Tell me then, who IS the sexiest?!

This week I have mainly been reading articles on ambivalent sexism; yes we all have our hobbies and among the interesting and thought provoking, I stumbled upon a few things I generally ignore...mainstream, glossy articles.
In the interest of research, I read a few. Wow, this is a strange and uncharted territory. Don't get me wrong, I have flipped through women's magazines at the doctor's and dentist's waiting room. But I think it was probably 1989 when I last looked inside the cover of Cosmopolitan. However, the article which really interested me, was this one in Marie Claire, Australia.

http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/marie-claire/features/reports/article/-/6530219/you-tell-us-who-s-the-sexiest/

Now I do understand, that most people will be familiar with this article and it looks as though it has, 'done the rounds' it was written in 2009 after all. But as I said the other day, I realised at an early age that I was destined to discover 'new' things which the rest of the planet already knew about!

Now, call me sad, but what a peculiar piece of propaganda this is. Using objectified female bodies, to confirm to the female readership that objectified female model-size bodies are in fact, not attractive.

The psychology of the body language used and the positioning of the people is constructed to ensure there will be only one possible outcome - the size 12. She is standing in the, 'I find you attractive' stance and also creates the 'full stop' in the 'reading' of the body sentence. I really do find such overt manipulation insulting! Couple with this the fact that the women are not the sizes presented...yes I took out a small scale ruler and measured and cross referenced the width of their frames as confirmation that this is a piece intended to manipulate me, the reader and I took offence! If these women are the size we are told, they have been stretch, or shrunk to conform to a standardised height and this has skewed the perception of the form. And that is just cheating! The size 8 model has the same width shoulders and hips as the size 12...ummmm. seems rather unethical to me!

If we are going to use pejorative and damaging journalism to undermine the beauty of women, or in fact to make 'beauty' the only goal worthy of attainment, at least make it an ethical photograph!

Now I am all for women celebrating beauty, as someone who has spent most of my adult life lacking body confidence and with issues around being labelled, I am fully supportive of articles which make women and men question their preconceptions about everything really! But why must we have one form of beauty as superior to another?

What a juxtaposition and bizarre contradiction these magazine-things are. Packed full of labels, real women are the most attractive being the sub-text of one article and how to lose weight and look like a rake the sub-text of another.

I tend to think that this media works so well at turning women into warring factions, and while we symbolically scratch each other's eyes out over a size label, we also subserviently don bras and knickers and line up to be 'compared' and 'contrasted' in the beauty stakes. The fact is, that while we all bitch about the vital statistics of Victoria Beckham or Kate Winslet, we won't be questioning society or demanding to be given the same career opportunities, or even expecting that other women will actually judge us for how we behave, rather than for what we wear. 

Obesity Epidemic

Well I decided I would start blogging regularly, so here I am again.

Today I went back to work after three weeks off sick to find myself sitting in an office, checking emails until about one in the afternoon. I fully admit, there were intervals, the odd ten minutes speaking to colleagues, a walk to the toilets and back...even a walk to the water dispenser.
At one, I ate my lunch (at my desk) while reading a student's assignment. Then I downloaded and printed a research paper, before answering another two emails in the afternoon and had a telephone conversation with a lady who wants a 'report'.

So that's half eight until one, then another half an hour of time consumed by virtual communication...5 hours of a 7 hours (ish) working day!

Now all this communication makes me wonder and the question is 'why'? Okay, I acknowledge, time off sick generates a full in-box, but my reply system was set for 'out of office' and so the box wasn't as full as it could have been...but I have lots of days like this.

Days filled with non-working-work. All this time tied up with pinging, sentence-long dragged out conversation.  It can take a few hours of sporadic pings to arrange a meeting which would take 5 minutes over the phone.

There's talk of, 'information obesity' maybe it's also, 'communication obesity' we need to fear, so much time consuming, meaningless froth, which fills our time and leaves us interaction empty. Rather like a convenience meal - it tastes bland and you'll still be hungry at the end of it, but it piles inches on the waistline and hardens those arteries.

We spend so much time engaged with this constant stream to instantly demanding chatter, that we cease to seek conversation with meaning. In face, so full am I today with 'communication' that by bedtime, I am asking my chatting children to 'just shhhh, just one minute please'! The only worthwhile conversations today, dismissed, because my head is so full of ready-meal ping!

Lipstick and Lingerie

Who'd have believed it? I'm back again! Can you guess that I have been off work today?!

Hypocrisy, that's what I'm coming to terms with...the hypocrisy of self. Now most people develop an awareness of this contradiction at an early age, but I have always been a little slow.

