The ‘Lum-Sharon’ cut was so good until that mullety back-shag grew in! I cannot stand heavy neck hair. I will miss being a hornbag, though. Sharon is the strongest babe-magnet in that show!
Snip, snip, HACK HACK CUT SNIP trim trim
Only, without the padawan brain double-feature..
I’m kind of hoping it will grow back in with an entirely different texture. I have heard that that can happen.. haven’t you?
Note: choice of haircut does not necessarily reflect my choice of favoured character! In GITS:SAC It’s Batou (the Major is more of a ‘person who wouldn’t annoy me at all if I knew her in real life’ than a ‘favourite character’?), in Mai Otome (anime) Mashiro IS THE BEST. I really can’t choose a favourite in Kath & Kim.. they are all too funny.
I’m away from my graphics tablet; forgive the shitty face-hiding plz, also do not have the saved code for the alternate comments box - if you want to say something and it isn’t working, email! Address on the right of the front page!
A week’s Cornwalling in late July goes something like this:
These are they that spawned me (“my mum and dad”)
Gimpy tortoise! There was a whole array of gimpy moss animals, but this was my favourite. He looks so calm about it.
Hand of my mother! Picture by my mother!
Sister hearts dogz
Then some people came, and we didn’t feel like seeing people, so we ran away across the mud flats (tide was out; creek)..
And for those curious, here is the state of my VW + Melissa rubber shoes after taking all but two days worth of a walking-packed week’s holiday:
Barely scratched at all! I was worried, having heard anecdotes of shoddy VW jewellery for (natch) non-shoddy prices.. but my worries were all for naught. Spiffing!
How does an extremely minimally employed person afford a holiday anywhere? Sometimes they’re lucky enough (and believe me - I appreciate how lucky I am) to have parents who say “we booked a house and it wouldn’t cost any extra for you and your plus-one to come along, it would be lovely to have you!”. THANK YOU PARENTS, again.
Hahaha, I just made you look at holiday snaps! Do you hate me, now?
First, your favourite e-vice and mine nogoodforme posted (by way of Gatochy and clair_voyant) this among many amazing 1960s make-up adverts. Then, a character sketch went wrong and turned into an Eastenders-worthy slaaaag. And then I became attached to her, as you do (those tarts with ‘(e)arts!), so I drew’er mor an’ mor.
An’ naw I fink she’s GAWJUS! And ripe for the drawing-with-a-paintbrush practice, because I am bum at that. As you can see. Those first two faces looked good before I ruined them, honest.. guv..
I cannot get enough of the “can’t make tea/can play darts = AWFUL FEMALE” idea. It’s so baffling that it dazzles me!
I know it’s a myth and used for mockery so lazily, and I know that it would be horribly impractical and pretty uncomfortable (cutting off a nose to spite a face? Not quite, but close-ish), but sometimes you just have to live the iconic moment.
It wasn’t an in-use bra. My Gran’s birthday was a skip party getting rid of approximately sixty years of attic/barn debris/treasure. We burned a whole LOAD of stuff but nothing really has the same spark as “we burned our bras”, does it?
The goggles sister has on there were something I found in said barn. I let her have them because I AM A GOOD SISTER, and she’s having her first flying lesson this week.. Do I regret it? Sure, baby. Sure.
NOTE: I’m basically still offline! But I wrote this, and transfered it to a computer that can get online, so, here it is.. for YOU.
>((Cross your fingers for me to be able to get my BSB colum up the day after tomorrow, huh?))
I used to watch Ocean Girl
Actually, I used to watch Ocean Odyssey, because I am Bri’ish. But the show was Australian, and in Australia it was known as Ocean Girl.
I read it, too; there was a cinemanga-style phoo story adaption thing in Girl Talk, which was my favourite magazine. The radest thing about going to the Big Bash in year six was going to the Girl Talk booth and talking to the editor, getting a goodie bag and my nails done.
Ocean Girl was a pretty good show. It was the kind of sci-fi where the speculative aspect of the genre is just an add-on to our current real life, and Australia and New Zealand (something in the air? Or water?) were apparently really good at those from about 1994-2005. According to wikipedia the show was “an example of deep-ecology science fiction” - it was about two boys (both named, as the captain formally addressed them, “Master Bates” I am not kidding) whose mother’s job as a marine biologist demanded that they move to an under-sea research dome lab run-like-a-ship thing. They have to learn to get along in their new environment, in the cramped quarters with the other kids whose parents are ‘on-board’, with having left their friends, with their dastardly father’s absence, blah blah.. but then they also meet Neri, who is magic.
