Self-awareness

I think life as a woman is harder than that of a man.

I know – controversial statement in this day and age, where feminism is almost as much of a joke now as it was before the Suffragetes. But it’s true enough, regardless. And my reasoning behind saying so comes not from the argument that childbirth is a more painful experience than a kick to the crotch any day of the week, or because of the ever-present glass ceiling that still, after all this time, hasn’t quite been lifted.

I say so because modern women (I can’t speak for the women of any other time-period because I am, of course, not one of them) go through their whole lives experiencing a constant, almost painful self-awareness. In our culture of advertisement, there’s an ideal aesthetic standard that women are expected to achieve. Of course, any sane person would look at the size-4 models on any catwalk and say, ‘Ha! How ridiculous – surely we can’t expect our women to live up to that!’ But we do, nonetheless.

We’re generally expected (by members of both genders, the media, society as a whole and consequently ourselves) to be slim, cellulite-free, constantly bald from the neck down and with entirely unblemished skin in order to be considered attractive. This isn’t a new complaint by any means, but no matter how ridiculous we realise this situation to be, we are affected by it nonetheless. And so most of us spend our entire lives thinking things like, ‘Do I look fat in this?’ ‘Does this make me look too old?’ ‘Does this cover up my skin enough?’ and other mundane, vapid questions. Call it vanity if you like, but a lot of women are self-obsessed out of necessity. It by no means affects every woman, and I’m certainly not saying that men don’t also feel a similar pressure, but for those who do, it can really take the joy out of life. It’s not just considerations to be taken into account when looking in the mirror at the morning – worries about our own appearance can consume us, can be niggling away at the back of our minds (or even at the forefront) when we’re walking down the street, in our jobs, socialising, dating, having sex. Especially the latter.

A lot of activities and experiences that are supposed to be positive or gratifying are tainted by this self-awareness. I’m not going to get all Buddhist on your asses, or pretend that I can suggest a solution to this (if I did, I certainly wouldn’t have need to complain like this), I’m just saying that I think it’s wrong, and that the overall happiness that can be gleaned from life is dramatically lowered for many people in this kind of environment.

Size zero

Over the last couple of years there’s been a lot of controversy over the ’size zero’ debate. That’s stating the obvious quite a bit to those who have even been near the news in the last year or so, let alone someone who’s read the ridiculous amount of trashy gossip rags that I have during my lunch breaks.

It doesn’t need to be summarised for me to make my point. Controversy has arisen over the related rise in eating disorders amongst we, the impressionable, body-conscious teenage girls. However, the psychology behind the fashion industry’s current obsession with very skinny women has yet to be properly addressed in the media.

It also doesn’t need to be said that the fashion industry is an overwhelmingly male-controlled business venture – apart from the models, of course. The majority of managers, designers, photographers, agents etc. are men.

In an article from The Independent in 2005, Johann Hari explains the common male attraction to the average model-sized woman:

But it’s important to understand that no particular type of beauty is programmed into our brains at birth. Your attraction to one type over another – anorexic women over normal women, say – is a complex product of advertising, culture and social conditions. The beauties of Rubens’ paintings would be considered grade-A mingers today.

Beauty is an elastic concept; it is vulnerable to being hijacked by (in the 17th century) great artists, or (today) by particular industries with creepy agendas and massive marketing budgets. Men do not “naturally” fancy anorexic women; they are made to.

So the problem isn’t that some people are more attractive than others. It’s that the particular form of Western female beauty created and policed by a small minority of people in “trend-setting” industries today is a bizarrely unhealthy one. The people involved should not be allowed to escape their responsibility. The glossy offices of Vogue are built on the bodies of thousands of self-starved young girls. Every catwalk model walks over a tide of bulimic bile.

So we can safely establish that the average man is influenced by the media and the fashion industry. But why does the industry push this “creepy agenda”? The attraction has to come from somewhere, and this is the issue that I think hasn’t quite been addressed.

