DKNYoop

The first time I read GOOP, I laughed like Mehcad Brooks was tickling me. It was for the same reason that I love to watch Barefoot Contessa. I enjoy people who are fabulous to the point of being preposterous. Ina Garten floats delicately through her Hampton home casually referencing (because we should all already know) the importance of using only "very good vanilla" or "the best truffle oil you can find". If you can't get your cardamom pods freshly fertilized by only the most discerning mountain goats in the hills of Nepal, you might as well just burn your kitchen to the ground now and allow yourself to perish in the blaze. There is no point in going on.

As a real person from the Third World, I regard these folks with glee, and not as much judgment as you might think. I love interesting recipes and fancy things, and am currently enduring a self-imposed shopping fast to arrest my acquisitive nature, but surely one does not absolutely need two pieces of perfectly snipped Spanish chervil to garnish the side of one's Sunday frittata. You could pluck a couple pieces of Aunt Rhoda's fern and we would be none the wiser. So I have once or twice found myself staring at a GOOP article saying out loud - apparently to Gwyneth Paltrow but really to no one - "Gwyneth Paltrow, A Perfect Murder is my guilty pleasure (in part because you just had to have your character speak in perfectly-lisped Castilian Spanish so we would know that even though you seem boringly American, you are in fact well-travelled and severely interesting.) But you are a ridiculous person."

Still, Ina and Gwyneth have and know their audience. There are similarly ridiculous people out there (actually, Ina is not that ridiculous in substance. I make her food all the time. One manages to overlook the condescension and just go ahead and throw in the very mediocre vanilla) and others who aspire to be similarly ridiculous. Presumably, all the fancy people congregate in these and other fancy places and barter very good vanilla, cardamom and chervil. But when I open a modest little Allure magazine and Donna Karan's "10 Things Every Woman Should Have" begins with "Haitian craft", not even Alfre Woodards's psychopathic son could inspire such chortles. Here's the entire list:

1. Haitian crafts. This turned out to be the least absurd of the list, although at first it seemed hilarious. It suggests that we should all try to make active, social choices through our consumption, and that one way to do so might be to support companies that invest in and help create markets for the products of artisans in developing countries. Noble, if oddly specific.

2. A bodysuit. Donna starts her day by wearing it to yoga and then "adds and subtracts layers as the day goes by." A bodysuit. They should have named this article "10 things Maybe Four Women should have if three of them are Beyonce".

3. Art to call your own. There is some text here about being married to a sculptor. I haven't met my sculptor yet. But I know a guy who carves fallen twigs on the beach and sells them to tourists.

4. A yoga mat. You can lay on it and consider how much you hate yoga.

5. A sanctuary. This I can agree with. Women tend to be disproportionately burdened with care responsibilities in addition to academic and professional commitments. Having the space to regroup is important, even if it's just alone time outdoors in the fresh air. Of course Donna Karan's sanctuary is Parrot Cay in Turks and Caicos, which she calls her "three-hour Bali". So...you know...fresh air or that.

6. Donna Karan Cashmere Mist Body Lotion. This one has her name in it. My. How curious.

7. Cashmere scarf cozy. For $2000 from Donna Karan stores. Curiouser still.

8. Essential oils. Ok.

9. Green juice. Ok. And no thanks.

10. A belt bag. It frees up her hands and she can feel it on her body. If I'm trying to feel anything on my body, Donna, it's not a $1695.00 glorified fanny pack from your store.

I know this is Allure - a glossy whose business is selling crap. But who is Every Woman? Reading this article prompts me to again wonder who magazines like this are writing for. Is it all aspirational? Are we all spending our bus pass money on the March Allure each believing that all the other women reading it have bodysuits on under their jackets and we are the only losers who don't own Haitian craft or cashmere scarf cozies? (Interestingly, the average woman in Haiti is clearly not even being counted as a woman. But at least if she were, she would probably already have item 1 covered.)

Of course, the simple answer is that the entire industry is absurd and built on hyperbole. A 'steal' would be a $500 feather for the hair if a 'splurge' is a $12 000 fascinator. And 'every woman' means 'every woman whose lifestyle can support our recommendations and whose interests mirror ours, or who wishes she fit into the latter categories'. Still, one can't help but chuckle at the earnest tone of the GOOPs and the Allures in their pretense that we're all in this together. Or at least we will be when some of us return from wintering in Bali.

Newsclips and quotes [I got your issues right here]

[Via Showbiz Spy via Jezebel]-"We all have the same issues. Every woman. It's thighs, butt, arms, muffintops. All those fun things, we all have the same issues." — Heidi Klum.