Course, she isn’t just a wizard did it-style magic. She lives alone on an Island, and can talk to a whale (Charlie) and swim underwater for extended periods and is terribly curious about the boys’ world whilst also fearing outside influence. Pretty straightforward Pocahontas-arc stuff, only eventually it turns out that Neri is actually an actual alien, from space. By the end the elder boy and she fall in love.
When it’s written down like that it sounds like just my kind of thing. Emotional drama on a backdrop of futuristic science fiction, with no gratuitous tit-flashing (because, For Kids), with a basically ridiculous premise played straight. Dark Angel, The Tribe, Dekaranger, Buffy, Kamen Rider Anything, The Girl From Tomorrow, classic X-Men, etc etc. And the costuming was good too - Neri wore a dressthing made out of what looked like natural fibres and fishing net, which was perfectly evocative of ‘ocean’ and ‘girl’ and even ‘alien’, really. The boys (and the other kids on the station, who were the gang in the background for use when needed) wore variations on a basic lab-base uniform which got across the whole “suddenly trapped in a military-style world away from home, grasping for identity and personal connection” thing. But somehow.. somehow it never really became “mine”.
You know what I mean when I say “mine”, right? It’s the difference between being a fan, and just tuning in or picking up. You know what I mean.
It kind of bugged me, what was so-called ‘wrong’ with Ocean Girl. It did. It went off-air in 1998 and I think I stopped watching before it finished, but it stayed at the back of my head somewhere. I was curious! But I watched the first eight or so episodes recently, and I think I figured out what my problem was.
Wikipedia, again, says that the show was set “in the near future”. We all, I think, know how poorly vague that can be. But that wasn’t the point here - the point was that the show never contextualises itself that way. That’s not the whole point, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
In August 1994 I was seven, and as a seven year old it didn’t occur to me that underwater bio-dome laboratory stations didn’t actually exist. I didn’t know - I lived in inland England, and I was seven, and I had heard about Atlantis. I knew that science was pretty amazing, and that people had been to space. Sure, people could live underwater. Why not? With that as the only solid suggestion that the timeline on Ocean Girl and the timeline I was living on were out of sync - because I definitely never noticed any dates referenced the first time around, and I gotta say I never noticed any this second time around either - there was no reason for me to think Oh yes, of course, this is set next Sunday A.D. Of course! Culturally, things may be a little different!
That was a problem, because the hairstyles on the base-bound girls in this show were fipping wacky. I’m serious, I am fairly sure that this was the basic reason why I could never really get into OG’s groove. I can’t quite believe how small-minded that makes me look, either.
But see, at seven one is old enough to know about “normal” and “weird”. Honestly I don’t think this is a parental-fail thing - parents don’t know about which trainers are cool, and my parents raised me to not see “cool trainers” as something I was entitled to, but I still knew which ones were cool and that people valued them based on that. I may not have been completely down with omgtrainers or omgcool, but I still felt the pull of cool trainers. Y’know? Am I sounding totally well excuuuse me princess about being a judgemental asshole (at seven)?
It’s nice to see that the [whatever they call character designers on liveaction shows] were doing their job, being creative, experimenting. It’s good that they tried to do a bit of extra world-building. But the script, alas, completely let them down.
In Dune, things are different to now and nothing is explained; it’s just written as if what’s everyday to the characters in their weird drugged-up space-future is everyday to you, the reader - and that’s cool, it’s good, it makes the story larger and realer and engages you all over the shop. But in Dune, it’s more than just “Paul woke up in his perfectly normal bed, put on his perfectly normal trousers and shirt, went through the perfectly normal automatic door to the bathroom and looked in the mirror at his COMPLETELY BATTY ENORMOUS SQUARE BOUFFANT WHICH LOOKED CRAZY. He mused on how utterly usual everything was, especially his hair, which he never mentioned to anyone ever.”
Do you get my drift Ocean Girl?
I’ll show you pictures, now.
Mark, please - there are three characters here. One of theme is batshit bonkers in the locks department, two are merely real-world unusual and what you might call bold. If I saw them alone, or in real life, I wouldn’t squint at them or wonder what their game was! I’d think, you rock that puff lady, right on. They wouldn’t unsettle or throw me out of a story in just about any other circumstances. It’s just the volume of unusual that’s here, all crammed together, never mentioned, discussed, spotlit or even lampshaded.. there’s a kid with a fringe cut in steps, too, and a boy whose details I have forgotten but who again alone would look interesting and individual, but packed with the rest makes/made me want to shout EXPLAIN! EXPLAIN! TELL ME WHAT IS GOING ON because I know that that isn’t what you’d get if you just took a bunch of people!
