My Illustrative Life

This is the secret handshake, internet. Let us sort the msties from the chaff.

You see, Ironside really likes chili. He feels it is “the only food fit for man”, because it has all the right nutrients! So, chief.. what’s your recipe? What goes IN this amazing chili? We’re all dying to hear.

The first picture was referenced, the rest were referenced from the first or from memory.

OK OK I’ll give you this one for free! Because I like y’all.

Pictures from the weekend:

I told y’all I spent today (off sick) learning to draw Raymond Burr. He has a really particular face! As you can see in that last picture. This for the sake of an Ironside/MST3k comic, which you shall see later. If you tune in.

Needing to save my workshirts for work only, I have taken to wearing these oversized “peasant shirts” in the heat and just tying them up until they stop annoying me with their bigness. It’’s pretty comfy I guess, and disguises my belly button - if you can’t see it, you can’t be sure I’m not a clone. It’s less structured than I am used to or quite comfortable with; good for being in fields or on run-down farms or cooking a la Like Water for Chocolate but not for being in company, really. The skirt, also, is shorter and breezier than usual.. a little less secure than ideal. This is the kind of thing I need to say to myself curse it all, I have no inorganic responsibilities today before I can wear it.

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!

Soooo here is my “me”, from the Scott Pilgrim avatar creator(thanks for the tip, King!). It’s actually not at all bad! No glasses, and not quite enough hair (there were no solid fringes), but! Mix up the three following real-me photos, and what do you get? Pretty sure I have worn this formation at some point. And if I haven’t yet, I will.

Whaddaya think? Bruce?

I show you this because though I haven’t read the Scott Pilgrim comix (yet) (I’ve seen scans, it’s honestly not quite my kind of alley, bookwise) I think the film looks pretty interesting. And definitely the kind of movie that should be encouraged! It looks more fun and honest-hearted than most of the Big Two comic movies, f’rex. I like how.. semi-crappy it looks? And a romantic interest/leading lady with hair that an on-the-street Average can achieve (as long as she has the texture for it) is a big plus. Trailer:

So there you go. This movie has the IllusClaire nod of considered approval. Go see it; demand funk the music* instead of funk the smell.

*Not implying that there will be funk in this movie

Sometimes there are things which inspire and one admires and aspires towards somehow, without the specific desire to be/be in/be with the places, characters, wardrobes, movie. Sometimes a film will take you by surprise, and speak to you with atmosphere and colour scheme and attitude in a way that heightens your intent to do your thing your way, without actually being a film that you want to poach costume from.

Let’s learn about one such film, my fine comrades!

Let’s learn about RED SURF. A George Clooney movie with an 18 certificate, from 1990. Which according to imdb comments went straight to video!

The cover LIES, you guys! Yeah, even bargain bin dvd releases bother to photoshop their covers in an attempt to cash in on more lucrative, starry periods of their lead actors’ careers.

This is what George Clooney actually looks like in this movie:

Lulz!

The back cover was what convinced us to buy it, actually -

- the back cover’s picture of how George Clooney actually appears in the actual film. Why do they think people buy cheap-ass dvds? Either because they can’t afford expensive ones, or because they like sub-par cinema. Or both. Don’t lie to us. Don’t patronise people who know they aren’t at Blockbuster, don’t put off people who don’t want to be. That said, check out this alternate cover/poster, as well as this one (Check’em all here). What, can no-one in the world appreciate 90s grunge metal surf criminal drug choker George?

Apparently not, I guess.

So. In Red Surf. George Clooney plays Remar, man without a family, man without law, man without qualms about lying to his 90s-earnest girlfriend. He loves to play pranks like convincing his best friend his girl is cheating on him, then tricking him into thinking that they have accidentally murdered her. Fun times! Then they follow that up by going out on jet-skis (loaned from Gene Simmons, “the Doctor”) to collect drugs from the sea.

This is the apparently communal party drugs casual crime beachhouse, also home to sensitive hat-wearing girlfriend Rebecca:

(This is Rebecca, later in the movie:)

This is George Clooney/Remar feeding best buddy Atilla (actually? the movie’s real eventual hero) some delicious cocaine from his lap whilst driving. They love to weird out the squares!

