Ode to John Lewis ...

Ah John Lewis, mecca to the middle classes, gateway to all things sanitised and shiny. John Lewis is a wondrous place mainly because yesterday I went there to get some Dead Sea Shampoo and left with neon pink nail varnish, clip lock storage tubs and a Christian Dior face cream reduced from £23 pounds to a tenner! A tenner!

Normally I eschew sales, not because I can afford to but simply because I can't hack the cut throat rack rummaging. I get pushed aside by those women with the shopper thousand yard stares, their thumbs as agile as a fox rifling the hangers with a mesmeric dexterity, their hawk eyes honing in on their cut price prey.

The sheer messiness of sales sends me into a bamboozled state - I'm like Rachel in that Friends episode where she's hidden between the racks of wedding dresses mindlessly puffing on a whistle. Sales are simply too much like hard work for a girl who if it were an Olympic sport would limp in last, or simply not qualify like the Scottish football team. This is all of course self evident when I buy neon pink nail varnish.

So thank the lord for John Lewis where at its worst there is only ever organised chaos and at the most the only injuries you are likely to sustain are from middle aged lady elbows - they're sharp, but I'll take them over the acrylic nail claw of a Primark shopper any day.

In these recession addled times there's nothing quite like the one up manship of the unemployed young woman clocking a reflective shiny box of expensive face cream under strip lights in a greying bargain bin. Amongst the bone yard of neglected, unwanted and unloved self-tanners and hair nets I found Christian Dior. In your face Gordon Brown!

In praise of butter dishes ...

Its odd how not only do sometimes the simplest of things bring pleasure, but that they merit a mention at all. To that end I give you the humble butter dish. Ah the butter dish, when they went out of fashion, indeed when they were in fashion we cannot say, but like old fashioned ice-cream scoops there is something altogether 1950's housewife about them (in a good way). They are cosy, farmhouse relics from a world that never was, before fridges, the ghastly invention of margarine and possibly even worse, spreadable butter.

Just before Christmas my flatmate and I went to see Julie and Julia, the film about the New York blogger who sets herself the challenge to cook her way through America's first TV chef, Julia Child's encyclopedic cook book. Meryl Streep was wonderful (has she ever been anything else?) and though the film we really nothing more than a beautiful love letter to food and Paris, it was blogger Julie's belief that just about any food that tastes good, tastes good because its laden with butter that stayed with me. My sentiments exactly! You can shove your size zero, you can keep your washboard stomach, because there is absolutely nothing that tastes better than butter ... in your face Kate Moss!

I've just had toast with butter from the butter dish I mentioned in my last post. One word - sublime. Once you've had proper butter, left out of the fridge, from a butter dish, you realise just how vegetable oil infused the spreadable substitutes are, and you know you'll never go back.

Image courtesy of John Lewis.

Happy New Year ... Cheryl Bloody Cole ....

I will try harder to update the blog once I've fully gotten over the faux excitement of Christmas when the world seems to stand still and all worries about the women go out the window in favour of scented candles and champagne. Argh, I've turned into one of those people who thinks there nothing better than spending a Saturday afternoon in John Lewis. I'm off there later for a butter dish. That's right a butter dish. I've skated past the mid-twenties, when as women we're supposed to be in our physical peak (tell that to my hair that's turning a weird pigment sapping blond) into middle age-dom.

Anyway back to the reason why I've blown the dust off this blog. I'm no Cheryl basher -I've praised her once before on here - awe she's so shiny and you could brush her hair with one of those big pink Barbie combs - it would be so much fun blah, blah, blah. But the other day something truly horrifying happened.

I was sitting in a hospital waiting room (bad enough), surveying the crumpled literature of mangled gossip magazines laying limp on the table like dusty relics to a by-gone era of celebrity - 2009 to be exact - and deciding to plump for The Shining instead, when a wee girl skipped in with her mother. They plonked themselves down on a couple of chairs, the little Ugg-booted girl (probably no more than 3) proceeded to thumb through one of the said celeb magazines. This was shocking enough, but not as shocking as the classic straight out of the mouths of babes moment that followed. Scanning the page with the hawk eye of any 3 year old well-read in celebrity, her finger hovered over the image of a lady with bounteous hair. 'Cheryl Cole!' the little girl exclaimed with obvious glee.