This is pretty nice hair actually, taken alone
It looks like a Barbie should be chillaxin’ in that fine hair-throne up there. Look, if you want to wear it that was that is FINE, but people have to NOTICE, OKAY?? Please???
Geisha of Frankenstein?
No.. seriously, you guys. Seriously. Red-haired girl’s face paints my thousand words.
It’s a SQUARE, just on her head. Why.
If you are going to evidence cultural shift, even ‘just’ visually, you need to note that your story is not set now or kids like me, who pick up on patterns but are too young to quite articulate or realise the questions forming due to them will just not be all that into your show. And it will bug them to all heck, maybe for twelve years.
Then I guess they’ll write a blog post about it, and maybe someone will read that and think “I remember that show, I loved it. I think I will buy the dvds RIGHT NOW” let me know if that’s YOU, so maybe my tirade is all in vain, and it’s actually a pretty good long-term marketing strategy.. ..?
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
Bury him in advice!
Advice the first:
When you are cycling through fields in summer you DEFINITELY need to wear a face-protecting neckerchief. You see how many bugs are on this sleeve? The black specks. Imagine that many bugs flying into your face. That’s no fun. Only once I forgot my necker, and it.. was pretty terrible. You can feel them hit your lips.
Advice the second:
Even if you buy a second-hand, vintage item that has surely been washed MANY times before - if it is a deep colour.. wash it alone or with (very) like shades. I know, I know! Obvious! But not obvious enough, for me!
Things that used to be white:
The salmon-y pink part, of course, was not white.
Only the stitching here. Hurray for polyester! It’s kind of good-looking, I think, the new contrast.
This shirt - luckily the only non-pants item that wasn’t something of mine - used to be a delicate pink to match the buttons.. I’m sure my dad likes lilac, though. Probably.
There was a pair of pants in this was that went from green to purple. That was a strong purple pill!
Advice the third:
When a nine year old peels off from the pack of nine-ten-eleven year olds who have already sassed you several times and runs across a field apparently expressly for the purpose of telling you you should “get a better hat”, Caesar, I want you to remember this - you should drink down that fine old vinegar-wine of oh yes, that’s how it feels to know that people want to belittle you because they’re uncomfortable with your wardrobe. I remember and savour the fact that it’s a vintage unpleasantness. Not one that can currently spoil your day. In a minute, you’ll catch a glimpse of your reflection in a french window and you’ll think DAMN, I’m looking GOOD.
And you’ll be right!
Oh, and don’t forget to bend down to his or her eye level, give him a Paddington stare, and say “And maybe YOU shouldn’t be so rude“. If you don’t tell them, how will they learn? That is the kind of thing you need to nip in the bud.. before they grow up into full-blown users of “negging“. That would really make the world a poorer place.
Today I am wearing “mom jeans”. Ugh, saying “mom” feels so wrong to me. I AM ENGLISH! ENGLIIIISH!
The jeans of my mother, again. I forgot about them! And that they turned out to fit me pretty well! I don’t need to buy new work trousers, after all! I already have the means to teach the new generation about how to dress like a 1970s Tokusatsu secret identity.
Did people bend their knees a lot in the seventies, or have I fabricated that entirely? And if so.. why?
The pictures are all effects-ed up because I couldn’t find the camera, so sister took these with the “polaroid” “app” on her magical future-phone.
Plus, as promised: some pictures from the Morris dancing in the town I was in a couple of weeks a go. Gosh I enjoy traditional Britain. We are a culture of tie-on costumes, arcane dancing, effigies and scary masks as much as any other, and (considered as a whole) we have not lost the dance-to-death spirit as much as our more toffish reputations suggest.
The face of the hobby horse:
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
I have a ton of story-seeds using Morris Men like pop culture uses ninjas.
Just got back from a flight and a bit of a stint as a Maypole. Chin chin!
Hat: Anthony Peto (gift), shirt and skirt: Jane Marple secondhand, shoes: VW + Melissa post-season
Today has been bafflingly tiring. Took a bunch of pictures - or should I say, had a photoshoot? - at CorinaCorina (or Corina Corina) for my next BSB column. Taster!
After which, I spent an hour or two in the rain. But I did meet these fine gentlemen!
Boots: Dr Martens, trousers: eBay, t-shirt: hand-me-up, scarf: Accessorize (gift), hoodie: Vans, coat: independent leather shop, bag: Scary Go Round
P.S. This guy appeared on the c4 Alternative Election Broadcast. I dubbed him “Jim Cary Elwes”. You see it, right? Right.
Watching Ironside, talking to my gent about Bloody Roar, we came to thinking what if they had new outfits, a bit like outfits from the sixties?.
