My Illustrative Life

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:

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.

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!

These ain’t my clothes, y’all!

I’m Dinner Ladying the rest of this week and all week and I’m in TROUBLE, because this morning when I got dressed to go to work I had to wear my sister’s clothes.

I’ve gone over in some detail the personal troubles I have with summer clothes, but now I have met the professional perils and they buffeted me onto my rear. See how:

My job entails squeezing around tiny tables and chairs making sure kids eating their lunches are behaving, seeing if they need their food cut or their yoghurts opened, pouring drink, etc. Then I have to make sure they’re safe and happy running and climbing around outside. Skirts and shorts are a bad idea; I don’t trust 4/5 year olds to be fully cognizant of physical boundaries, f’rex. Low-cut or loose tops are a bad idea because I do a lot of leaning over, ditto hipster trousers (no child needs to see the crack of authority). Button-up tops are a bad idea because they gape. The few graphic t-shirts that I own are either intricate - interesting and distracting (they ask me my name often enough - “what’s that about?” is a question I’d like to avoid answering seven thousand times), or scary (when I was small I wouldn’t have wanted to stare at the Crimson Ghost whilst eating, that’s all). Sweaters or roll-necks are WAY too hot right now- really anything long-sleeved is. Showing my belly is inappropriate. And so on. And so on. And so on!

O___O’

This, in my wardrobe, leaves nothing!

!!!

It also does not help that both my pairs of trousers are in the wash right now. Oh, bravo, bravo, I know.

Sister was in the shower so I grabbed and contorted my way into a shirt I haven’t seen her wear for ages and the first pair of skinnies on her floor.

I safety-pinned the back of the shirt of the seat of the trousers because when they say they are low rise they really

are not bluffing, and thank goodness I had a badge of comparable size when I noticed this at the last minute -

..What the heck am I going to wear tomorrow?

When I get paid, I might be looking in to some skinny “jeans” in an interesting colour - I really like the way they just fitted right into my boots. Any recommendations on where to get good quality examples?

It feels like I’m complaining a lot recently. Sorry about that! I will try to do better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’ll look nice.

Fuckin’ clothes. What are they good for?

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

Fathers Day!

Bikes in car, drive, park in layby, cycle, reach village.

You see, because I am a good and loving daughter, today I allowed my dad to menace and terrify me by exploring a village “Scarecrow Festival” together.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

The worst part is that these weren’t the worst part. Those Morris Dancers that go about covered in rags with their faces painted night-black and feathers on their hats? I don’t care how traditional they are, or that my beloved’s father occasionally partakes - these guys are FLIPPIN’ SCARY.

No pictures, because I am a big wussy.

X_X

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Today what I did, was I sat in the garden watching Sweet Valley High and writing up blog posts for Waterscape and getting lightly sun-altered. Then, I removed a very young blackbird from my house,

..and let out a full-grown one from the living room. Which was exciting! And then, I watched some more Sweet Valley High and did drawing practice.. with some X-Men fanart. Including the below!

This is the series I want to be reading right now. Well, actually, I maybe want to be reading the new vampire X-Men arc? I do heaaaaaart Marvel vampires, generally. But I am unkeen to touch modern Rogue/Remy interaction, because they won’t let them be happy aughhhhh.

BUT MY POINT. My point is, my favourite type of Wolverine is kid-mentor Wolverine. Growing up with the 90s series — [pause for most excellent intro]

– I always subliminally knew that Wolverine was There For Me. Or, you know, would be if he were “real”. Jubilee was a character I resented and disliked at the time (love her now!), but she served her purpose for child-me - Logan was protective of her as a girlchild, and I was one too, so I related to the character of Wolverine as a protector. When I meet or walk past muscular hairy grouchy older dudes, I have in the back of my mind, he’s looking out for me rather than eee he’s maybe scary. That’s good. That makes me a more secure person.