'Aye it is' her mother replied lacklustrely (evidently not everyone loves la Cheryl) 'she get's bloody everywhere ...'

All this would have been mildly amusing if the rosy cheeked cherub hadn't then turned the page and hovered her eye over another lady. 'Lady Gaga!' she squeaked ...

I could lament over this tableaux in a mournful air similar to the little girl's mother. I could wax lyrical about how awful it is for the next generation having to grow up in a celebrity obsessed, hyper sexualised culture where looks (Cheryl Cole) eschews talent and sex sells absolutely bloody everything (Lady Gaga's cynical derivative music). But instead I'll just leave you with the image of a small child pointing at a picture of a woman wearing a leotard and nothing much else and instantly being able to recognise her. It was George Orwell who said if you want an image for the future imagine a boot stamping on your face ... forever. Perhaps this should be rephrased - if you want an image for the future imagine a celebrity gossip magazine being rapped around your head ... forever.

Happy new year ...

The Cupcake Conspiracy

Photograph: Guardian

I’m struggling to understand what the cupcake revolution is all about. Seemingly overnight women downed tools, shut their Outlook accounts and started opening ‘boutique’ cake shops across the country. When earlier this year Marks and Spencer got in on the game I knew this was more than a subversive confection movement, it was a full blown craze. What was once the humble cake of choice for kids, the kind of bakery that came straight out of a box topped off with Dennis the Menace transfers has been transformed from nursery food into the birth of sophisticated patisseries. But why, I ask would a fully grown woman actively infantilise herself by eating a teeny tiny cake? Indeed, what sane adult would want to be seen dead eating anything in miniature? We all know how naff mini burgers, hotdogs, fish and chips, and beef wellingtons are so minuscule cakes should be no different.

But the ten years since The Beauty Myth when Naomi Wolf lambasted the cosmetics and diet industries for shaming over-indulgent womenfolk across the land into starving themselves, has seemingly spawned the hybrid treat – the have your cupcake and eat it cake helpfully consumed in one mournful mouthful. And that’s the problem with cupcakes they are thoroughly unsatisfying. From their momentary sugar high to the inevitable diabetic come down – they inspire madness and melancholy in equal measure.

So ladies take heed, for is it any wonder as Paris burned and its inhabitants starved on the streets, Marie-Antoinette could only manage the limp ‘Let them eat cake’ before she opened another box of Krispy Kremes?

A Storm in a Mooncup

Its official, menstruation is cool. No more shamefully stuffing your tampons up your shirt sleeve as you slope off to the bogs. No more embarrassed cheeks aflush as you hand over cash for fanny pads, as if they were counterfeit goods purchased on the black market. Girls rejoice for the monthly bleed is not only natural, it’s sexy. No really, a few weeks ago The Guardian ran a spate of splinter life and style articles celebrating all things menarche. From the delightful period lipstick, to the life-changing effects of the Mooncup, women all over the west are ripping off their clothes and howling at the moon. And if you are in doubt over the validity of this statement just check out Shakira’s latest video for ‘She Wolf’ – a wonderful example of not so much PMT as pre-menstrual sexual tension.

In the video Shakira is lured by the glow of the full moon into her closet, adorned not by Jimmy Choos and not so much a secret passageway to Narnia, but rather the entrance to a cavernous and glittering womb. Cue costume change and we find Shakira writhing around in a cage in a barely there nude jump suit. Come on don’t tell me you haven’t been tempted to put on a flesh coloured leotard mid flow. ‘She Wolf’ is as shamelessly sexually provocative as a music video comes, but coupled with the bizarre concept of ‘Lycanthropy’ (behaviour governed by the movement of the moon) and its thoroughly pleasant 70’s disco synths it’s proving to be a big hit on Youtube. I’ll put the vast majority of the viral interest down to Shakira’s slick as a cat dance moves and her perfectly formed derriere, but if the video is fairly standard fare, its subject matter is at least seemingly subversive. Particular lyrical highlights include ‘I’m starting to feel just a little abused, like a coffee machine in an office’ – now that’s got premenstrual irrationality written all over it.

Ah Woo ...