Except, not every woman counts those as 'issues'. Feeding ourselves and our dependents; physical security; finding and keeping a job; getting equal pay for equal work on that job; not being sexually harassed on that job; reproductive rights and autonomy; affordable, accessible health care provided by professionals who see us, hear us, value our input and well-being. I could go on and on about the things that concern millions of women everywhere, and readers can add several more. Thighs, butts and arms - those are body parts*. Not issues.

*ETA: And for some of us, the above issues are influenced by the disabilities with which we live, yunno, speaking of body 'issues'.

The version of your body currently running is not bedroom compatible

My gym is running some kind of 6-week body makeover butt blast boot camp bangarang. That's not what it's really called but you get the idea. It's especially for women. It says so on the flier. Also on the flier, central to the message and in large red type, are words to the effect of:

GET A BEDROOM BODY!

Now, the gym runs these kinds of things all the time, in which they propose to bulk you up or whittle you down or generally bring you up to code in a specified time period. This is the first one I've seen geared specifically to women. And it's also the first one I've seen that seeks to gently encourage participation by reminding people women that they will have to get naked for someone's enjoyment, and for the sake of that other party, they'd better get their asses in gear. Or no man one will want to sleep with them. And then what would their lives become? Why else would you want to get in shape anyway, womanperson? For sport? For functional strength? For your own damn self? Stop speaking nonsenses!

Presumably, men don't need bedroom bodies*. Their fitness activities are in pursuit of more lofty ends. Hunting! Fighting! Watching cricket with their shirts off! And since women have to sleep with them anyway (everyone in this hetero-normative dreamscape is 'straight', ok? Just play along), there is no minimum aesthetic requirement involved for men.

Also what we've learnt so far is that a "bedroom body" is of a particular type produced in a gym or other exercise situation. Somebody should tell that to the bodies everywhere that are at this moment getting into some pretty enjoyable situations in their bedrooms, garages and crawlspaces right now, and have no intention of changing their bodies in order to continue doing so. If this describes you, you are hereby advised to cease and desist, until such time as we have certified that you possess the appropriate, bedroom-approved body.

It's true, I suppose, that "a bedroom body" could mean something more all-encompassing: it could simply mean a fit body of any size and shape that allows you to - as a friend of mine likes to put it - spin on your headtop during sex. But then, nobody's asking a man to spin on his headtop. I guess he and his non-bedroom body can just lay there.

And what annoys me most about this stupid poster - when I have to see it every single morning because it is affixed to the changing room door at my eye level - is that it does not reflect what I always thought were the philosophy and behaviours of the staff at this gym. They've always seemed very inclusive about women in sport, women gaining strength just because they feel like it. They've always seemed to have a pretty open "we can all do anything we want" mentality, inclusive of men, women, the elderly, people with disabilities, everyone. But now, because they are letting this stupid poster speak for them, I have to acknowledge that somewhere, someone in this establishment either does not get it, does not think, or does not care. And since I spend some time there, time that I otherwise enjoy, that's a bit of a downer. Still, always one who's eager (w00t!) to embrace the all too familiar "humourless" tag, here I go tomorrow morning. To ask what that mess there on the changing room door is all about.

*I asked if there was a similar poster on the inside of the men's changing room, and was told 'no' by a jolly fellow who is also a member, and who added, "darling, any man that got a body, it ready for the bedroom."

The curious case of Not Meaning Anything By It

I live in a land where people think it's perfectly acceptable to say whatever they want. If you gain weight, or lose weight, or cut your hair, or let it grow, or grow paler, or grow darker, all these things are worthy of comment. And along with the comment comes a healthy serving of judgment. The judgment says a lot about who we are. When I was growing up, and even now, sometimes, getting darker was not cool: "Oh...you get dark! You been in the sun? [contemptuous snarl]" Well yes, I've been in the sun. We only get about 702 days of sunshine a year and I'm 8 years old. My life is in fact dedicated to being in the sun. But of course, voluntarily getting darker was not something that people understood, because for a lot of them, dark was less attractive. The same was true of short or natural hair, and an aunt once remarked with disapproval when my sister grew her natural hair out: "oh...('oh' in this context is usually a sign of impending disapproval)...you leaving the hair hard!" I am at once totally baffled by and in complete understanding of this kind of sentiment. I get that she meant "oh you have ceased to chemically process your hair", but implicit in that statement is the notion that processed - rather than natural - hair is the default (which by definition cannot be true), that unprocessed hair is 'hard' and therefore bad, and that 'hard' hair is to be avoided at all costs.