Bloody Roar actually has some really good character design; I like it a lot. Google Image “Busuzima” sometime. Actually no! I will show you right now. This is great work! It’s plain engaging to look at, I want that jacket, it’s an unusual fashion sub-genre to exploit, it telegraphs “this guy is weird”, it works with the fact that he can turn into a chameleon. It’s a pleasing counterbalance to his lab-based scientific career:
So anyway - I drew a couple. Simples. Tiny sketchy fun! Please try to enjoy.
Protip: Don’t paint with inks over fountain pen lineart. Because, this happens! Bleeding.
Gado (Gadeau!):
Busuzima:
Jenny, again (she is my favorite, because we have the same haircut. Yeup).
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.
Left: Roberta! Right: Susan!
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 (the woman whose story this is (who by this point has been the canape server at her own birthday party, who was then ignored for her husband’s new tv advert (which features him being pulled into water by bikini babes)) has gone into New York (away from the suburbs where she lives with her hot-tub salesman husband (who she never finds out is cheating on her, and who undermines her identity and choices at every opportunity) to spy on one of the meetings that she has romanticised so much: “Susan” is meeting her touring band-member lover, who leaves her messages in the personals pages about which town he’s in and when they should meet. “Desperately Seeking Susan”, they say. Roberta reads all his adds and dreams about how dreamy their lives must be. Roberta follows Susan after her rendezvous and watches her trade a jacket for a pair of boots in a vintage clothes shop, and once Susan’s left Roberta buys the jacket for herself. At home, douchey husband - who wears what I assume are ’slacks’, and pale turquoise polo shirts - undermines her purchase (”[used to belong to Hendrix?] Second-hand clothes? What, are we poor?” and her exploration of non-suburby aesthetics, and generally is a massive ass - which leads Roberta to throw the jacket onto a chair in self-disgust.
A key falls out of the jacket at the end of that scene, which leads Roberta to hatch a plan: she can leave a “Desperately Seeking Susan” ad offering to return to the key, and she can make contact with her idol. We see Roberta dressing for the meeting, and we see.. she’s dressing up as Susan. At this point, as far as she’s processed, she just wants to be Susan. Desperately Seeking, right? Or try being her, I should say. Then we get the scene that is the scene. The turning point, for the film, in every. single. way. It’s so complete!
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.
Please forgive my dodgy pictures - digital camera + lapop + DVD
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.
This picture is used twice! On purpose!
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.
This picture is used twice! On purpose!
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”.
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”.
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.
My mum and sister had half-term last week, so we took an overnighter in Buxton. To walk in nature, and.. look at stuff. We stopped at Chatsworth House (because my sister is a big squealer for Pride and Prejudice), which as you can see above is quite delightful. This is the view from one side of the bridge:
One of several reasons I am proud to volunteer for BW: Waterways are wonderful. So pretty! I drew as much as my freezin’ fingers would let me.
There are links to more pictures (reference/stock) of these gorgeous landscapes in the righthand sidebar.
Also fascinating was the toilet paper, where we stayed. No really, take a gander!
You see??
Nice chairs, too. Evoke Union Jacks without being Union Jacks. An interesting choice, for a place where Mary Queen of Scots stayed pre-chop.
Lots of charming pokey shops, too; antiques and bookshops aplenty. A surprising amount of clothing, in the antiques emporiums in and around Buxton actually - maybe it’s a local thing, but ‘vintage’ seems to be creeping in all over where it was once disdained. I may be being overly romantic.
There was the most excellent bookshop. Second-hand, antique to current, FIVE FLOORS. It had free tea and coffee! That you could make for yourself! It was glorious, and I kick myself for not being in the right sort of mood to really appreciate it. Then again, I really can’t afford to be stocking up on old, old thick books with the sorts of covers that make you want to weep from the perfection of illustration.
Where was my mind? Photographic evidence:
The horrors (and adventures) of my youth.
Truth be told I came out with exactly what I did want - Teacher’s Pet by Caroline B. Cooney, a Point Horror (remember those?) that chilled me so royally that I refused to use the downstairs bathroom for years. I’ve been looking for it for months; I wanted to see if it still had the power.
In the story the heroine finds a rough workmans glove in the woods, which turns out to still have a hand in it. My dad keeps his work gloves in the downstairs loo. I was a nervous and imaginative child!
LET'S BE BUDS, BUB IllustratorClaire: Twenty-three year old Illustrator and Englisher, female feminist, interested in being helpful and denouncing things that aren't. Designed and drew the Britsh Style Bloggers logo; available to hire on just about any illustration project. Currently working as a Dinner Lady. For illustration portfolio, click the "tales from the sketchpages" tag or my logo below! Why do I do this? click here. Thank you!
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