The Cheryl-Factor

Photo REX FEATURES

So after all the controversy last week about Cheryl Cole having the audacity to pre-record the debut performance of her new single ‘Fight For This Love’ due to air on the X-Factor on Sunday night, it appears Cole had a change of heart and went live. Clad in red boxy military jacket and hat she was every inch the little drummer girl, flanked by a voluminous hip-hop dancing model army. It was slick and chorographically sound, if the vocals were perhaps a little shaky. Still, you gotta hand it to our Cheryl she was in fighting spirit and gracious to the end, thanking the audience and the X-Factor production team for embracing her to their hit-factory bosom. Even with her lippy seemingly smudged during her energetic routine she was radiant, in fact this make-up malfunction merely served to enhance her humility.

And that’s the problem with Chezza no matter how hard you try to dislike her you end up coming over all sycophantic, enjoying her dazzling veneers, bounteous hair and winning Geordie charm. From the controversial early days of Girls Aloud when it all could have gone so hideously wrong, to her marriage to Ashley Cole, she has struck the British public as a survivor and a fighter and that’s why she’s so well loved. And that’s why she’ll almost certainly be number one on Sunday and we’ll all be invited back for another round of the Cheryl Cole love-in next week.

Damn even when Simon saluted her at the end and she blew him a kiss back I liked her because although that kiss is mostly for him it’s also a little bit for everybody. Cheryl’s just nice like that. It struck me that although their faux rivalry is more the mechanics of the great, heaving X-Factor machine, churning out controversy at every turn, there is something genuine to the sparky quickness with which she defends her acts against his criticism. Like a loyal and spirited Chihuahua she’s ready to snap at the stacked heels and high-waisted trouser leg of Cowell. And who couldn't not enjoy, when moved by a performance, that she delicately wipes away her Swarovski crystal tears with her tattooed hand - a chav-tastic reminder that's she's not totally flawless.

I’m not sure she will repeat the success of her rookie year when she won with Alexandra Burke, particularly given Simon’s self-important and belligerent canvassing of himself and his acts, but she’ll almost certainly remain the reigning princess of reality telly. So what if Germaine Greer says she can’t be a feminist icon because she’s skinny, really its time our definitions of what is and isn’t inspirational to us womenfolk wasn’t defined by the size of our bodies. Cheryl Cole might look like a walking, talking, living doll, but she is no air-head. She’s a self-made woman and for now Germaine, that’s good enough for me.

The Crotch of the Problem.

Sometimes you have to take your inspiration where you find it. This can be hard when you’re struggling within a mainstream culture to pick out the bits that fit in with a spirit that wants to sing to its own tune. I’m trying to find redeemable qualities in the music artists of our generation but it can be hard; Lady Gaga is an odd ball – but how much of her image is manufactured?

Herein lies the problem I have with our lady singers, it’s in the engineering. When I read that Lady Gaga aspires to uniqueness over pretty, I’m pleased, but then when I see her spread her legs in front of a male model in her latest video ‘Love Game’ I fear we’ve taken a step backwards in liberating women and a move forwards in the on-going hyper-sexualisation of our gender.

Has the crotch become the last area of the female body to finally be colonised? Magazines circle ‘camel toes’ in body halls of shame, and so bored are we apparently with faces that the paparazzi have resorted to taking under-skirt photographs. And now the fashion actively encourages it: body suits are to the crotch what belly tops were to the tummy.

And while I don’t subscribe to the idea that our lady-parts are something to be ashamed of, I do think that in making them so apparent popular culture has inadvertently turned on its head the old adage ‘the horror of nothing to see’ into the horror of seeing far too much. I worry that all this reduces these women to the sum of their individual ‘parts’ rather than the collective strength of their talent. And I ask is it time to put the clothes back on and let the music speak for itself?

Thankfully there are quiet challenges to this status-quo. La Roux is a good example. I cannot express enough what a sheer joy it was see Elly Jackson in a masculine suit in her latest music video ‘I’m Not Your Toy’. There is something intriguing to the pale ethereal face of this woman in understated make-up and giant quiff. Quite aside from Jackson’s gender, it is her image that is sexually ambiguous and androgynous and it forces you to think. And the thought I had was this - why I am I so amazed to watch a video where the female artist keeps her clothes on?

This kind of shock should be reserved for the pop crotch and all it represents with its blatant agenda. We should be saying ‘deary me, I do believe that woman’s forgotten to put on her trousers’ rather than encouraging her to take them off.