Did I mention this was a movie about George Clooney, looking in no way how I imagine “George Clooney” to look? Acting the part of a leather-wearing curly hair having ex-professional surf bum large-scale drug dealer? Who is also able to get a sensible, on-the-wavelength multi-necklace wearing art-loving girl pregnant (again; implied abortion alert) and convince her that he will change and raise a family with her, through thoughtful gifts of guitars and well-timed fake promises?

Well, it is. WEIRD MOVIE.

Aaaanyway. Remar finds out Rebecca’s pregnant, and she tells him she wants to keep it. He’s all, “okay..” but when she tells him she wants to go to Portland to raise it with a friend of hers who has kids already, he starts getting protective and territorial. Promises her he’ll change, blah blah no more drugs and crime, more time for romance and kisses. She gets up for ice cream, and by the time it takes her to serve two bowls full he’s all *coffcoff*I really love drugs*coffcoffff*. Sadface.

Later, Atilla and Remar have a heart to heart about how Remar’s going to screw things up and lose lady & baby - Atilla is psyched at the thought of having a baby around - and Remar talks about how for the first year, you hope the baby won’t die, and it doesn’t, and then the second year it starts to hate you. And it hates you and hates you.. with this honest frightened bitterness. And he tells his buddy how he feels like he’s suddenly lacking control. There’s a later scene where Doc tells Remar to quit with the drug deals, and later than that Remar refuses, outright refuses with yelling and a pushfight, to take money from a deal that all his buddies planned without him with the explicit intention to set the couple & child up for a secure life. Why is it that movies with these real relationship scenes and true-person complexity get bargain binned? I have no idea what makes a “good movie”.

The whole thing keeps building - running big drug deals get you in to trouble, did you know? Well, Red Surf is here to tell you that they do. They have to fake a murder, and Remar misses doctors appointments with Rebecca, and Atilla becomes her rock (it’s really nice) and they talk about girl babies playing little league, and they have to send off one of their gangbrothers to save his life after he talks to the police. He cries! He’s the most annoying sort of character, that you just want to squash and yell SHUT UP!! at, but when he leaves his guys he cries and it’s sweet and sad. Bargain bin film. I don’t know. Then there’s more peril, and more apologising/lying to Rebecca, and the blabbermouth gets stabbed and then probably fed to wolves. The antagonist/drug partner lives in this decrepit ruined house with two guys in slacks and vests with big guns and slicked back hair, and he has a pit of wolves in his front room. Did I not mention that?

Soooo eventually Remar dies. He gets machine gunned and blown up on a jet-ski. Atilla and Rebecca set him on fire and push him out to sea for burial. But not before he tells Atilla he loves him, when Atilla is trying to convince him to let the boys do the run so he can stay safe for baby! BARGAIN BIN MOVIES. He literally says “I love you”.

Atilla doesn’t take too kindly to his friend being all killed and such so he goes off to infiltrate/murder the antagonist/partner’s (..okay, just antagonist by this point) gang. With Doc Gene Simmons, who was in ‘Nam. I really, really want a video game out of that scene. Or all of this movie. He kills them all and avoids the wolves (not everybody else does, om nom nom) and hurray, he wins!

There’s actually a very nice, assumably realistic ‘person unused to machine-gunning has to use a machine gun’ scene. Atilla wears his heat on his sleeve!

By the closing credits, Atilla and Rebecca look to be starting this super-sweet, semi-awkward, adorable take-care-of-each-other romance. He follows her to the train station as she’s leaving, bereaved, for Portland and.. it’s sooo cuuuute. I was completely satisfied by the progression of this film. My beloved and I both had that “no wai, for reals!” expression of surprised enjoyment - for £2.99, in a village shop, we’re used to expecting Jaguar Wong or “Richard Harrison IS.. a ninja“. Not an honestly watchable, variably heartfelt, fun movie. With George Clooney in a bandanna with a crack pipe.

