one boxset I was thinking to myself, as I do, “what shall I wear today?” I put the question to one side, as I did a little internet catch-up, feeling that the answer would come in time. And naturally - it did!

I forget where I was, but I saw mention of Runaways preview trailers. WHAT, I thought? I can WATCH SOME OF IT? Already?? And then I sent an email to my beloved saying that I wasn’t going to, because it would probably make me feel too full of fireworks and vim - and I have no villain to punch to calm myself down.

But (I thought) there’s no reason why I can’t look at related stills and get a bit of contact-awesome! And that: is what I did!

The answer was pretty clear. I needed to wear some seventies jeans.

I don’t really have much of a bond with jeans; I didn’t own any until I was old enough to make a big “I’m so cool cos I’m different” mental deal of the fact that I didn’t have any jeans (seven?) and throughout my life finding any kind of trousers to fit has been an angry ordeal. I haaaate trying jeans on in shops (it takes ages! and energy! and they’re never gonna fit perfectly ANYWAY, and they’re expensive even if they fit just “okay”!). So when I see lists of wardrobe must-haves that include jeans, my reaction is pretty much a big ole “whatever”. I frown at jeans because they frown at me.

Actually on the whole I also just don’t think they look that interesting. “Jeans” as a concept are ubiquitous, and since I don’t live in a high fashion or very hip area means I get to see a lot of really boring cuts. I’m sorry!

Seventies jeans, though? Those I can dig. Flares flatter, High waists, large pockets.. seventies jeans are chilled and lounging with hidden power. They have metaphorical narrowed eyes. Their lines flow - bootcut and a lot of modern “lady trousers” have lines that I find really uncomfortable. They short of go vase-like up the legs, and then flick in over the top of the hips? I hate them, they make me feel like a sack of potatoes. Particularly trousers from Fat Face. They just are not for ladies built like me.

I’m reading that this kind of jeans are coming back into shops, which is nice, though I suspect the shape will be smaller in the hips now than then. But like I mentioned - trying on jeans is my idea of shopping labour. Unless they’re already in my house. Handily folded away on a shelf for etsy sale, fresh out of my Gran’s attic - my mum’s teenage jeans! From the actual seventies. I got out of bed and I tried them on, and would you believe? Somehow all of a sudden, they magically fit me, Kind of. Well enough. That’s the other thing about seventies jeans, as seen on the Runaways (real or filmic) - they’re just there to express how awesome and bodacious you are, rather than being king of the picture. Seventies jeans are like the stem of a flower. The wearer is the blossom. On second thoughts that analogy is irritatingly close to my childhood belief of “the 70s = flower children”, but.. jeans make me say whatever. So: whatever!

Mumjeans. Seventies jeans

Did you ever put on three different things that you know are “you”, and end up feeling unsure if you feel “like you” when you have them all on at once? I haven’t worn trousers casually with a non-oversized top for too long! It took a while to get used to.

Then I got too hot and changed to my Bowie shirt out of the washing bin. WOW let’s PUSH THAT ENVELOPE on the ‘what to wear with seventies jeans’ front!

Right there is the only bad thing about authentic seventies jeans: the zips are often not the healthiest. But that’s cool - Kristen-as-Joan rocks the open waistbutton, and so can I. If I feel like it.