In our nicknaming, we go a step further. We not only comment on some aspect of a person's physical appearance, but we brand them accordingly: we make it the sum of who they are. So a person will be Fat Man, Short Woman, Tallies, Hopalong (yes, I'm referring to a person with one leg; yes, I'm horrified that some people seem not to see the problem there), Slims or Bones or Matchstick.

And on we go: commenting on people's appearance and habits, expressing unsolicited desires and attraction, bullying people as a pastime, and generally blabbing here there and yonder about things on which we have no business remarking. It gets tiresome, but what's more tiresome to me is the defense or dismissal of this habit with the words: "Well I/he/she/they didn't mean anything by it." This expression is a mystery: it's that all-encompassing defense which it seems is supposed to allow you to let any mess fall out of your mouth without taking responsibility for it. It's akin to "it's just my opinion" and a close neighbour of "I'm just saying". There's this notion that because an idea was spawned somewhere in the recesses of your brain, albeit by a process that remains unclear, it is worthy of utterance. And not only do you have the right to share it (which you probably do, which doesn't mean you should), but we have the obligation to 'respect your opinion' merely by virtue of the fact that it's your opinion. This is false. If your opinion is ill-conceived or bigoted or just plain nonsense, I don't have to respect it. And further, if you share it with me, and I think it nonsense, be prepared to hear about it, if I'm in the mood to let you know. You don't get to hide behind "it's just my opinion" as a license to talk out the side of your neck and not have to defend it.

Not meaning anything by it is a similar animal. What am I supposed to do with this information? That you didn't mean anything by it? You formed a sentence, so you meant something. You used words, which carry meaning, and so there was something that you hoped to convey. Perhaps you're saying that you didn't mean to upset me, or to start a fight. This might be true. But what you're really saying there is "I wanted to say whatever I pleased and leave you with the responsibility of not getting upset or challenging me." Or maybe you're so used to certain patterns of conversation that you just automatically discharged some nonsense without thinking about what it might mean for the other person. And if that's the case: stop it. Or finally, maybe you had a genuine foot-in-mouth moment. I've had those. They're hideous things. But "I didn't mean anything by it" is not of any comfort in those situations either. Because it's so overused, it's a bit of a non-statement now. If the person registers offense (or even if they didn't, depending on how brave you're feeling), just say sorry, you used the wrong words, and say what you really meant. Because you did mean something. Otherwise, why was your mouth open?

Now, there's been a lot of talk recently about what it means to be offended, and whether it is even desirable to avoid offending people, and it's a worthwhile discussion, because people do claim offense at everything. It's now a strategy; it's about manipulation. In the theater of the absurd that is the US Tea Party movement, for example, becoming offended is the new method by which to deflect responsibility: "How dare you call me a racist? I'm offended by the implication!" The ensuing backlash means that no one cares any more. Forget about not meaning anything by it, people are now starting to feel that if they can cause you personal injury on a lark, that means they're edgy and interesting, possess biting wit and are not afraid of being 'real'. That is all an illusion. The fact is, you're just an a$*hole. For me, the point of demarcation lies in the following: you don't have a right to not be offended, especially if you're the type to be offended by the skirt length of a stranger on the bus. But you do have a right to be free from discrimination and dehumanization by word and action. I tend to feel that words are action. They can call all kinds of things into being. They should be operated with care.

Are women really jonesing for Angelina?

This post is about sex and attraction. It contains some profanity and reference to genitalia. The references are by no means scandalous (ok maybe by some means), but if you're shy about 4-letter words, consider this your warning.

So yesterday morning, via The F-Word Blog, I came across this post by someone called Bitchy Jones (BJ). And I imagine Lynne at The F-Word linked it because she agreed and found it brilliant, as her title "Bitchy Jones is onto something" suggests. But while this BJ person may have a general point, that is, she may be correct in part, I find the overarching message of what she asserts a steaming pile of doodoo. And this post is to explain why.

So she, BJ, is at a party.

The talk is, as it often is, of popular culture. Celebrities we’d like to fuck. We, are seven or eight of us at a table, urbanites, almost exclusively thirtysomething, artsy professionals – basically, if you handed any of us a latte we would drink it – and then one woman, a good friend, says, yeah, but we’d all fuck Angeline Jolie, right?

And she is annoyed by this because:

It is because the highest compliment you can pay a woman is to proclaim that you find her fuckable.

Always and forever and as simple as that.

If you admire a woman and like her, if you find her witty and attractive, if you like the way she thinks, well obviously, you want to fuck her. Because if you were a straight man, that’s where that would lead. But if you’re someone who isn’t sexually attracted to women, you might think you are feeling that too, you might even feel that you are insulting that woman if you don’t want to sleep with her (dishing out the ultimate insult by calling her unfuckable).