This is my favorite George Clooney movie. Of all time.

No Rebecca, really!

All the clothes in this movie are so worn-in. they look like they’ve been walked over by the whole cast, and have sand ground in and the colours worn out. Nobody’s constrained by what they wear - comfort first, expression of wild-life values second. Honestly I’m not sure if I like it so much only for itself, or for the fact that it has such an un-George Clooneyish George Clooney. I mean, that’s a compelling element, right?

But I think a fair part of it is that it’s that 1990s grunge-metal-taste-of-hippy aesthetic that’s so present in a lot of films & shows I really love but completely divorced from the music that made the scene. This is what I know about music in the very late 80s - early 90s: Patton-era Faith No More and Primus existed (excellently). Also, people liked the bands they namecheck in Bill & Ted and Wayne’s World. THAT’S IT. I guess Nirvana happened some time around there..? I’ve made no secret of my hatred for music journalism and I find the sartorial guidelines hard to use as an entry point to the sounds because as far as I can tell there was an extreme gender divide - dudes wore baggy t-shirts and loose trousers, girls wore leather bras, spandex and hotpants. Neither of these looks have really worked for me, as yet, and for some in-brain reason that really impedes my investigation and understanding of the knots of bands and sub-genres that make up the cultural era. And that failure to break through the bubble surrounding my perception of the music scene means that I feel inauthentic approaching the dresscode with increased zeal. It’s a vicious cycle! Of ignorance!

A movie like Red Surf though, which I assume has no budget to source big soundtracks and which only broaches the question of “what do you listen to” with mostly-covered t-shirts and easy to miss flyers pasted on bedroom walls in scenes where character tension is high, doesn’t make me feel like a double outsider. I can assimilate the costume apart from the intimidating musical context.

Here’s a question that Red Surf raises for me - what’s so wrong with me that I’m suddenly not finding 90sgirl hats completely, ultimately ugly?

Wanna know a secret? I wrote this entire post saying “Lisa” instead of “Rebecca”. Yeah, she doesn’t get that much autonomy. I still have this film a ten out of ten on IMDB.

BONUS: Here’s the pretty shitty trailer! With really awful sound quality!

I want to buy stuff. But I have no paying job and therefore no money to buy stuff, so instead I guess I will just talk about stuff I want to buy.

If you want to employ me? PLEASE DO. Ask me to draw you a picture for money! I will!

Anyway: Summer lovin’. Summer lovin’ is a thing I do not tend to do; I don’t know how to dress for summer and that makes me cross. T-shirts tend to swamp me, vest tops make me paranoid about my boobs hanging out, most for-girls summer tops are either too staid or too scene or too girly. I bring it on myself, I know. I’m picky! Except for that if I did like them, then they still wouldn’t fit because I am short. Comfortable fit is important, in summer.

But I was having a think this weekend, about what I can/like to wear: sweaters, and what I don’t like to wear: cardigans, and how cardigans are actually summer sweaters. And I thought, well wearing a cardigan over a shirt may be the worst kind of frictionous restraint for me but wearing a cardigan AS a shirt might actually.. work.

So now I WANNA DO THAT.

Cardigans that button up all the way to the collar, not so much v-necks, so they lie like button-down shirts and any undone-ness or flesh airing is on my terms and on purpose. Cardigans that are tight enough to touch my skin everywhere, rather than wrapping vaguely or bagging.

Basically a bunch of punchy knit shirts, is what I want.

These are all from Laura Ashley. They had a pretty great deep purple, white polka-dot version last autumn and I passed it up because I hadn’t thought of undershirtless-wearing yet. Shucks!

Penelope Cruz up there is as her character Raimunda (good name!) in the film Volver - which I found interesting and in some ways inspiring, but would maybe not say that I ‘enjoyed’. She got to wear a lot of colour (and a lot of colours all at once) in that movie, though, which I like - and managed to work the badunkadunk and look overworked-sloppy despite the neat woolen pencil skirts (which I have!) and the whole cardigan-over-shirt thing. I could relate to the sulky refusals and grudges of her character, too. Not the specifics!

