The Changing room mirage

Changing room mirrors - they are the end, aren’t they? Can I hear a whoop, some foot stamping and some cheers? No? Sorry, I thought I was doing American stand-up, circa 1985 then...But changing rooms are notorious for their unflattering, unforgiving lighting, curtains that never quite fit the gap and a strange, life-sapping atmosphere. It’s a cliche (and gross exaggeration) that you come out of that cubicle wanting to slit your wrists.

However, I have recently become aware of a reverse phenomenon - the Flattering Changing Room experience. This is marketing genius, it fools you into thinking that you look fabulous and that everything you try on looks amazing, so much so that it is really hard to decide what to buy, because all of it looks so good. Until you get home….

Let me elaborate. I went shopping yesterday, having rushed out of the house in the morning with an hour to spare before I had to pick my daughter up from nursery. I wandered aimlessly around one shop, lamenting the fact that high necked, floral patterned blouses seem to be all the rage this year. The floral patterns in question look like the curtains from a Mr. Man book. (And a high-necked blouse is the natural enemy of the bigger-than-an-A-cup woman).

I then proceeded to one of my go-to shops, full of cheap clobber, grabbed an armful of stuff, went into a cubicle and something miraculous happened - I liked everything I tried on!

I had left the house that morning without make-up, which isn’t unusual but I do sometimes regret this when I go into a shop and my morale takes a nosedive. I hadn’t had time to dry my hair properly or style it in any way so it looked like a child’s drawing of some hair - all wiggly lines. But the lighting in that changing room must have had special filters because, in that cubicle, I felt good; my skin had the healthy glow of a shiny russet apple (not bad when you've been fighting off a cold all week) and my hair didn’t look shit. I tried on this smocky type thing and I liked it.

Usually I avoid those loose, smocky-type tops because they look like maternity wear but yesterday I felt kind of stylish in it. I bought that smock and some other voluminous thing and some pyjamas and I felt a surge of pure happiness, perhaps akin to what a drug addict feels when they take their first hit. (Maybe, I'm not trying to mock anyone for having a dependency)

The come-down came later on when, getting ready to go out, I put that smocky-type thing on. It didn't look loose and stylish and a little bit arty. It looked distinctly like Maternity Wear.

“Does this make me look pregnant?” I asked the old man.

“Er, do you want me to be honest?” He asked, warily.

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s not very shaped, is it? It doesn’t really do anything for you. We’ve all watched Gok Wan, we know that things should be shaped to be flattering.”

He was echoing what I had suspected and I lamented my own stupidity for wasting my money and buying into the illusion; that temporary illusion that purchasing something would somehow enhance my life. (Or make me feel better about myself) This, my friends - is Capitalism and I really should know better by now.

P.S I wore the top anyway. Perhaps I was being perverse, or maybe just trying to get my money's worth. Anyway, no one asked if I really ought to be drinking or when the happy day was, so I think I got away with it.

Food memories

They say that smell is the most evocative sense and, as taste is so closely entwined with smell, it obviously follows that food carries a wealth of memories and associations with it. I’m not going to talk about Proust and Madeleines; mainly because I’ve never read any Proust, (plus I really don’t think that anyone wants to hear about how the first taste of a pickled onion flavoured Monster Munch reminds me of being violently sick). But, as I was standing at the stove yesterday, waiting an interminable amount of time for some onions to caramelise, it made me think about how evocative cooking could be.

I’m hardly Mary Berry and I don’t do a vast amount of 'real' cooking but there are a few things in my culinary repertoire and I acknowledge that, if you put a bit of time and effort into cooking, it tastes better than processed food. And perhaps, for me, it is the act of making something, rather than the taste of it, that brings forth the volley of emotions.

So yesterday I trying to caramelise onions to make onion gravy and I have to admit that the only reason I was doing this was because we’d run out of gravy granules! As I stirred the onions and they stubbornly refused to resembled caramel, I remembered who it was who had taught me how to make onion gravy, a lovely lady called Val.

My first real job was working in public libraries and the manager of one of these libraries was a gloriously scatty, bohemian and generous-hearted woman called Val. It could be a little stressful sometimes, working with Val, because, lovely and gregarious as she was, she would often disappear for ages, leaving you to manage by yourself. But she was a real character and enormously hospitable. When we had events at the library; book groups, Christmas parties etc, instead of opening a packet of biscuits/crisps/mince pies, Val would produce a feast of epic proportions. There would be exotic salads, homemade quiches, a cheese board, pâté, French bread and grapes. The sherry and wine would flow and a good time would be had by all. Val was a fan of ‘real food’; of smelly cheese and fresh fruit and veg. It was she who suggested what I serve as a starter for my first dinner party (Pear with stilton and watercress on sourdough bread) and it was she who told me how to make onion gravy:

• Saute a chopped onion in butter or oil for fricking ages, until it’s lightly browned/caramelised (or you get bored out of your tiny mind and decide that as long as onions are see-through, they’ll do).
• Sprinkle a tablespoon of plain flour over the onion and cook for a minute.
• Add around a pint of stock (Val used beef stock, I use vegetable bouillon).
• Bring it to the boil then simmer until the whole thing thickens.