So it makes me sad, and eye-roll-y, that Wolvie’s biological son (I’m not forgetting the adopted daughter, she’s there too, she and Laura are just out getting groceries in the pic above) is not someone with whom he has a loving and healthy relationship. I really want that to be so! I want all of Logan’s kids to be able to look up to him and live in some great hand-built cabin and BE A FAMILY, DARN IT. People are bored as shit with xtreeeeeeeeeeeeme on-every-team Wolverine - lets bring him back to his roots (kind of his roots). Just some guy, struggling with his past, trying to make the world better for the children who depend on him.

Also I just really enjoy Daken’s design (remember how I approve of Mohawks?), feel that bisexual characters need a wider and less evil-creepy representation, and HATE CHARACTERS HAVING “RAPE” AS THEIR SUPERPOWER.

He has pheremones, you know. That he manipulates people with. Sexually. Vom.

I just want my favourite characters to be HAPPY. Is that so much to ask?

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.

My sister, and my foot again. I’m just unable to colour things without using yellow. Why, I wonder? I barely ever use white for highlights, even when I’ve built up enough pigment to block out the paper or canvas. Or if I do use it, I start to hate it and feel put-upon.

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna be posting these every day!

Plus: I’ve been twittering my discontent with Ian Holt and Dacre Stoker’s “official” sequel to Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula; Dracula: The Un-Dead. I drew this in the night, after reading a particularly enraging, faith-breaking passage. Please excuse my vendetta.. Dracula is just too darn GOOD.

Warning: Possible rape triggers

I aquired this advert page (got my sister to rip it out of a magazine (she was in the corner, I was in view) in a cafe) last weekend. And not for the reason you may suspect! Compared to my beloved this dude is weaksauce. Not to disparage his objective attractiveness..

I think that the current ad campaign for Gaultier’s Le Male (and whatever the girly version is called) is pretty much super-great. Because it’s a male/female pair, and both versions are almost exactly the same. They’re both soft, but not too soft. Both a little bit fetish-y; the corset for the lady, the sailor outfit for the guy (I love his little hat!). Mimifroufrou.com says

The advertising plays on the ambiguity of a masculine image that is appealing to the gay community for its Querelle de Brest reference but is shown in the TV commercial to be heterosexual.

I don’t know if that’s the intention or the precise direction of the direction (I can certainly believe it) but I do know that I enjoy the heck out of it. This “appealing to the gay community” isn’t just doing that - it’s appealing to the me community.

I don’t want to see ‘traditional’ manly man men man in adverts. They’re boring; I’ve seen them since forever. They don’t interest me because I like balance.. and that applies to all areas.

I like to see trad-masculine balanced with trad-feminine. Why does Hokuto No Ken appeal to my heart so well? Because it’s about uberdudes whose hearts are crying even as they tear off heads. Why do I like to read Being Manly? Because it’s about ‘manliness and masculinities’ (emphasis masculinities) approached in a gender-inclusive, polite way that makes me (a lady!) feel welcomed, and talks about gender relations and gender roles in a positive way. Why do I like to wear Dr Martens and a heavy leather coat on my wide shoulders and army surplus(/inspired) hats? Because I really like to wear pink skirts! Why did I make Laurence Llewellyn Bowen my style icon (and nickname, though I didn’t make that happen, so much) in sixth form?

Because I was at an all-girls school and most of my friends were vocally into lipgloss and high heels. Why do I love the Runaways so hard? Because they were girls who wore girl clothes and who were assertive and who weren’t ladylike and sang about screwing and drinking. I did a whole great long poorly formatted post early on in this blog’s life about my enjoyment of Jean Claude Van Damme movies due to the, perhaps, “masculine femininity” or “feminine masculinity” of the majority of them. Why do I stare so hard and long at my beloved’s Disney-princess eyelashes (other than the whole “I love him” thing)?

For the same reason as why I think these two adverts are the bees knees. Because they’re not so flippin’ gender binary as most of what gets thrown in my face in the everyday.

It’s some kind of mad dream to see a “I just had sex with a lady” gent doing anything other than thinking “I am SO AMAZINGLY THE BEST because getting ladies means you WIN”. It is some kind of madder dream to see a post lady-sex guy doing semi-submissiv, emotion-based flexing about in tight pants and trousers, putting on a little hat (for his own enjoyment!). I’ve got no idea what these scents smell like, but I am fully pro-them.