I’m not so sure I like the two green examples on the bottom right, actually; they’re a bit too fussy and studied. I want something I can bang around in and warp to my own image instead of live up to neatly - to me cardigans are conservative and sensible, which I am not and don’t aspire to be. But I think the spotty one or the printed ones or the checkered faux-faux-Chanel one down at the bottom could look awesome and crossoverish with the top and bottom buttons undone with a tan and icecream and frazzled-from-dampening hair on a sunny grassy afternoon.

Don’t you think?

I live in England, specifically in Warwickshire. I have done since I was eight, and I love it here. It’s beautiful. Until recently, I hadn’t heard about the ‘controversy’ going on in another part of my county: Meriden. The ‘exact center of England’. Oh, and also the birthplace of Napalm Death! Nice. What’s happening there right now is that a great many of the villagers have “banded together” to protest a local-living man’s use of the land that he owns; he wants to build a permanent travelers’ camp. The land is green belt land.

You can read more about this here, here and here if you would like. There is also a very good report on the Travelers’ Times here.

Full disclosure: Every now and then, I think about movies I have seen that feature people credited as or referred to as “gypsies” and I think, wow, they were dressed in a way I found really cool. I’d like to dress that way. The fashion industry backs me up; ‘gypsy style’ is a periodical summer staple. And then I feel guilty and callous, for culturally objectifying and potentially appropriating the modes of a classification of people who are treated extremely poorly by people I know (please never say “gyppo” to or near me) and by my country (and just about EVERY country, it seems). Then I go online, and try to find out about the factual histories and present times of travelers.

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This time, I went through here, here, here and here as well as here which sent me to the Travelers’ Times Online, linked above.

In case you didn’t follow the TTO link before to the article about the situation in Meriden, here’s the video report:

Noah’s Ark from Travellers Times on Vimeo.

Natural beauty being bulldozed and planning permission laws being flouted are bad, or at least not good. That’s true. But do you know what is worse? RACISM. YOU FUCKS.

People can say “I’m not a racist” all they like. That doesn’t make it true. Even if, as a white person, having an asian dentist were proof that one had no prejudice at all against any kind of asians, that still wouldn’t be the final word on whether or not one was any kind of racist. I’m pretty sure that there are people who are totally great with, say, ethnic Jews and black Caribbeans but make foul remarks based upon their beliefs about, for example, Pakistanis or the Japanese. “Coloured people” (ouch) are not one monolith of unwhiteenglishness. And ‘being able to pass for white’ does not mean that a person is white, in the sense of being ‘not of another race’.

There’s also the arguable difference between racism and xenophobia and cultural prejudice and ethnic-religious prejudice. Personally I am not sure that there’s much use in differentiating, but as a white person raised atheist-Christian in Church of England schools, I may be missing something important in the distinctions. Is there sense in calling a white English geographically settled person racist for being against, say, white Irish travelers? I would say yes; I think that there’s enough of a similarity in the dismissal of a lifestyle and heritage someone is born to to make racism and ethnocentrism effectively synonymous.

But as - I just checked, I missed it the first time whilst chopping onions - it says in the video, the travelers in question are Roma. They are an ethnic minority here. They are an ethnic inority everywhere. They are members of a race that is not in power. So all quibbles here become moot.

Did you note the sentence structure and inflection in the woman’s interview section, in the video? The “them” and “us”? They should have to follow the same laws as we all have to. That’s some hardcore sub-radar othering, lady.

The first man interviewed really stresses the word “pretty”! He’s implicitly saying, with that and the rest of his speech, that these people will bring ugliness. Necessarily.

The old guy straight-up says that if it were he who had an identical planning permission overstep, there would not be this outrage. One of the news articles I linked noted that the villagers themselves were breaking laws with the placement of their protest - so it can’t be simple illegality which has got their goat about this settlement.

