A Design, An Alignment, A Cry

Fashion Friday: Pinup Style Edition

(Yet another installment in our sporadically-updated series. Tune in for the next episode sometime in the fall!)

Speaking of the unrealistically skinny appearance of most models, I found this article about a trend in which girls take inspiration from pinups from the 40s and 50s, saying “to women who have grown up with the spray-tanned, skinny models as their beauty ideal, this look is new and refreshing, and even groundbreaking” and that it “'is a way of being feminine without looking like a little girl in pigtails and ruffles. Wearing stockings and high heels, there’s something fundamentally adult about that'...They draw on a pervasive nostalgia for 'more innocent days when sexuality wasn’t portrayed as so hard core and in your face.'”

It's certainly interesting, but at the same time I'm more than a little meh about embracing something that was originally about the objectification of women, even if it does involve a far more realistic approach to women's figures and a much more classy/glamorous way of dressing. You can dress in a chic and classy way without necessarily taking your inspiration from pinups. Thoughts?

College Teaches You More Than Math

(Now that finals have blissfully faded into the past-that-is-no-longer, I feel like I can finally post this)

One thing that college has taught me is that there are very few woman who are truly happy with the way they look. I am by no means thin, and I start seeing red a bit whenever somebody pats the fashion industry on the back for being "realistic" and including "curvy size eights" ::eyeroll:: When I was in high school, I looked askance at all of the thin girls I knew and thought bitterly that surely they must be happy -- they were thin for crying out loud!

Then I got to college, and listened to first my roommate, then the rest of the dorm moan about how fat and ugly they were. How could this be? This group of girls moaning about their weight included a beauty who ran a mile every day, my roommate who is curvaceous in the absolute best sense of that word and an assortment of sixes, eights and tens who were all perfectly healthy, curves and all. Maybe we weren't all in the best of shape, but we could hardly be labeled overweight, let alone obese. Seeing these girls (whom I regarded as pretty-near-perfectly-sized) just as unhappy with their figures as I was with mine astonished me.

Honestly, I don't have anything else very profound to say. We've all been sold a bill of goods* by the people behind the checkout glossies, and I can't imagine that attaining the nigh-on impossible ideal body that they present would make me (or anybody else) happy. As cheesy and trite and cliched and banal as it sounds, who you are on the inside really does matter more.

(No, duh, disclaimer: losing weight for reasons of health is a different kettle of fish from losing weight for the sake of societal pressures and conventions and fitting into the popular clothes)

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*You don't suppose the fact that fashion magazines are at least half advertisements has anything to do with this, hmm? Buy this face cream, that sweater, those boots, and be THIN! PRETTY! HAPPY! It's almost like they're businesses... ::le eyeroll::

The New Noblewoman

An intriguing look at a new online site, The New Noblewoman, which features posts on diverse topics ranging from Lars von Trier's Melancholia to the difference between high and low teas. It looks to be most inspirational and lovely.