You see? Advertsising CAN make me want to buy things! It just usually does the opposite.

They ain’t perfect. She could have a smirk after smelling the pillow too. But that? Is a pretty small complaint, considering.

Has anyone else noticed that all the Valentines-themed window displays this year are red (with silver or black accoutrements)? Red to hot pink, at least. Where is all the marshmallowy pink, the fluffy powder colours, the teddy bears swearing eternal affection? Everwhere I looked, in town yesterday, there were red satin undergarments with the spindliest of garter belts (they won’t work, don’t you want your sexy to be practical too?), and shiny metallic balloons.

I did consider that it was a display of solidarity with China, any British-Chinese or visiting tourists, Chinese New Year falling today also. Red being an important related colour. But there wasn’t any gold involved, and besides - shop windows don’t tend to be that inclusive.

I hope you’re having a fine day, whatever you’re celebrating or whatever you aren’t. I do think it’s a shame when people are vitriolic against Saint Valentine’s Day, because being martyred because you refused to disallow soldiers to marry is pretty bloody admirable if you ask me. And technically, by visiting my blog, you did. Ha-HAH! I think it’s a day to celebrate, unless you prefer to make it a day for activism - St. V died for the cause of marriage for a portion of the population who higher-ups felt shouldn’t be allowed it. Who knows what his views on homosexuality would be, but luckily for us (and the whole point of this is that) he’s dead - so he can’t complain if we use his Day to say “Hey, Governments - Let Your People Marry”.

I was unconsciously mirroring the red red world, when I ventured out into it to search out records with my newly-drivers’-liscenced sister. My reds were deeper though, because straight-up primary colours make me look startled. And besides, I like the mystery of a slightly dirty hue.

I couldn’t physically be with my beloved for Valentine’s Day - actually, we’ve never been together on The Day (don’t worry! It’s never mattered, either) - and I’m not near any New Year celebrations as I thought I would be so I’m here typing.. Able to say that if you are feeling blue (and so quite out of place) then all you need to do is put on some dreamin’ gear and use that in-head laptop we call ‘imagination’ to fly you to where and with whom you really want to be. Look, I’ll show you:

Oh - and I beg your pardon, happy New Year to China, and anyone who celebrates!

Here is a picture of me, this morning:

As you can see, these trousers are too small. They are definitely too small - I had to pin the zip at the top, and they are not decent to wear in public (I didn’t go out today). But they are thick cord and moss green and properly flared. Of course I still wore them!

THE ZIP BROKE TODAY.

Please, a moment of silence for my oldest pair of trousers. I will miss them, and I have no idea where I can find a new pair. They never fitted properly; the waist was always too wide and the hips always pulled a little snug. But since I bought them, dear Lady Changes done worked her pesky magic. The shop isn’t even there anymore.

Please, anyone got a trooser-shop that caters to the small but wiggly? :/

I don’t always illustrate my face subject to the thoughts I had when I dressed for the day. Sometimes I do, but sometimes I just add what I think would look fitting based on the taken photograph, or to add a balancing agent to the mix (for example, if I look bodaciously Disney-buxom, I’ll probably add a manface). Sometimes I add a completely new element, to see how it changes the story of the clothing and my body language.

Today my creative process went like this:

“Haha, this outfit looks way sixties! A thinking socialite, like the ones from the movies, who took the Sound of Music straight to heart. Such things were nowhere near my mind when I put this stuff on! How interesting! I think I shall add a snooty model head, to complete the ensemble.”

“Hmmm. A lot of my thighs are visible here. How can I make a thigh look interesting? Well, much as I dislike him, Batman has made forearms look interesting.. how can I improve on that.. fins.. fins.. mermaids?.. fishpeople.. Gillman!”

“I can’t be doing with drawing ANOTHER set of thigh scales. The Creature’s only my second favourite type of classic movie-monster, anyway; I’ll show that Kate Beckinsdale what for. What a twit.”

