Who do you see in your mirror?

The other day, a gorgeous mother of two was in the press, talking about her career and family.

Some people posted lovely supportive comments under the article online.


Some other people posted some extremely mean, judgemental, callous and arseholey comments under there, judging her on her mothering skills, her appearance, and mostly her weight. I'm not going to link to the article here. Don't feed the beast.

Chrissie Swan, you didn't deserve any of that judgement. Nobody does.

The wonderful Mrs Woog, and equally fabulicious BigWordsBlog blogged about this appalling turn crap. Then got their own fair share of nasty weight-ist comments as well.

Of course, all these keyboard heroes posted using anonymous handles. And they all said that weight was a health issue, costing us blah blah per year as a community, responsibility to our children to be healthy, blah blah wanky smug blah.

Fuck that shit.

To all the cowardly weight-ist anonymouses...

Before you get too smug about science, science tells us that people who are overweight have higher life expectancy than the under or "healthy" weight people out there.

Fitness impacts life expectancy far more than fatness.

So let's not hide our prejudice behind the great god of science, OK?

Let's get real here.

Being "fat" is an aesthetics issue, hiding like a coward inside a simpering faux-caring costume of health.

Being over size 12/14 is not currently within that narrow, ever-changing FASHION of how we're supposed to look to be attractive - to be ACCEPTABLE.

A couple of hundred years ago, plumpness was the epitome of sexy for women. But, fashion is a fickle mistress and a complete bitch to boot.

People are too scared to admit that they've been conditioned to not like looking at people over a particular size. It disgusts them. But saying "you disgust me" isn't very nice, is it?

So they hide their mean-ness, their shallow conditioned prejudices in talking about what's "good for us".

In the same way we should stop telling women what to wear to be pretty/age appropriate/safe we need to stop telling people what size they should be.

Be who you are.

Diet if you like, or not.

Exercise if you like, nor not.

It's your responsibility, not mine, what you choose to be.

Weight - like age, gender, race and sexuality should never be used to put people down, as a way to make you feel superior when you look at another person.

Frankly, I'd rather look at a nice fat person, than a healthy-weighted judgemental arsehole. And that includes looking in the mirror.

Who do you see when you look in yours?

In the previous edit of this post I had a picture of Nigella Lawson and a picture of Gillian McKeith. Nigella is, as most of us know, a food writer/chef.  Gillian makes her living telling other people what they should eat. I juxtaposed the two photos, stating which person I would rather be. In light of comments made - rightly - about the unintentional inferences this made about appearance, I've removed that piece of this post.

Keyboards breed cowards. But that's a subject for another post.

So come on, all you keyboard cowboys, disagree with this post? Tell me.

I'm an angry, fat, 44 year old woman with a severe cold and the first day of the first period I've had in 10 months.

Bring. That. Shit. On. I dare you.

Fashion and our heroes du jour

I hate buying clothes. There, I said it.

(Ladies who are into fashion, read no further. Save yourself the pain. This is not a post for you).

I find clothes shopping, frankly, traumatic. So when I heard that today marks the start of the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week I was filled with a combination of loathing and lack of interest. I’m sure that if I was a size 8, attractive 30 year old I’d feel a bit differently. But I was never that person.

I like to look nice, don’t get me wrong. I think you can really boost your confidence if you feel you look good. Nice clothes are nice to have. And sometimes a touch of retail therapy is good for the soul. But I don't have the cash to splash on a whole new wardrobe every year just because some fashion designer reckons I should.
I don’t think the definition of nice should change each year. This is what fashion does – through commercially-motivated peer pressure it tells us that we need to follow something. To buy more clothes each year to stay with the trend. To spend money.

Can someone please tell me when being an apple of two sticks will be a trend?

Most fashions don’t suit me. Or if they might, they’re only made in impossibly small sizes. It’s true that every now and then someone recommends a clothing line or shop and I weaken in the (usually naive) hope that they’re right and something in there will be one of the timeless pieces I ache for. (One notable example of when this went spectacularly well is when my gorgeous friend LGS recommended the equally gorgeous Te Kiero Boutique in Melbourne. This isn’t a sponsored post – I just love the clothes this lady is importing. Most of the clothes for my age group have something  timeless – even vintage - about their design. Thank you Teresa. You're not a slave to fashion, despite working in the industry. Great work.)

Why do the rules about what looks good change, just because the numbers in the date tick over? Fashion is a sneaky ruse to get you to part with your hard earned cash. Get the hot new look for 2013/summer/winter/spring/autumn/Monday/this second.

I keep a look out for timeless items that I can mix and match, and wear while working. And not have to iron. Oh god, the humanity. No ironing please.

I applaud the piece today in The Hoopla by Rachel Ward on older women and timeless style versus fashion. (Sorry Rachel, not with you on the cosmetic surgery though). Why do so many retailers only push clothes for the young? Thanks to scarcity these pieces are costly so I don’t have many. The rest of the time I’m a slob. I don’t deny it. Cheap t-shirts and jeans, that’s me. A hoodie. No makeup.

So when a large company like Mercedes-Benz gets together with a bunch of retailers to tell me that I should change my look to keep up with all the other women out there, forgive me if I don’t jump up, grab my purse and rush out the door.

Fashion is a first world construct designed to line the pockets of greedy retailers. And don’t get me started on “fashion designers” as our heroes du jour. Fashion designers? Really?

Are you excited about fashion week? If so, why? (And why didn't you heed my warning at the start of the post?!!)