Now I get some of what she's saying. First, the notion that we should all want to have sex with Angelina Jolie because her exquisite beauty surpasses personal taste is, in fact, annoying. And tired. And premised on an imposed European standard of beauty that just induces my "Oh give me a big, fat, nougat-filled break" eyeroll response. Angelina Jolie would not be my bag, and don't tell me that I'm in denial. Because as a black, Caribbean woman, surely you can understand that were I attracted to women, a slight, pale, White woman, lovely though she is, might just not be what gets me purring. So I get that part of BJ's meandering diatribe.

I also get the notion that it sometimes slips into our vernacular to - in the way we offer praise - reduce ourselves to what has been determined as women's most important worth. That is to say, we want to convey our thorough admiration for someone, man or woman, and the best we can do is to claim that we love him, or we want to marry her, or we want to have his babies. The commentary in those statements is that the highest praise and prize we can offer is ourselves as lover, wife, mother. Our verbal, intellectual praise or support is not enough. So that it's alright for a man to say as his highest praise "Oh I really support Obama's agenda. He's the best President the United States has seen in my lifetime." But we as women feel forced to say "Obama rocks. Seriously. I want to have his babies." And I get how it might happen. We're being a little facetious; we find it funny; and we don't really examine where it's coming from.

BJ takes it a step further, and suggests that when straight women make this kind of statement about other women, we are not just reducing ourselves to our sexuality and value as objects to be f*cked, but we are reducing those women as well.

[T]his I’d-so-sleep-with-her phenomenon is pretty much just a side shoot from the whole damn dirty deal where women are mainly for fucking and generally supplying sex and men are the choosers and enjoyers of that sex. And also the whole thing that every piece of expression of anything ever should be expressed in the kind of terms and ideas straight men would use, as if that is some kind of default language because straight men will get confused if you don’t because they have never learned anything else, and they’ve never learned anything else because they are the default so they don’t need to.

Well, ok. Except, your example of Angelina is a little weak if this is meant to be your point. Because really, while Angelina is very civic-minded and activist, her main product as actor and public persona has mostly been as a beautiful woman, not as a politician or writer or even, dare I say, as a brilliant actor. So it is, I think, reasonable to say that those women who say they want to sleep with Angelina are not doing as much reducing of her person to the mere sexual as say, those who say they want to sleep with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I don't think this particular Angelina desire is based on the idea that in order to express your admiration for someone's work or ideology, you have to do so in language that men have invented and we have all appropriated. I think that these people probably do feel some kind of physical attraction: perhaps to look like her, if not to f*ck her. (Glory knows they couldn't possibly like her pouting snarling acting.)

And BJ includes a kind of cowardly caveat toward the end which, I think, she should have led with, or at least paid more attention to. And it is this:

I know this post can be read as somewhat, uh, dismissive of ideas of sexual fluidity. I do appreciate that there is a whole Kinsey scale and everything. And that wherever you might think of yourself on that scale it isn’t fixed for life, but I didn’t want to clutter up my beayootifuel writins with endless qualifications about how this might not apply if you are bisexual or some other kind of self identified sexual lucky dipper. But sexual fluidity can be used to wash away women’s own sexual identities. Too much fluidity, too much choice, ends – bizarrely – in homogeny.

The post is dismissive, and condescending, and patronizing and insulting. And even the disclaimer above is not much better. Because the writer is telling women: "wherever you may think yourself on the Kinsey scale, if you're straight, you probably don't relish the notion of licking Angelina's clitoris. You may think you do, but you really don't. I know." And even with a more generous interpretation, the disclaimer is meant for what she imagines are the small minority of self-aware, not-strictly-heterosexual women to whom her analysis does not apply, as against the misguided, staunchly heterosexual masses of us who can't express admiration except on men's terms.

And she is also telling us that we can't distinguish between admiring someone and wanting to sleep with them. Because we get confused, you see. We don't know what our little pink feelings are all about. And I find that anti-feminist. Yep. I done gone and used the A word. So bring it.




