A year or so ago, I had discovered Yahoo! answers, and was going crazy with finding questions I could answer. Then I ran across a boy who was dating an Italian girl, and who wanted to meet her parents I think. Or, no, maybe he had met her mother and experienced a poor reception. His question was, he wanted to know, was it because he was Roma - did Italy have bad history with Roma people? Now I cannot resist the opportunity to help along a romance. So I googled, and I found this, where “Italy’s highest appeal court has ruled that it is acceptable to discriminate against Roma on the grounds that they are thieves”. And I found this; “Gypsies in Italy protest prejudice”. And I found out about the fire that was set to Roma settlements in Naples in 2008.

Later in the year I somehow ended up on ONTD reading through this thread. The subject of the original post is Madonna being booed for preaching equality and acceptance at a concert with Gogol Bordello in Bucharest. The subject of a lot, and I mean a lot of the comment threads are more detailed looks at how and why gypsies face prejudice in various parts of the world; a lot of these threads start or build with someone saying “but no you guys THEY LITERALLY ARE ALL THIEVES, so it is OK!”. Then these people get schooled by wiser members of their community, but often? They just keep on keepin’ on, ignoring the fact that blind prejudice makes you a dick, rather than your opponent a(n un)worthy victim. It’s an interesting thread. Horrifying, but interesting.

The point is, that all this information isn’t hard to find. Roma people (if I’m saying this wrong, please forgive me and if you’re willing teach me better) are subjected to widespread racism. They suffered pretty darn badly in the Holocaust too, did you know that?

Irish travelers are recognised as an ethnic group here and don’t fare well, either.

I have never, as far as I know, met anybody who lives either partially or completely nomadically or anyone with immediate Roma heritage - as I mentioned earlier the only reason I started thinking about their (your?) lives at all was because when I was maybe six I saw a movie where the romantic lead was ‘a gypsy’ I’m sorry - I really cannot tell if this is an acceptable word for me to use or not. I’m trying to use it only when referencing where it’s been used already and he, his sisters and ex-girlfriend all wore outfits that I wanted– and because Gogol Bordello seem like the coolest people in maybe the entire world. Nothing rests on my doing this research. I am not in the dilemma of “should I go and protest against people (who want to have somewhere to live) being allowed to have somewhere to live, or not?”. And yet - I found this information. In one afternoon, using one search engine, I found all of these news items about the victimisation of a race and of a lifestyle throughout the whole of Britain and mainland Europe. It was not hard; a non-computer literate person could go to the library and say “I need to find some information” and the librarian could point them towards google.

There is no excuse for these protesters.

You can’t gather a posse, saying “I don’t want these people here”, ignoring the persecution they and their brothers and sisters face in multiple countries (right up to government level!), and then fall back and say - “But I’m not racist. I’ve got nothing against them personally”.

You know what? I’m just going to go there and say it. If you can’t manage to not express this kind of wholesale rejection at adults? Think of the children. Please.

Do you care more about planning rules and a single field and, I don’t know, a slight potential fluctuation in property value (are you planning on moving? To a new home? Oh, lucky you), than in the right of a child to be brought up in a place that doesn’t treat her like an eyesore, a criminal and an unwelcome nuisance before they see her as a person? If you do, reader: I judge you.

“I don’t choose to live like this. I was born to live like this.” Said the man who owns the land in dispute.

This makes me feel like bursting.

I hope you win Meriden, travelers. I really really do.

I don’t know who Melissa George is. I don’t know what the Met Ball is. But this -

Is like seeing this spring to life -

And so I thank both Melissa George and the Met Ball and whoever made Melissa George’s dress for the Met Ball. Good call, Garth. Good call.

Picture pinched from gofugyourself; Belle google image’d

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”.

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.

I spoke of The Legend of Billie Jean before, but I didn’t (couldn’t) do it (her) justice. I can’t believe Pat Benatar anecdotally refers to it as “the worst movie of all time” when she performs the theme at her concerts. Gosh darn this movie is inspiring!

Billie Jean Davy is seventeen and lives with her mother and her brother in a trailer park in Texas. When a massive jerk steals her brother’s bike she asks the police to bring it back, and is told that Hubie (the jerk) was “probably just trying to get your attention” because she’s “a pretty girl”. When she arrives home, the bike is trashed - and her brother is too, after trying to get it back.