So where do I start?

I am a feminist; in principle, ideals, opinions and views. Idealistically, I am a real ball-breaker. I realise this makes me somewhat unfashionable in today's world, but I have never really, truly followed fashion and here is where the underlying hypocrisy begins...because I covert satin. Well satin, lace, bengaline, cotton, mixed fibres, bones and ribbons and all manner of pretty, impractical apparel.

Confessional time: I am a retro clothes addict.

This may seem like a minor confession and I can justify and qualify my clothes of choice.

I could claim that, like Gloria Steinem, I have inverted and subverted the perceived cultural assumptions around gender and stereotypes.

Possibly there is just a little of that. While people are commenting on my bizarre choice of a 1940s military suit for a meeting with the Dean, they aren't commenting on the size of my tits.

I could claim that, as I find the hegemony of feminism within the Capitalist system repugnant, I am making a political, visual stand against the consumption and corruption of feminism into a controlled, sexualised fashion trend and therefore pre-dating the 1960s and the corruption of my ideals which the era heralded.

Possibly there is also more than a little truth in that...I do find the whole, 'ah, we'll give you the pill, just roll naked in mud and we'll film you, roll it out for men sitting on settees and call it liberation'...actually there is a lot of truth in that.

There is also the very real, and uncomfortable fact that, yes I am 'traditionally shaped' and modern styled clothes do not fit boobs in. Well they do if you want to:
a) wear a kaftan
b) wear tops stretched so tight that you look like Katie Price
c) accessorise with Ugg boots

I really do not want to do any of the above and so wear retro clothes, because they are made for boobs, a waist and hips i.e. the female form - and I have boobs, a waist and hips. I like to be comfortable and when modern clothes slide down to my hips and bag around the bottom, and pull across the chest and hang off my shoulders, I am not comfortable. For years I hid in jeans, because jeans used to be made to fit a female body...and if they were too big, well a good Sam Brown belt did the trick. But not any more, now they are shaped for pencils, or sea cucumbers, I am unsure which. (Unless you buy a good pair of Freddies of Pinewood jeans that is!)

So, is this a great hypocrisy, to be a feminist and admit to being female? Can we really hold feminist principles while secretly (and not so secretly) coveting What Katie Did lingerie?

And I suppose that is my point, I have, for years claimed many intellectualised and theorised reasons for my wardrobe choice, while never admitting to myself that I actually also wear these clothes because I like pretty things.

This new epiphany,  this moment of realisation has been something I have been in denial about for too long...I am a retro clothes and retro lingerie wearing feminist! And that's an okay thing to be...see growing and accepting.

Hence, and acceptance of, the link below:

http://www.whatkatiedid.com/

Epiphanies...

Posts are like buses...none for ages, then three come along at once!

I have been 'growing' recently...not 'expanding' I add, just growing. And about bloody time, I hear people who know me cry?!
I suppose everyone has epiphanies - just this week our three year old has discovered that sharing treats with your brothers gains you 'rewards'. Specifically, they are so pleased, they read her the book when she asks!

In my life, I have had several epiphanies, most were before the age of seven and in my mind, they all happened the same winter:
1. Walking home from infant school I discovered that semi-circle was not in fact the biggest word in the world when my Mother told a boy who threw a gritty snow-ball in my face that he was an 'abomination'
2. I looked at the sky and realised the moon was outside the world
3. I was bought a pair of brown, fur lined Dr Martens and realised that having comfort is an essential part of my life

And there my development stopped -with the realisation that there are so many big words that I will never know; new facts which I find astounding (such as the moon not being held in the sky) are old news to everyone else and that people who crave comfort will always sit on the chair with the pin stuck in it.

Yet recently, I have been learning things anew; again, I understand and accept that these will be known truths to the rest of Humanity.

1. Being married with 6 children and a job is a very grown up thing to be and I, therefore am a grown up
2. I am both a hypocrite and contradiction

Both of the above are not enlightening statements to anyone but myself...but it is good to be aware of yourself I feel, and I think my next post will be about how much I dislike hypocrites!

Election Campaigning

We will be having the local elections in England on Thursday. Not as grand or glitzy an occasion as the recent US Presidential campaign, but still, a small tree worth of leaflets have been shoved through the letterbox. I resent this for several reasons:
1. They make a draft - it's getting a bit nippy here in Northern England now, and the half shoved in leaflet creates a space for gusty winds!
2. The ones fully through the letter box land, unceremoniously on my tiles vestibule floor, the ones half in-half-out allow drissle-rain to blow in, and the ones on the floor stick to the tiles. Creating a vestibule floor which needs cleaning more often than it should! (Really the house is already looking like a squat, it's not needed!)
3. I just don't like the design of the leaflets, all brash and shouty. Campaign leaflets are really the McDonalds of the design world. Nothing aesthetically pleasing about them at all.
4. I read them and get cross - propaganda nonsense in the main, gurning photographs of self-serving people attempting to look friendly and self-less, all promoting policies I usually disagree with!