Because I am able to distinguish and articulate my admiration of Rihanna's red carpet poise; and Aisha Tyler's hilarity; and Michelle Obama's eloquence; and Cate Blanchett's acting, as completely separate from the fact that I think Maria Bello has a beautiful mouth and Zoe Saldana is gorgeous and Jennifer Connelly is striking. The former I admire and respect for their talent, and can acknowledge that they're beautiful, but there is no level of physical attraction there. The latter I honestly find hot (not that they're not talented as well), and while I might not want to lick their vaginas because vaginas are not my bag, I can acknowledge that were I in their presence, I might pay attention to a little more than what they had to say. Granted, I've probably only stuck my toe out of Category 0 on the Kinsey Scale, but I own that. And my brain, female though it may be, is able to make that distinction. And let's not forget that a large part of physical attraction is tied up in the non-physical. I might be physically attracted to a man not just because he's pleasant to look at, but also perhaps because he's good at what he does, or seems kind, or speaks well. Might that not be what's involved in women - who identify as straight but feel a bit of loin-stirring for some members of their own sex - expressing their desire for other women? The factors of sexual attractiveness are not as black and white; as talent vs. f*ckability as BJ would suggest.

At some point BJ also half-jokingly suggests an either/or situation, as if to say "STFU no way you straight b*tches would sleep with Maggie over Jake [Gyllenhaal]!" Well that's hardly the point, is it? Since I'm straight, my preference for sexual activity is with men. A woman I might (and this is the hypothetical 'I' so please don't flood my Inbox with oh em gees about my sexuality) want to kiss or fondle or look at or masturbate over, depending on who I am. And I don't have to refrain from those feelings because you have determined that I have to be firmly planted at 0. Yes, I saw your "but I don't mean youuuu" disclaimer, and I ain't buying.

So while I do think we could all benefit from checking ourselves if we're given to using language of admiration that reduces both admirer and admiree to our worth as wives, mothers, lovers and nothing else, I also think that we need to be careful not to invalidate people's true feelings and experiences with our angry theories. The women-are-hot, frat-party, lesbian makeout dynamic among young, straight women is tired, yes. But seeking male validation is not always what's behind expressions of women's sexual desire. If you don't want to f*ck Angelina, then don't you f*ck her. But some of those who say they want to actually do. So I see some value in some of what you say, but in general, just stop policing everyone's sexuality. It must be exhausting.

Real Women, Fake (White) Noses

I haven't so far been very impressed by the exploits of Coleen McLoughlin Rooney (she seems to go by both names separately) in Coleen's Real Women. (Are we not meant to notice the Photoshopping in the promo pic?) The premise of the show is that each week, Coleen - who became famous for marrying footballer Wayne Rooney and then carving out her own career as a writer, model, businesswoman and wearer of expensive clothes - does her own casting calls to find 'real women' who will compete with career models for high-profile modelling contracts or spokesmodel positions. As you'll guess from the name of the show, it's based on the notion that there are in fact beautiful, non-model women walking British streets who are just as appealing as and perhaps more representative of certain brand philosophies than your typical (UK) size 4 model. Ignoring the annoyingly over-used and disingenuous 'real women' caption (which implies that smaller women are either Barbies come alive or figments of our imagination), I was willing to give the show a chance, mainly because I like (the media image of) Coleen, who seemed confident, not very far up her own trasero and earnest in her quest to make everyday beauty more visible.

Except, I don't think she's doing that well. She does find gorgeous women of all sizes, but the women who ultimately win the contracts are not too far off from the model industry standard of beauty. I've also found it curious that one of Coleen's candidates always secures the job, but let's assume that I'm willing to suspend disbelief concerning that, and just go along with the idea that Coleen is just so convincing and pioneering, that all of a sudden these industry professionals see the light and are lured to the fat side. The thing is, they aren't really lured to the fat side. If anything, they're lured to the just as conventionally beautiful and carrying a little water weight side.

But the show fails in other ways, and that failure could not be more evident than in last night's re-aired episode, where Coleen and her assistant were trying to satisfy a Superdrug spokesmodel brief in Birmingham. As usual, they found some really striking women and narrowed them down to the three who would be put forward for the job, my favourite of whom was Cara, the biracial daughter of a Black, Jamaican man and White, Belgian woman. I was drawn to her serenity: I felt that if she were on a Superdrug billboard, she would probably catch my eye.

So after all the show's preamble about embracing your own height, size, unique features and personality, Coleen's casting expert Camilla then promptly spends the entire episode registering her discomfort with Cara's wide nose, and agonizing over the ways in which they might make her nose appear more narrow. (She's also concerned, but considerably less so, that Alana looks too old and Liz seems to lack confidence.) She consults the photographer about the angles he'll use to diminish her gargantuan nose, and at one point has what resembles a nose intervention with Cara, confronting her about the 'problem' and reassuring her that they'll do whatever they can to hide her big, fat, black nose. At one point during Cara's shoot, Camilla, smiling and relieved, tells her, "Your nose looks beautiful!" which, given the woman's ethnic heritage, can only mean "Don't worry...it hardly looks black at all!" Way to help women embrace their features. Cara, meanwhile, seems a little nonplussed by the nose debate. When pressed about what abuse she suffers because of her clearly inadequate nose, she confesses that her husband says she has a 'pig snout'. (Yeah...you might want to trade him in for a less asswipey model.) Just for your own reference, here's Cara:




















I guess it's ok to be fat, but not too fat, short but not too short, and black but not too black. If you can have dark enough skin to make their campaign seem edgy and inclusive, but white enough features to not scare off the consumers with your big, black nose, then you're a real woman.