Note: if you use vegetable stock, as I do, your gravy won’t be brown - don’t worry about it.

Also, a nice little splosh of sherry or wine adds something special to the mix.

As many memories are often tinged with sadness, this one is too. Sadly, I learned that Val passed away this year. I hadn’t seen her for years but we always sent each other Christmas cards and she always remembered my birthday. The last card she sent me had a painting of two little girls on it and she said it made her think of me with my daughters.

So, Val, thanks for the recipes! I’m going to raise a glass of wine to you tonight.

Bad Feminist

I overheard my five year-old telling my husband that she wanted to have ‘no hair, like Mummy’, the other day.

“What do you mean? Mummy has got hair.” Her father replied, accurately enough.

“On my legs.” Daughter clarified. “I want to have no hair on my legs, like Mummy.” She pointed to the razor on the bathroom shelf.

I felt a pang of guilt.

I was horrified when I learned (from a feminist book, ironically enough - How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran) that, these days, women were expected to get rid of all their pubic hair. Apparently the proliferation of Internet pornography, where pubes are eradicated to give the viewer a better view of the genitalia (not so sexy when described like that, eh, voyeurs?) had given men (bloody men!) the expectation of a bald pudenda. Thus it became fashionable to wax all the hair away. I was outraged; women were now expected to look like prepubescent girls (with tits)!

Tattoo Fixers is a T.V programme that I find oddly compelling, despite the fact that I don’t have any ‘ink’. It’s where the tattoo artists cover up bad, amateurish or lewd tattoos with pictures of skulls and flowers and stuff.  One episode featured a woman who wanted them to cover up the tattoo of a cat that she had on her vagina because she’d showed it to her colleagues on a drunken night out and now she was embarrassed!! (And you thought that your office parties were raucous!) We were watching this programme, me and my enlightened spouse and we both said - Yes, you could cover up that picture of a cat with a different, larger tattoo, or, how about this for a controversial idea - you could just let your pubic hair grow back.

However, as my daughter can attest, I’ve been shaving my legs for years, ever since I received my first ‘ladyshave’, at the tender age of twelve, to be exact. I never really questioned this, I just did it because all my friends did. In the same way that I sheepishly had my ears pierced and my hair permed, I just accepted this as something that you did. Pubic hair was supposed to be trimmed into a neat triangle, god forbid that any of it should obtrude from the leg of your swimsuit, but it wasn’t eradicated completely. Other cultures were roundly mocked for the female members not getting rid of their armpit hair. And Nena, of 99 Red Balloons fame (Google it, whippersnappers), was described (by an older, male friend of a friend) as a ‘dirty bitch’ for raising her arms on Top of the Pops and exposing the little furry guinea pigs residing in each pit. What can we conclude from this? That, not only is there (perceived to be) something unhygienic in not shaving your armpits but also something suggestive of promiscuity??

While my husband struggled to explain to the five year old, that it was Mummy’s choice to shave her legs but a result of cultural conditioning, throwing around words like patriarchy, and that she was too young to shave hers, I wondered what sort of a message I was sending her and her sister. Here I am, trying desperately to hold the tide back against the tsunami of pathetic, pink Princess nonsense, which threatens to engulf them at every turn but perhaps I am setting them a bad example. I buy subversive children’s books about strong, independent women who throw off society’s expectations and outwit or befriend dragons. I try not to talk about weight or associated issues with them and yet, and yet I still shave my legs. Does it really matter? Will it hold back the cause of equal rights and female emancipation if a middle-aged woman from West London persists in depilation??

Of course it won’t. Who cares about the minutiae. Similarly, if I choose to sport the odd bit of eyeliner, every now and again, I’m sure that the ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft won’t come back to haunt me.

However….am I being rather inconsistent with the whole bald leg thing?

I’m sure that other women don’t worry about this. Many women even shy away from the term 'feminist' as from an embarrassing label, akin to running around a department store shouting ‘I’ve just farted!’

“Oh no, I wouldn’t call myself a feminist.” They say, with distaste. Which I find utterly bizarre. Would they like to hand back the right to vote? To equal pay? Would they like it if custody of their children, automatically went to their husband, if they got divorced?....

I could go on, and on and on but I won’t.

Perhaps, now that Winter is Coming, I’ll stop shaving for a while and see what happens...

In the meantime, I’m going to go away and record a song called ‘Bad Feminist’, written to the tune of Michael Jackson’s ‘Smooth Criminal’. I’ll have to work at the lyrics. That will be the next post.