Billie Jean takes Hubie a bill for the scooter’s repair, and his father tells her to come on upstairs for the money (he doesn’t keep that much in the till) after disparaging his son. She goes, and he gives her fifty dollars and expresses his intent to rape her. When she flees, Binx (her brother) accidentally shoots the bastard with the “unloaded” gun that’s kept in the till.. and Billie Jean and co are on the run.

The policeman Billie Jean originally went to is the one assigned the shooting case and realises, as soon as he sees her picture, that it’s his fool fault that it went so far. The story continues with Billie Jean (and Binx, and their two friends) on the run as outlaws, refusing to give themselves up until they’re paid the six hundred and eight dollars that they’re owed for the scooter’s repair. Hubie’s father refuses to pay, because he is an enormous jackass, so the whole thing goes on for ages, with Billie Jean becoming more and more clearly aligned with the ideas of justice and taking a stand. She also naturally blossoms as a leader and a carer and I love this movie please excuse how dry I am making it sound.

Anyway, at one of the peaks of her journey Billie Jean is introduced (by a kid she clearly finds mondo foxy (above)) to the story of Joan of Arc. She watches the black and white film to the end, and when it’s done she expresses her decision to make a video - answer the media’s accusations. She stops running, and starts to fight. When the video equipment is set up, Billie Jean emerges from the bathroom having gone from this:

To this:

Let’s lay aside for a moment that fact that BJ2 here reminds me fiercely of Amber from the Tribe, who is the only fourteen year old I might call “a personal hero”. The music for this scene is an instrumental section of the Benatar theme, and it’s perfect. Stirring, badass, a little on-edge; Billie Jean’s clearly a bit shy about her new hair, but the kind of shy that means I look amazing, I feel so good, so good it makes me vulnerable. The cutting of hair is so symbolic even apart from the Jeanne d’Arc ref (and it’s one of my favourite tropes, actually, as I quite strongly indicated in this post at BSB). It can mean so many different things.

The extreme removal of (head) hair has a pretty strong tradition of meaning “brutal”. The type of brutality varies with context, of course, but very very rarely is it a gentle thing of joy and wonder.

For a western man, shearing/brutality usually mean “this is an act of power”. Skinheads have a semiotic reputation of violence (violence that they hypothetically commit). Draft-based fiction usually has a ‘we all get our heads shaved’ scene; male soldiers in real life have buzz cuts. That Taxi Driver/Heat Guy shaving is an act directly prior to an assassination.

For western women, on the whole the connotations are quite different - there are many stories of post WW2 women who were thought to have ‘dallied’ with enemy soldiers or betrayed their country in other ways being forcibly shaved and paraded through the streets or beaten. Girls sent to nunneries had their hair cut, numerous stories for or about girls feature the removal of somebody’s hair to their great dismay: the section of A Pack of Lies set in India, Berenice Bobs Her Hair, Little Women, and a book I read in the infants that I can’t recall the name of (it also featured a pair of green P.E. shorts stuffed up a drainpipe, if that helps?), off the top of my head.

One pro-power female example is the flappers’ bobs; “I can be independent if I want to, you can’t make me your Rapunzel”. Just as relevant. Oh, and George from the Famous Five.

Sudden removal of long locks essentially means one of two things, in western storytelling: “I have the power” or “I have not any power”. On Billie Jean, it means both and that is why I adore it so. She’s an outlaw through another’s fault and direct maliciousness and she really has NO power over the situation - she’s a girl, she’s underage, she’s poor; he’s a man, he’s an adult, he’s a businessman. But she’s not going to just sit back and let it happen. FAIR IS FAIR, after all, and that’s the sort of factual statement that is power unchallengable. Just ask Sirius Black, the only sane man in Azkaban.

There’s more to Billie Jean’s makeover than the hair, of course, but you can watch the movie and dissect or absorb that for yourself. It’s worth it, Guide’s honour. There’s no DVD as yet (veoh has it..) but I got myself a VHS copy from Amazon Marketplace. Not expensive. You HAVE to see how the Joan parallels play out, too.