Consequences Creed

Consequences Creed has great hair, especially for a professional wrestler. His body has an unusual chunkiness that looks dependable - I’m not worried for his health, or for the crowd of his opponent - and non-monstrous; he’s not scary thin or scary ‘roidy, he’s not super Hollywood-guy ripped but he looks like he is strong (especially in the thighs!). His costume doesn’t have too many elements to it, but it does have enough, and it makes me think of Wonder Woman a little. He doesn’t look nude like the guys who wrestle in pants, and the short shorts are sporty. I dislike watching matches where people are wearing those long spandexy leggings, because I think about them riding low in the crotch and feel sympathy irritation. The colours of his getup complement his skin tones. He springs about and is cheerful. This is a good wrestler image.

Awesome Kong

I am not impressed with the fact that Awesome Kong’s bodice didn’t fit her boobs properly when I was watching TNA semi-regularly. “Get her a tailor, management!” I shouted. But it looks like they did! I dog the Xena look, and I dig that she is FIERCE not a fuckdoll. She pulls great faces and tends to ignore the crowd, I think. She also has cool hair, and I like how she lets it fly about all over. I like her little wrestler boots! Her NAME is AWESOME. And she really, really does make good faces. Good wrestler image.

Sting

Gothy wrestlers (there are more than you’d think, unless you are a big ole wrestling fan) are some of the funniest things, in my opinion. But I like Sting! He is old, for one thing. Kind of. He has a neat gimmick (the lights go out. They come on.. AND THERE IS STING!!!!!!), and he reminds me of the Misfits I like Vampiro by default. I like that he paints his face, all spooooky and that he used to wear pink leggings with bleached hair. I very much enjoy that he had (has?) a major beef (or whatever wrasslin’ calls it, I forget) with Kurt Angle, who I find one of the most boring Entertainment Superstars around. Sting threatens to bite fingers off! He believes in respect, hence troubles with Angle. I dislike his coats, because great big muscular types need careful tailoring and better fabric and better, non-hideous stadium lighting to look purposeful in structured-flowing garments in my opinion. But I respect that he wears it! Good wrestler image!

Samoa Joe

I liked Samoa Joe because.. OK, I liked Samoa Joe because he had a slight rockabilly bent but mainly because his name had “Samoa” in and one of my favourite moments of Dog the Bounty Hunter is Tim yelling “MY WIFE IS SA-MOAN!“. But! Then I didn’t watch TNA (the only wrestling we get on our TV, which is good, because it is my favourite) for a while. When I came back, Joe had a sleeveless Hokuto leather jacket! And (I think?) different facial “tattoos”! And he went around doing peoples’ bidding, like he had been to the future and come back a badass brainwashed cyborg. Duh, obviously I like that. GOOD WRESTLER IMAGE.

Best of all: Booker T

He has a couple of namesakes to choose from. The musician, seen above, and the political leader Booker T (who you should read about). He wears pants, with massive great boots and sometimes T-shirts, which makes him look so nude that I am simply amused rather than squemish. His use of colour in his gear is skillful He also makes great faces, and pretty evidently has a sense of humour that I enjoy. He uses GOLD and CROWN MOTIFS in his ring-wear. He involves his wife! he wears his hair in a ‘princess ponytail’ sometimes, and his boots look like platforms half the time. I just froze the first video here on a frame that shows him jumping reeeally high, which I admire. He also also has massive thighs, which would alarm me in real life but just make me go wow, really?? when watching on teevee. And he just looks like a “nice man”, silly and subjective as that is.

My beloved adds, Booker T is cool about racism because he called Hulk Hogan NIGGA when he got carried away and then laughed and his wife patted his shoulder! She just pats him and stifles her mirth!

 
“A definite challenge there from Harlem Heat~”

Best wrestler image.

Aw, shit, wiki just told me he’s TNA No More. Shucks.

Why do I take this post to get all this opining (is this the correct word?) out? Partly out of frank enjoyment. Partly out of an inclination to let people know about stuff they might not know. And partly because I want to do my part, if possible, in making sure that we never, ever return to the days of..

“Wrestler hair”

That is exactly what “wrestler hair” looks like. Youtube, for example, Royal Rumble 1992. Or I could do it for you! Jake the Snake is a marginal offender, but watch for Sid.

He was NOT ALONE IN THIS.

Bad wrestler image

Picture credits here
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