But today a leaflet flew through from the 'HOPE' party, a party against racism apparently. I agree with this wholeheartedly - the only time I have ever congratulated any of my children for acts of violence was when my eldest son hit a BNP party supporter in the Student Union.

However, I've read the leaflet from 'Hope party' and oh, it did make me cross, initially I reacted with predictable crossness, as any pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-middle-class woman should by creating anger at the statements quoted from the BNP. The standard, 'Phah' and 'Urgh' at the quote from a BNP officer about rape inflamed my feminist principles quite extravagantly!


I am looking at the newspaper link to this quote, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-552692/Sacked-The-BNP-candidate-said-women-like-gongs--need-struck-regularly.html

Yes I find those attitudes repulsive beyond words, just as I find all BNP attitudes repugnant,and yes Nick Eriksen is, in my opinion, a rather feeble excuse for a man. I would seriously wonder how damaging and harmful a childhood the man had to create such major psychological problems. I certainly wouldn't want to have lived his life. However, the Hope party is pro-porting to be against hatred and bigotry, surely it is enough to make a statement that they oppose the BNP's racist, violent and sexist views and then list their own policies? This negative and attacking form of political campaigning seems to me, such an bizarre form of politics. 'We can tell you what we are not, but have no means of telling you what we are.' Do ideologists now simply display their principles based on who they are not? This seems an ungrounded method at best...

...or is the Hope Party, a party for hope over hate, simply parasiting on my fear and bigotry of the unknown, of the unliked and the dreaded BNP? Just as the BNP parasite the fear and suspicion some people fear over the unknown and alien cultures that they seek to remove from our nation?

But now I have read and re-read the leaflet and just wondered, apart from 'Vote Hope Against Racism', what exactly are the policies of this party? I am all for voting against hate, as it requests I do...but what exactly would I be voting for? How will the Hope Party help the very deprived regions of Manchester? What is the policy for economic growth? What will be done to improved crime and homelessness? How will employment be encouraged? How will this party develop my children's schools or the local hospitals?

It theory, a party of 'Hope' may be just the answer for an idealist and politically disaffected individual such as myself, but creating a voting population simply by preying on the fears and hatred of people is what I would be voting against, and so Hope party, I'm sorry, but your hypocrisy has just lost you my vote.

Life gets in the way sometimes!

Oh, how infrequently I post on here, well recently, it has been for good reason,

LIFE!

Gosh, it just runs away with you sometimes, doesn't it?

Phases of the moon sometimes seem to stick and spend an unnatural age waning or waxing - a symbolic and pretentious way of saying that I've been having a 'challenging time' but the details are actually none of your bloody business! Haha, oh the impersonal rudeness of blogging.

The fact is, that in life, I am generally incapable of being rude. I am one of those, 'open book' types, you know, you ask them a question and they give you the truth as a response. People ask me all sorts of personal questions and for some reason, I usually answer and very rarely become offended, or even wonder why they thought to ask! But today I am.

So my question today is this: why do some people feel they have the right to pass comments and judgements on the life of specific others? It puzzles me...

Is it because I live a life which is ever so slightly unconventional? Or is it that most people are asked these types of questions, and it is only people, such as me and mine, who never think to ask them?

For example, we have six children...I never pass comment, or even think to question why someone has chosen to have no children, one child or three. Why? Because it is none of my business. Yet whenever people discuss children, I always get a, 'NO! REALLY?! MY GOD...WHY?!'

I don't drive (through choice) and strangely enough, whenever this comes up in conversation  I get a, 'NO! REALLY?! MY GOD...WHY?!'
Never once in the history of my communications have I EVER said to anybody, 'My God, you bastard, polluting my oxygen with your toxic car waste!' To be honest, I never even think that, it is just a different choice than the one I made, and that is fine by me!

Maybe this is exactly what I need to start doing? Shouting random, 'MY GOD, WHY?!' comments at people? Maybe then they will stop saying, '6 children, but which of them are really YOURS?' or 'So you've been with just the one man for how long? HOW and WHY?!'

Bizarrely enough, I don't think I shall, because really, it's none of my damn business.