What is the attraction for androgynous, de-feminised women? I use the term ‘de-feminised’ loosely, because I’m aware that it is not, in fact, a real term – but you get my point. A typical size-zero women lacks the physical assets which are classically characterised as feminine – breasts and hips. Today’s ideal of beauty seems to be symbolic of either that which is aesthetically male, or that which is aesthetically young, i.e. pre-pubescent, at which point those aesthetic features which commonly characterise a mature woman are still absent.

So, my question is – does the current obsession with very thin women stem from repressed homosexuality, or repressed paedophilia? I’ll leave you to decide.

Trends I hate at the moment.

On the topic of conformity as ugliness, here are some fashionable things that I really just can’t stand:

• Japan. Now, it’s an interesting country, to be sure, so far as history and culture go. But something tells me that genuine youth interest extends about as far as anime and the PlayStation 3. By and large, the rest is just pretense.
• Metrosexuality. The general act of straight males aesthetically feminising themselves, e.g. eyeliner, acting gay with their straight male friends. Now, I love a bit of man-gegen-man as much as the next girl. But it’s not fair to tease. I like to think I’m fairly liberal and open-minded in my ideas on sexuality considering my limited sexual experience, but I still like my men to be men. If I wanted a guy who spends more time putting his face on in the morning than I do and shaves his legs, I’d just be a lesbian and it’d all be a lot easier for me.
• Skinny jeans. Dear God, how I hate them. They are so unforgiving. Unless you’re a size 6. Which I’m not. They are (like it says on the tin) ’skinny’ jeans – for skinny people. Very skinny people. If you’re the perfect 10 or above then they’re just going to be unflattering. Especially if you’re a pear, like myself. I recently bought my first pair of skinny jeans (I figured it’d be okay since they’re going out of fashion), and Good Christ, they look awful on. They are just not for the likes of myself. I had major ghetto-booty.
• Insomnia. And yes, it IS a fashion statement. There is absolutely NO way that the amount of people I know who SAY they have insomnia actually DO have it. I mean, I can understand that the amount of insomnia sufferers in a questionnaire-pool of, say, a group of single mothers with hectic day-jobs would be higher than the national average. But 17-year-olds? Not bloody likely. I think claiming to have insomnia makes some people feel hard.

Fashion, pt. 2

I’ll begin the post with another Oscar Wilde quote (my most commonly name-dropped author, since he’s the only decent author I’ve ever read): “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”

It’s true enough, and I think some of that ugliness genuinely does lie in the aesthetic value of a particular item of clothing – some things are just abrasive on the eyes.

But I think the majority of the ugly aspect of fashion stems from the fact that conformity itself is an ugly thing. Something which was originally passably attractive when stores were starting to stock it is made less so because everyone is wearing it. It’s a basic case of diminishing returns – a thing which was new and fresh and exciting, which was a pleasure to look at, becomes ugly merely by it’s repetitiveness. By becoming popular a beautiful thing essentially sacrifices that which made it popular – its beauty (assuming, falsely, that a beautiful thing has a will of its own, although I suppose this can be applied to beautiful people).

But hey, what can we do? There’s no escaping conformity. We are all inherently the same – how can we succeed at being unique when there is nothing original about us that can differentiate us? I mean to say, that supposing the soul does not exist (which I do), there is no unalterable, constant, essential life force in us that defines us as individuals.

‘Individuality’ is just the need to express characteristics which we believe would differentiate us from others (often in a positive way) but which don’t, in fact, exist.

Notice.

Well, I’ve handed in my notice to soul-destroying shop-job, and from previous posts you’ll already know that I’m eager to see the back of it, although I’ll miss the banter.

My last day is Thursday 28th, at which point I’ll have worked there for roughly 11 months. It has been a learning experience though, or ‘character building,’ as my Mum would say to describe any shit experience with no redeeming qualities, and I’d like to take this time to ennumerate the lessons I have learned from working in retail:

Numero uno. People are cunts.

Number the second, and my only fashion tip – a black, high-waisted, elasticated belt is the ultimate accessory. It gives the illusion of a slim waistline, and will probably match with most of the hideous outfits one might choose to wear with it.