Adventures in horripilation with Marc and the mongoose

I often wear this funky, fauxhawk hairstyle which my sister says makes me look like the mum from Dinosaurs. I of course ignore her hateification on my stellar hairstyling capabilities, and keep rocking my did (from 'do - from hairdo; we have a complicated language, the three sisters). So in her honour, I think the next time I go home, I'm going to step off the plane wearing one of these styles from Marc Jacobs. The man clearly had me in mind during NY Fashion Week:






Ok this first one will never fly. Get it? Chortle.












These two might work out well because this is how I look straight out of bed in the morning with no hairspray. True story.





I am extremely partial to this because I rock similar sunglasses. Mine are smaller, but after seeing the ensemble look, I might go for the upgrade.





But no! I have found my holy grail:











Alert the aviation towers, sis. The mongoose has a new 'do.





Thanks to Jezebel for the inspiration.

Tune in at 8:00 for an eating disorder

It seems like every other week, some TV celebrity decides to unmask the dangerous world of dieting by herself embarking on a gruelling journey towards the perfect figure. This week, it was a rerun of Louise Redknapp’s “The Truth About Size Zero” feature shot almost two years ago. The TV presenter, who was voted FHM’s Sexiest Woman of the Decade, and is usually a UK size eight (US size four), severely restricts her calories and undergoes punishing workouts for a month in order to fit into a US size zero dress. She also visits celebrity friends who have suffered eating disorders, along with some young women at the Rhodes Farm Clinic for eating disorders in North London, and they all share with her their struggle to develop a healthy relationship with their bodies and with food.

The formula is pretty much the same as all the others: Louise eats a couple blades of grass and an egg a day, exercises herself into a state of constant lethargy and nausea, her weight drops dangerously low, she is warned by doctors to stop but continues anyway, and at the end, she fits into the size zero dress and then goes out with her friends to get sloshed.

Throughout, she complains about how hungry she is, is consumed with guilt that she is constantly snapping at her husband and young son, and keeps reminding us that she feels awful and that the whole thing sucks. But what is the ultimate lesson? She never stops, even when she starts to have bouts of vomiting, she loses the weight, and she fits into the dress. And even though we’re told she’s dangerously thin and given the whole “please don’t try this at home” spiel, frankly, she looks great and not at all emaciated. So, what we have just been provided with is a living model of how to successfully starve oneself into a size zero dress in 30 days. Presumably, this was not the aim of the piece.

I say ‘presumably’ because I’m not quite sure of the intentions of the whole trend. I don’t want to malign poor Louise and question her own motives: perhaps she really is concerned about all the young, confused, starving women out there. And she’s certainly not the only one to undertake such an ‘experiment’. We’ve had Alesha Dixon with her “look, no airbrushing!” special, Natalie Cassidy trying every diet under the sun for our viewing pleasure, and it seems like Dawn Porter is always somewhere or other eating or doing something bizarre to lose weight. But I have to wonder whether these shows and their presenters aren’t doing the same thing they’re accusing the rest of the media and the fashion world of doing: capitalizing on our obsession with weight and our bodies in order to capture an audience.

First of all, where is the real sense of experimentation? We know that if you greatly restrict calories far beneath your basal metabolic rate (what your body would need to function if you were to keep perfectly still all day), you will lose weight rapidly. Louise’s programme did mention that you lose large amounts of muscle as a part of this, which is undesirable, but the aesthetic result – her body – doesn’t show this to be a bad thing. So what we expect to happen does happen: she loses weight and feels somewhat sick. But she carries on, and at the end, she’s 15 pounds lighter. And – and there’s no way to say this delicately – they don’t die, these presenters. They don’t even almost die or even have to take a sick day. There are no tufts of hair on the bathroom floor or gum disease or heart failure. If they were to carry on this way for a little longer, some of these things would likely start to manifest. But the fact is, they don’t.

So all we get to do is watch these people lose weight, which I think some of them secretly want to do anyway, (experiment and public service my arse), and then those among us who have spent the last six weeks wondering how we’re going to shift that holiday weight – or worse, those twelve and thirteen year olds out there who are smack dab on the verge of eating disorders – now have added and proven ammunition.

