“Let me judge you: I give you a four, five, whatever comes after seven and keys to a hotel room.”
Back in the land before time, also referred to as the 1980s, there was a big HOOT about fashion. In the clip above, your soon-to-be-favourite comedienne, Deven Green, mashes a HILARIANT voice-over on top of the already — though unintentionally — hilarious home order videos of Brenda Dickson, a one-time star of The Young and The Restless. The Welcome to My Home series can be enjoyed in their original, instructional glory (including how to drape a fox over your shoulder — it’s very dramatic.) Or, you could watch Deven’s parody videos and get right on to regaling your co-workers with one-liners.
“Another diet tip is, if you get too much of anything in your mouth, just spit it out. I know I do!”
“Kudos, me.”
“I’m so exhausted, but that doesn’t stop me reading porn to the blind.”
Related/Timely: Betty Powers, America’s Best Christian.
Well, maybe not a paedophile, but it seems the Pope is busy apologising for the sexual abuse perpetrated by certain members of the Catholic Church wherever he goes.
Dawn Chorus reader Chris sent me details from this website, Catholic House And Garden. Catholic Children’s costumes! Just in time for the Pope! The costumes are Made in the USA by American Farm women (their bolding suggested national pride preferences their identities as women and farm women at that).
I was walking down Sydney Road, Brunswick the other morning. It involves walking past A LOT of wedding related retailers. I’m getting married later this year and every time I was down the street I get an eyeful of dresses ranging from frou-frou, haute couture and meringue; pointy shoes pasted with fake diamantes; heavily embossed jewelers; laser cut invitations; unidentifiable sweets concealed by gauze; some slightly suspicious looking reception centres and enough snow white ephemera to remind me that your wedding is not about celebrating your loving relationship with family and friends but actually a socially sanctioned legal and commercial enterprise. Celebrating your love makes other people rich.
And it’s fraught with the most bewildering array of social practices, traditions and conventions… I will write a pithy diatribe on these at a later date, not enough coffee this morning to begin.
But then I saw this:
It reads: “YOU ARE UGLY THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE FUCKEN DOING”.
Most intriuging. Could it be from a jilted bride? Jilted groom? Jilted ex-partner of potential bride or groom? Or some kind of counter culture revolutionary reaction against the giant meringues in the window? The mind boggles…
Flipping through a Cosmo from a few months back in the toilet (because that’s where it belongs), my eyes were continually assaulted by the “boooiiing!”-esque campaigns for Bras’N'Things’ “Intimate Secret” range of seamless, well, bras and things. Haven’t seen it? Here’s a sampling:
Am I the only woman who feels this is a bit, how you say, in your face? I appreciate that bra advertising by its very nature needs to feature bosoms, but does it have to be done in such a lad’s mag way? The whole spread legs/arse out/boobs up thing, I dunno, if anything it makes me feel pressured, not enticed to purchase. And while I don’t have the time right now to discuss the obvious trickledown effect of the Victoria’s Secret campaigns (feel free to take over in the comments), is it naïve of me to think that bra advertising should appeal to women first, men second?
I mean, I haven’t tried the Intimate Secret range, but I own a few bras from the range that inspired it (the Kayser Very Smooth bras) and they are very comfortable, durable and come in a range of kicky colours – albeit with no noticeable power-babe functionality, despite what the ads would imply (they should print a ’serving suggestion’ on the labels).
Ads like this reinforce the idea that lingerie is solely something you wear to turn on dudes, not something you wear (as they keep trying to tell us in Cleo and Co.) for your own comfort, pleasure and expression. I’ve taken to wearing sports bras lately, not because I really need the support (A Cups of the world unite!), but because they make me feel like an action hero. Which may sound unspeakably dumb to some, but I’d rather feel like I had Ripley hiding under my t-shirt than Girls Gone Wild.
(It’s probably no coincidence, regarding my sartorial choice, that sports bras are also generally advertised with far less ‘tits ‘n’ arse blast’ angle, too.)
In the end the thing that puzzles me most about male-gaze-geared bra advertising is that you’d think, given the old clichés about men having no idea – bless ‘em! – about how to shop for their girlfriends and wives when it comes to lingerie (you know, apart from pulling the hilarious old “Well, she’s about as big as you” move on the shop assistant), that pitching smalls advertising more or less squarely at men is a pointless exercise. But I guess I was wrong.
Most of the time while looking for pieces to shine the Dawn Chorus spotlight on, there are usually a few choice sentences, sometimes a paragraph, to discuss. However, in the case of this “article” from the Daily Telegraph, I could pretty much re-print the entire thing, from headline to full stop, such is the shiver inducing sexism of the piece. Let’s start with the title:
Paris Hilton gets not tattoos for Benji Madden unlike Sophie Monk
Playing two women off against each other in the death sport of catching a husband, top work, Tele! What have you got for us next – how about a precede?
SHE’S not the smartest tool in the shed but Paris Hilton seems to have pinned down her man, rocker Benji Madden, by staying away from the tattooist needle.
Right, so while Sophie can’t catch a man, at least dummy Paris can! What next in this cavalcade of 1950s rhetoric?
While Madden’s Aussie ex Sophie Monk emerged this week flashing new ink in the form of her own name on the back of her head, Hilton revealed her Good Charlotte beau has kyboshed her putting pen to skin.
“Benji won’t let me get one.He doesn’t like tattoos on women. He thinks I look pure,” Hilton cooed recently.
Gee, and she looked so, like, angelic in that sex tape, Benji.
Sophie, that must have been where you went wrong.
In order, we have everyone clapping their hands over Paris playing soon-to-be-wifey to Madden, who likes to tell his girlfriend what to do – and she loves it!
Then we have a shake of good, old-fashioned slut shaming.
And finally, we round it all out by chastising Sophie Monk for ‘failing’ to keep a man. Because lord knows, when a relationship ends – particularly if a woman does the leaving – it’s a ‘failure’, not a mutual decision reached to further the individual happiness of both partners.
The Fairfax Digital sites just keep rolling out the pearlers when it comes to pointless/sexist stock photos illustrating their, shall we say, B-side news. For the last couple of days on the online presences for The Age/WA Today/et al, this one has been advertising a MyCareer piece on dressing for job interviews:
Goddamn, you wacky bitch! You’ll never get a job with a zany haircut like that! Watch out, The Man is checking you out! And so on. But it doesn’t get any better from there – click through to the article and you’ll find the Fairfax Digital special, female bodyparts!
And a runway fashion show has what, exactly, to do with dressing for corporate job interviews again? Who knows, but the gist of the article seems to be something to the tune of, “Girls, don’t dress like slovenly whores”:
Two thirds of those surveyed said that bad grooming, such as unpressed shirts and untidy hair, was the most common failing. Just over half said that bad body odour was also common!
When it came to clothing, lowcut tops (45 per cent) and loud or over-the-top make-up (40 per cent) were two of the most common examples for women. Very short skirts also were noticed.
Watch that bad body odour, girls, or you’ll end up in the typing pool until you die, a spinster, at 56!
Last week we did a round-up of the latest sexist/freaky/offensive ads to pop up in Facebook’s sidebar, well, it seems the social networking site sees sexist ads as the gift that just keeps on giving. Here’s the latest:
I didn’t even click through on this one because after counting those steps (“1 How to change your body shape. 2 How to let him understand you. 3 How to know when is the right time”) it sounded suspiciously like some sort of ‘true love waits’ diet plan, because god knows we’re all fat whores in the end, aren’t we – and men and women, they’re so different! *hands on hips, head cocked to one side* You guys! *giggles* *pledges virginity to my father*