Trois. No matter how hideous a trend may seem at first, if you look at it long enough, it will grow on you. You’ll probably have bought three of them by the end of the season. We’re bitches to the system that way.
3b: Okay, I amend my previous statement – there’s an exception. Uggs. No matter how many winters they come in for, they will never get any less ridiculous.
Four. The two-day rule is a farce. You can get away with four days at the minimum without people thinking you’re a skank.

Five. Don’t buy new clothes, ever. Nothing ever really goes out of fashion. The seasons change, but trust me, by the time next autumn comes around, the shit you bought this time three years ago will still be in.

Six. Don’t buy new clothes, ever. If the shit you’re wearing was bought three years ago, who the fuck cares?

Seven. Yes, you are too fat. No matter how much you diet and exercise, you will always be too fat. The amount of effort you put in to reduce your self-loathing is inversely proportional to how much you’re going to hate yourself, so why bother? Let’s face it – we all like food, and we all hate exercise. Just don’t look in the mirror as much. Trust me, it works a charm.

I need to get out of retail.

Technically, I’ve only been in retail for less than 5 months, but I’m considering not asking for a transfer to the branch in whichever city I end up going to university in. It’s getting to me.

And it’s not even the customers.

Well, not entirely.

I mentioned in an earlier post that we’re currently selling florals. Any well-informed fashionista will know they are (were?) in this spring – I didn’t. I think they’re hideous.

Thought.

You see, that’s just the thing: They’ve grown on me. Surely it’s not surprising, considering I spend 12-to-17 hours a week looking at them. If you look at anything long enough it becomes, if not attractive, at least not repulsive. It’s the same with people.

But the creepy thing is, I didn’t just go into work one day and make a conscious decision to like them – I could feel them growing on me. And it’s not because they’ve become more aesthetically pleasing – they’re just as ugly as they were when they first came in to the store – it’s because my attitude towards them has changed. Gradually. Involuntarily. And I could feel it happening.

And I don’t like it. Being exposed to the fashion industry has taken away my illusion of autonomy with regards to my likes and dislikes. I mean, the process that I’ve realised is working on me is working to a lesser extent on everyone else exposed in any way to a capitalist system but, because it is to such a small extent, you don’t notice it. The methods used in advertising in the media are so subtle that, when you see something you like in a shop window, you can still keep the false impression that you like it just because you do – of your own accord. You don’t, of course. You’re made to like it. But I’d like to un-know that bit.

WONDER-DRESS.

I just saw Wonder Dress in Logo.

I WANT it.

I’m feeling nothing but pure, unadulterated, animalistic desire.

I’d seen it before Christmas, but at the time, they didn’t have it in my size. I thought I’d made my peace with that. Evidently not. I MUST have it.

‘Florals in spring – how original.’

So, floral patterns and ‘coral-coloured’ tops are in this season, apparently. Which means my new uniform for work (we have to wear certain types of the shop’s own stock – 50% discount baby, oh YEAH) is basically a choice between pink, or flowers. The only two things I swore I would never wear.

So today, I sold my soul and bought a couple of pink tops – the lesser of the two evils. I don’t know what’s worse – the fact that I bought them, or the fact that I look so damn good in them. I felt a sort of dirty, guilty pleasure in wearing them.

It has to be said, though – the best thing about being vehement about never doing something is the part where you just give in and actually do it. It’s a fabulous way of deriving pleasure from doing something you would have previously found distasteful or disagreeable, and in fact stems from that previous distaste.

I’ve decided to give up being principled about clothing, anyway. When you’re in your early teens you feel there’s so much importance in being individual and non-conformist – now, I see people with that same attitude that I had really not so long ago, and I can’t get over how utterly pointless it all seems.