Frankly, I call bullshit, and I’m over it. I call bullshit on the truth-seeking, public education intent of these shows, and I challenge the TV networks, here in the UK and elsewhere, to make the real sacrifice, strip away the glamour and the voyeurism factor, and make a genuine effort to help solve this problem.

I am not my hair. And neither are you

It took long enough, but it’s finally happening: the discussion of whether Michelle Obama should or will change her hairstyle to one that more ‘accurately reflects’ her ethnicity. Erin Aubry Kaplan writes an interesting piece at Salon.com, considering whether part of our acceptance of the First Lady is tied up in her straight, shiny, inoffensive hair, and whether America would be quite so gracious if she rolled out of the White House one day in box braids or an afro. Aubry suggests that – aided in part by Chris Rock’s recently released documentary “Good Hair” – America might be moving towards a black hair moment, in which white people feel more comfortable questioning and understanding once and for all the mystique surrounding the history and ritual of styling black hair.

I’m not quite as annoyed by the article as I thought I would be. Aubry is right about the various associations black women and others have with different types of hair. Relaxed hair is largely seen by the mainstream as well-behaved and harmless, while dreads are seen as revolutionary. (I say ‘dreads’, ‘dreadlocks’, ‘locks’. Please don’t come in here yelling at me about how natural hair is not ‘dreadful’ because that’s not what it means. The term first originated among the early Rastafari to mean that the wearer lived a 'dread' life, or a life in which he feared God.) I do, however, take exception to the tasking of the women in the Obama family – especially the daughters – with sorting out images of black hair and blackness on behalf of the African American community. While it might be interesting to see the First Lady’s greased scalp peeking out from amongst some corkscrews, what would that really say about her? Would we feel more assured of her blackness, and feel that she was fighting the good fight on behalf of natural hair and images of natural, black beauty? And is it her fight to fight? (I promise that’s the end of the rhetorical questions.)

The only thing the way Michelle Obama wears her hair tells me is how Michelle Obama likes to wear her hair. Perhaps she is embroiled in some consuming identity struggle as all wearers of relaxed hair apparently must be, or perhaps she got tired of breaking combs or spending three hours every day just parting her hair. For goodness sake, just let the woman have her own hair evolution like the rest of us. She’s 45 now, and probably well past the “I’m going back to Africa which as it turns out is very convenient because it takes way too long to straighten my hair in the mornings before class anyway” university days; and the “maybe if I just texturized it I could have that cool black girl vibe and still be able to comb it” phase. But whatever relationship she is still to have with her hair, it is her own, and – and I’m really going to be in trouble now – it’s just hair.

Many of my girlfriends wear dreads. For some, it is the end (or is it?) of a journey in which they experimented with several hairstyles that did not satisfy their wallets or their mirrors or their souls, or all three. And so they began the dreadlock journey and now wear their locks with pride.

For others of my friends, their hair is a crusade; it’s a religion; they are the Jehovah’s Witnesses of hair. My late grandmother was a Jehovah’s Witness, and even though she was the gentlest spirit you will meet, she was always handy with that ubiquitous Watchtower - you have to admire their devotion. But these friends aren’t the gentle types like Dorothy (how great is it that my grandmothers were called Blanche and Dorothy, who are clearly the coolest of the four Golden Girls? Thank you for being a friend!) They are smug and judgmental. I, with my relaxed hair, am self-loathing and brainwashed by Whitey, while they, in all their dreadlocked wisdom, have found The Way. They cannot have a conversation without disparaging some other black woman’s choice of hair maintenance and simultaneously praising their own. I once had a woman tell me, when she learnt that I perform African dance, that I don’t ‘look the part’. I promptly looked down at my arm to see if my pigment was starting to fade. Apparently, I should leave the African dance to the real black people. And the kicker is that some of these are the same women who, on special occasions, take their inspired behinds on over to the hairdresser to have their hair wound around rollers or flattened to death or pinned to within an inch of their lives in order to emerge with neat little drop curls or Victorian up-dos. Steamroll your locks if you must, but don’t then stand in judgment of me when you are aspiring to the same ‘mainstream aesthetic’ as I.