The reason I rate this Makeover Movie so highly is the depth of emotion and resonance with the rest of the film the physical “make-over” has (waaaatch iiiiit). The Legend of Billie Jean is the kind of movie that causes me an amount of physical pain to imagine how hard I would have clung to it had I seen it as an a teenager. A ferocious and noble inner life matched with a faultless, no matter how eighties, outer style? My wagon is hitched, for life.

The Pat Benatar song with scenes from the film is below - and watching it now I notice how extremely Billie Jean’s body language changes with her haircut. From the determined but swamped good girl, to the fierce as all heck, much much looser Warrior for Right! The scene at the very end is her watching Joan of Arc.

Three days left of February and I still haven’t found the time to read this:

My SPOILERS! challenge started to well! The first and even the second posts were finished before Feb. even started.. and Tank Girl (numbuh three) followed.. actually, now I check, that one was on January thirty-first. Darn! It started SO well!

Oh well. It’s still coming! I WILL find a way to squeeze it in.

To compound my folly though, I hereby declare the start of another SPOILERS! Month-challenge!! Hurrah!

This time it’s films. And this time, I’m giving you warning - homework, if you will. I’m going to tell you what I’m going to write about, so that you can watch them first if you feel like it; you’ll know if you agree with me or not when you read what I write.

There’s even a theme! As I mentioned on twitter: Greatest Makeover Movies. As I also mentioned on twitter, every girls-are-pink site ever has also done this list, of course. But you know what? Mine will be better!! Because I read their reasons, and they were a load of old conkers, I tell you whut.

I know it runs against the Davina/Oscars method of reveal, but here’s my list:

• The Legend of Billie Jean
• Gigi
• Clueless
• Desperately Seeking Susan
• Oldboy

I’m telling you that now (and in no particular order) because it’s not the which that matters to me, but the why. And if you’re thinking “that’s not a makeover movie!” then you may be correct, in the general sense! But you are wrong QUITE WRONG in the “to me” sense. And this is my domain, cowboooyyy. So: watch these movies, if you please, and then come back here and see if we agree or if I can posit something you hadn’t considered. Or don’t watch them, and then come back here and see if I make them sound intriguing! It’s a big ole challenge!

I recommend doing Billie Jean first, because that’s the only one without an English DVD release. If you’re Spanish, then lucky you! You can own it on a shiny disc and love it forever! If you aren’t, then veoh has it. Or you can do what I did, which was fall for it so hard that I amazon marketplace’d a vhs copy (with what may be the greatest cover ever, I WANT THAT POSTER).

The rest are all available on DVD. Clueless, Gigi and Susan should all be pretty cheap; Oldboy is probably more expensive. But it’s worth it.

Go on. Tell me what I’ve left out.

I don’t want to change my hair. I like it a lot how it is. And I don’t really tend to envy people - just approve of them, because I am a Queen and thus imperious. But, here is an exercise: If I had to change it. If a villain was holding the world to ransom, and their only demand were that I MUST get a hair transplant.. Here is what I would choose. Three choices, in case they don’t have many scalps for me to pick from.

I like hair with texture and rhythm and impact. The hair I have now allows it its optimum.. boosh, if you like, and it holds my face like pincers. It’s short in the back, which lets me feel punchy, and it’s swishy in the front which makes me feel serene (but not too swishy, so I remain controlled). These three also have that mix of KA-POW and gliiiiide, I think. Don’t you? Or maybe you read them differently, that is the interesting thing about opinions! Do share.

My fourth choice - which doesn’t really count, because It’s more of a “style” than a “do”, if you see - is the hair I saw on a lady in the Jimi Hendrix documentary my sister and I watched on the train on the way back from her last uni visit. I didn’t see the start so I didn’t know her name! But I had to show her cool, cool hair to my beloved, and so: I found her. Fayne Pridgon. Here are a very bad picture and a link, because for some reason the clip has embedding turned off! Bah!

This documantary!

What about you? Got back-ups?