Maybe this is just part of the moulding-into-a-productive-member-of-society process – the part where you stop caring about everything – but it seems that if a person has to resort to a particular style of clothing in order to show how unique they are, then there’s really not much about them that’s unique at all. To be fair, at the moment I really don’t think there’s anything that’s spectacularly unique about anybody, so it’s a moot point, but if someone wants to show that there is something original about him/herself, he/she should DO something original – there’s nothing original about buying an item of clothing that has been mass-produced in order for hundreds of members of the populace to wear identical replicas. The entire fashion retail process is founded on the principle of conformity.

En plus, it’s a general irony of the universe that anyone who tries to avoid conforming in their teens only ends up conforming to another, slightly smaller, trend – the ‘non-conformist’ style. We’re herd animals, it’s an indisputable, undefeatable fact of nature. So trying to differentiate oneself from the herd in a non-natural aesthetic way is just hilariously futile.

So, it pisses me off when I get dirty looks from people who obviously consider themselves ‘non-conformist’ because of what I’m wearing. I don’t wear what I wear because it’s in fashion – most of the time, if I buy something from a shop, it’s because I like the look of it, not just because it’s there. It’s actually difficult to buy items of clothing that aren’t in fashion – you have to go out of your way and spend more money to buy items which haven’t been mass-produced cheaply in warehouses in the Philippines for chain stores that correspond to what’s in this month’s Vogue. Chances are, your nearest, most convenient chain store won’t sell anything that isn’t in fashion – that’s the whole point, it’s the concept that keeps the industry from stagnating. I’m not saying I agree with it, I’m just saying I’m lazy – sometimes, I will go to a more Gothic shop if I have the money and cba going into the city, but the rest of the time it’s easier to just buy whatever’s the least hideous.

And if I’m not wearing something I like the look of, it’s because I work in a fucking chain store. I have to be the model, brainless fashion clone. I don’t like the fact that I’ve sold my soul to Satan, but I have. So I get pissed off to fuck when people judge me for looking ‘preppy’ – I’ve been there, done that, got the Metalcamp t-shirt. I’m a fucking veteran in whatever the fuck principle they think they’re defending, so let me have my cheap, tacky, mass-produced pink t-shirt and leave me the fuck alone.

And another thing – why does fashion sense have to correspond to musical taste these days? What, do I have to wear my ripped-to-fuck black baggy jeans, New Rocks and dog collar (yes, I fucking have them) to be allowed to like metal? Fuck you. Chances are my musical taste is heavier than Fall Out Boy or whatever fucking shit it is kids listen to these days.

If anyone’s saw pictures of me at Metalcamp last summer, you’ll know I was walking around in my brightly-coloured shorts and a sun-hat. I got told by some wide-ass German guy there that I was ‘at the wrong festival.’ What in the yellow rubbery fuck?

It was fucking 40 degrees celsius. I might have been wearing heavy, black, full-length trousers – if I was a complete retard.

Advice for Retail Customers.

It’s ‘that time of year’ again (the one that dare not speak its name), and in light of the fast approaching occasion, and the consequent frenzy it causes in consumers everywhere, I have compiled a list of my top tips as a sales assistant for panicked customers.