I have had unprocessed hair that I wore ‘out’, braids, weaves, twists, afros, cornrows and relaxed hair. I had a moment back in secondary school when I started reading books on Rastafari and twisting my natural hair, and since I was already a dancehall/reggae historian, my mother – who ordinarily let me be with my various explorations – was all set to call either the pastor or the police. She managed to avoid both after I realized that Rastafari was in fact not the one religion where women were not second class citizens. (Throughout all the holy wars and Reformations, what a thing to still have in common.) And I also once had my dear Jupins, good friend and old roommate in the DR, come into my room and spend two hours helping me part and comb my afro, and massage my scalp that had become sore and tender from the combing. I have the original black girl nappography going on up there, none of that blow in the breeze stuff. But my hair has always been something for me to experiment with. And black women, even the poor, brainwashed straight hair-having ones, have once again shown how when we do something, we do it with style and make it our own.

There is a great deal of creative energy behind many styles of relaxed hair: from the Mohawk warrior do which see the sides shaven and the crown fiercely upright, to the blues and oranges worn like plumage. I don’t believe in punishing hair in the name of style – if your plumage is staying behind on the bathroom floor it may be time to look into some braids or an afro – but it’s a fun accessory to play with. And it really is just hair. I am no less black because I’ve made it straight. And if I feel like shaving one side and wearing the other blue, which I might do, and then stand next to Ms. Dreadlock Earth Mother with her drop curl locks, who is likely to look more revolutionary?

But I won’t do that, because I refuse to contribute to this spirit of competition – tacitly encouraged by men - which constantly pits women against each other. I love all black hair (or should I say most because sweet fancy Moses who is styling the weaves in London and why are they so bent on uglying us up?) I love the dreads, the afros, the straight, pink hair and the corkscrews, because they are all expressions of blackness by different people with different things to say. I’m not saying we don’t have issues as a community with loving our blackness. There was a reason my mother pulled my nose up when she gave me a bath, and why as a child I put a yellow towel on my head and flicked by ‘blonde hair’ about while singing into a hairbrush in the mirror. But while we keep the dialogue open and reassure our children that they are beautiful, women have to have their own journey, and their reasons for how they style their hair as adults are not yours to approve. So, you do your hair, and I’ll do mine.

The dreadlocked beauty above is Kali-Ahset Amen, featured as a DivaSoulSista 2006.
The picture of Michelle Obama is among those featured in a Vogue spread by Annie Leibovitz, 2007.

Beauty Snapshot: the important stuff

It’s Friday, so I thought I would lighten things up a bit by starting a Beauty Snapshot. The Beauty Snapshot will be a review of some makeup, skincare or similar beauty item that I’ve tried and love, or hate, or that worked fine but was nothing spectacular so I returned and used the money to buy gum. (I have a chewing gum fetish. I haven’t yet been told what pathology that suggests.)

Forget the politics and sex for now. We’re getting serious, folks. We’re talking makeup.

Recent drugstore favourite:
Maybelline The Colossal Volum' Express $7.47/£6

My highest performing mascara to date has been Yves Saint Laurent’s Faux Cils. But since mascara tends to dry out pretty quickly and needs to be changed often, and since I’m not yet a woman of independent wealth, I can’t keep that up. Drugstore options, especially for mascara, tend to be worthy and sometimes better substitutes for their department store counterparts.

Maybelline’s The Colossal Volum' Express (what do you suppose that errant ‘e’ is up to?) is my favourite drugstore mascara so far. The brush is made of several tiny teeth that make it more like a comb. This design means that there are no clumps, it’s easy to wiggle the product along the lash line, and it combs through and lengthens the lashes beautifully with just one coat. The effect is dramatic, drag queen lashes. (This is not a stab. Let’s face it, we sometimes need drag queen lashes.)

We’ll see how it compares to my previous drugstore favourite Cover Girl Lashblast in terms of staying moist in the tube; but so far, it has it beat on durability and effect.

Recent department store favourite:
Yves Saint Laurent Rouge Volupte Lipstick in #10 Provocative Pink $34/£19

I wanted a crazy pink lipstick to wear with a smoky eye. But some brighter shades tend to just sit on top of dark lips, and look like you filled in your lips with pink liquid paper. YSL’s Rouge Volupte eliminates that problem. It is highly pigmented and so creamy that it almost appears semi-solid, allowing it to sink fully into the lip and stain it for the most magnified colour effect. Be careful, though. It is quite thick and not extremely glossy, so without proper application, you’ll end up looking like you’re wearing your grandmother’s Wet n’ Wild.

For optimum results, line and fill with a nude or matching liner, apply the lipstick with a lip brush, and then top with a favourite gloss. MAC’s Pink Poodle works well for the #10 shade. At $34/£19, it gouges a healthy chunk out of your beauty budget, but with lip brush application, it is sure to last long. Their other shades are also lovely, but I’m afraid the price means I’ll be trying one every Ice Age or so.



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