• First of all, why is the concept ‘female changing room,’ so difficult for you to comprehend? Yes, I’m talking to you – you, with the penis.
• Why do you have this uncontrollable fascination with the fitting-room stock rail? You’re in a clothes shop – you’re SURROUNDED by racks of tidy, uniformly-ordered items – so why do you feel the need to swarm around the ONE rack on the ENTIRE shop floor that I’M working on putting out?! What’s so fucking good about it?! “Oh, honey! Look! A rail of randomly organised clothes! How intruiging!” We have a whole sale section full of that!!!
• Don’t even get me started on the sale section.
• Also, is it really necessary for you to touch absolutely everything you see? ‘Look with your eyes, not with your hands,’ would probably be a little harsh, and certainly not conducive to the whole buying process, but for the love of god, do you have to drag your arms through every rack you walk by? Must you insist upon leaving destruction and scattered clothes in your wake?
• Yes, I saw you knock it off the rail. Don’t try to pretend it wasn’t you. Pick the fucking thing back up.
• What is with this thing you say to me every time you hands clothes back (all at once, as if I have 12 hands. No, no, don’t try to help me out or anything) in the fitting room? “It’s no good”?! Actually, it’s just fine. You’ve just not been attentive enough to grap the right size before coming into the changing room, thus resulting in me having to buzz for assistance and a half hour wait before somebody becomes free to cater to your carelessness, as you get steadily more pissy and irritable. No, I can’t just go get it for you. I have to stay here and look after the other customers who aren’t so fucking stupid. If you weren’t that much of a fucking princess you would go get it yourself.
• Ladies size 18+, I don’t mean to pick on you, but you’ve got to be more careful than other shoppers. I know it seems discriminatory, but when I’ve just spent forty minutes wrestling with a 50lb of denim at a time trying to get the jeans section of the size 16-26 looking tidy, and a swarm of you come in 5 minutes before closing time and in 30 seconds make it look like I’d never been tidying in the first place, I get fucking pissed off.
• It’s exactly 3 minutes and 47 seconds until the shop closes, and there’s two full stock rails barring the entrance: What part of, ‘THE FITTING ROOM IS CLOSED!!!’ don’t you understand?!
• “The shop’s closing?! !OMG!1PANIC!!!1!i We’ve got to shop faster! Let’s make as much of a mess as we possibly can!1!!”
• I’m right here – I was watching as you scanted the maternity mannequin. Get the fuck out.
• Oh, I didn’t give you change? Yes I fucking did, you chancing bastard.

Fashion

I’ve always expressed a hate for the fashion industry, for various reasons; how it encourages conformity, sets women a ridiculously high standard of beauty and profits from, and encourages, people’s insecurities about their appearance.

Hypocritically, I’m a compulsive buyer. In my defense, I’m selective – I don’t buy an item of clothing because that’s what everyone else is wearing at the time. But if I see something that I find aesthetically pleasing, I want it. It’s a base urge. However, I’ve come up with a pretentious-sounding theory to justify it to myself.

Put simply (since I know of no other way to put things), the female body is the perfect medium for artistic expression. This isn’t an original conclusion, I’m sure. It is the canvas on which the artist (in this case, the designer) paints his/her masterpiece.

But it’s more than that – it’s dynamic. Unlike a canvas, the human body interacts with the work displayed on it – the clothing. This is because, unlike a canvas, the body itself is a work of art. It’s unique, and original, and beautiful. Hence the aesthetic appeal of the clothing is meaningless without the body, and it is the combination of the two which make it so bloody addictive.

Despite this, I still walked out of The Devil Wears Prada feeling absolutely shit about myself. What was the moral of that film?!

Clothing allows the wearer to express personal creativity without following the crowd, which is a seemingly contradictory statement. Normally it is associated with a celebration of conformity. But it conveys personal preference if one only wears what he/she finds aesthetically pleasing. It’s equivalent to a painter carrying his portfolio with him everywhere he goes, in clear view of the public eye, in order to communicate the aspects which make him unique. Except that unlike painting, or music, or theatre – skills which take years of dedication to develop – fashion is easily accessible to the general public who are excluded from the more highbrow art forms. I read something that made me think about this in my book:

“According to [Walter] Benjamin, the major repressive technique of the bourgeoisie with respect to art is achieved by creating an ‘aura’ about it, and ascribing to it notions of authenticity, uniqueness and originality. He believed that discussion of the work of art’s beauty – if carried out to the exclusion of its social context – could also contribute to this false ‘aura.’

‘Bourgeois society treats works of art as if they are a mysterious secret to be worshipped – as a cultic substitute for religion so as to sustain art’s economic value and their own class power.’ “

That attitude is not so much relevant today as it was back in the early 1900’s when Marxist philosophy was obviously a big hit, but we can definitely still identify with it. There is an aura of the mystique and inaccessible about art, as I’ve mentioned before in relation to Charlie and his pretentiousness. People are made to believe by others, although not necessarily wealthier others anymore, that they don’t understand the traditional art forms as well as they do.