You know, Dillard's does have some OK clothes in their ads sometimes. But never, never on this poor woman. This model must be toting some pretty terrible karma because she is only photographed in the most unfortunate outfits. What did you do to Dillards, poor MILF-lady?

Labels: advertising, dillard's, fashion

My horoscope today suggests a family gathering because my “clan is busting with enthusiasm.” And the stars advise me to “set up the badminton net.”

First of all, my clan is rarely busting with enthusiasm. They also live far away. And we don’t own a badminton net—just a croquet set we never use. I’m beginning to suspect the stars don’t know what they’re talking about.

***

You may have seen this story in your own morning paper, if you read a morning paper, which you probably don’t, which explains the state of newspapers in the U.S. today. It’s all about this lady who had her pit bull cloned in South Korea, which got a lot of news coverage. As a result, she was recognized as having skipped bail after kidnapping a Mormon missionary 31 years ago and handcuffing him to a bed and using him as a sex slave.

At the time, she told a judge, “I loved him so much that I would ski naked down Mount Everest in the nude with a carnation up my nose if he asked me to.”

***

Here’s a column about the day the moving sidewalks weren’t working at Love Field. Thank goodness for rolling suitcases! This writer managed to squeeze 618 words out on the topic, which is impressive in its own way, I suppose. On the other hand—WTF? You get what you pay for, I guess. She’s a “volunteer columnist.”

***

Finally … not only does the hat look silly, but it’s going to be 104 degrees in Dallas today. Just looking at this picture makes my head itch.

Labels: fashion, news

Last time I posted these, they were buried in MySpace. I watched them again and they tickled me so here they are again. Plus I need a little blogging breather so this is the easy way out.

Labels: art, fashion

I think it was in Jezebel, which has best and worst dressed lists, that a writer dismissed capris as if everyone knows that capris are stupid and there is no argument about it.

I have some capris and naturally felt dissed. And then, instead of beating them up about it (in my mind), I decided it would be more fun to join ‘em and declare myself an arbiter of all that is acceptable and all that is not.

I’ll take a page from Tom’s book. He long ago declared shorts on stage (on male musicians, that is) are unacceptable, period. He has insisted on this for so long that I must agree. You cannot rock and roll with your hairy legs showing. Don’t do it. If you can’t deal with sweating in jeans, you're too sissy to rock.

In that spirit, I have decided that big, plastic earrings are unacceptable. No, don’t argue, there is nothing to discuss. So it is said and so it shall be.

Big white plastic earrings with a bathing suit? Beneath discussion.


I’ll be back with more proclamations as they occur to me.

Labels: dillard's, fashion

"My shorts are more ridiculous!"
"NO! My shorts are more ridiculous!"

What's at stake? The winner gets to keep his "Men's Under Armour Heatgear Blitz Compression Top."

Labels: advertising, fashion

Here’s our happy multiple mom again, from today’s paper. She’s still silly but the bathing suits in this ad aren’t hideous and I’ve grown accustomed to her face and her easy-care hair.

Turn the page and…. (cue music from Psycho shower scene)


My god! This poor child! Feed her! Get her out of those Devil Shoes! For god’s sake, at least let her grow up a few years before you put her through this. Look at this sweet little girl face.

Yeah, yeah. Fashionistas are rolling their eyes at me—so gauche to complain about skinny underage models. But this photo gives me the willies.

Here, a young Dallas model discusses her bout with eating disorders. I wanted to cry and throw up reading that one casting director for Paris fashion week told her, "You're turning into a woman, and your body is changing. You need to learn to control that."

I know women are supposed to be inspired to shop by imagining they look younger, slimmer and sexier than they are, but this can go too far. Even when fashion photos aren’t quite as disturbing as this one, I’m not dumb enough to imagine I’ll ever look like a 14-year-old dressed as a grown up. I wouldn’t want to, anyway.

I had a similar thought while working out the other day to a Crunch DVD. All those pretty, perky and extremely buff women were supposed to inspire me but that was not the effect they had. I wished for someone I could relate to, someone who was a little bit older, a little bit curvier, a little bit imperfect but fit. I wasn’t discouraged by the sight of all those sexy sixpacks, but with them on the TV screen, my reflection in the mirror was kind of depressing. One reason Richard Simmons workouts are so much fun is because he has people of all sizes Sweatin' to the Oldies. To me, that’s much more inspiring than a chorus line of women who clearly dedicate their lives to their buns and abs. They only makes me feel that what I can do is not enough and never will be.

Labels: advertising, dillard's, fashion, feminism, personal growth

I’ve been shopping recently. Always an adventure, often not a lot of fun.

But first, let’s revisit a shopping trip past.

If you’ve been with me a while, you may remember The Shoes.

The golden shoes. The shoes for which the angels sang.

Alas, alas. Turns out they are not the shoes from the heavens, they are the devil’s work.

They hurt. Oh lawdy, they hurt. They dig into the backs of my heels and rip them raw. I have tried taping up my heels but they just rub the tape off and chew me up. I wore them for the second time today and went to the dentist, to lunch, to the supermarket. I was hobbling by the time I got home. Tragedy comes in so many forms. This is one. Oh, deceitful shoes, all your promises broken.

Speaking of pain, I’ve been shopping for a bathing suit, too. That’s time consuming because my ego can only stand about eight bathing suits per shopping trip. But amazingly, after trying on only about a dozen suits, I found one for the ages at Marshall’s, of all places. For $24.99. I never look for suits at Marshall’s-—I tend to spend real money on my suits--but I’ve been feeling hopeful and damned if I didn’t score on a sassy black tankini. It had its first outing last week and the consensus was that I have found a magical bathing suit. I have been running to Marshall’s all over town, now, looking for another so that I may have this bathing suit for the ages. So far no good but I have a few more Marshall's to go. (BTW, Lara tells me Kohl's has cute suits, too.)

I need new sandals, too, but I was a dope not to buy them two weeks ago, when Marshall’s and DSW were full of ‘em. Now the pickings are very slim. What could have been an easy flash of the credit card now is a quest. I mean, there are lots of sandals out there but I have needs and desires that must be fulfilled and the detritus on the shelves just doesn’t have what it takes.

By the way, is there any place more revolting than the Ross Dress for Less shoe department? Total chaos. I am convinced their associates are hired for their havoc-wreaking talents and that every night after the store closes, instead of organizing the shoe racks, they assiduously put the size 5s among the 8s, strew sandals everywhere and mismatch the athletic shoes. I also suspect the company keeps screaming babies on the payroll because there’s always at least one. Every time I go into Ross I swear never to return but I always drift back.

I also need a purse. (Yes, Tom, I know. But purses go out of style, too.) I’m the opposite of fashion-forward because it takes a while before my eyes adjust to new silhouettes and I have finally come to understand that my cute little purses just don’t look right anymore. So I’m looking at big purses, even though I always feel silly with a big purse because all that’s ever in it is a wallet, a phone, a brush and a lipstick, all rattling around the bottom. I find myself apologizing to security guards who peek in and then look at me as if I’m loony.

Here's a tip: I was in Sears the other day looking for something hardware-like and discovered that they have a lot of cute cheap purses.

Y’all have a great weekend, hear? And look for me at Marshall’s.

P.S. Black and Blue at the Barley House tonight. Dude.

Labels: clothes, fashion, marshalls, ross, shopping

"Poor dad"


Dad, would you prefer dull (far left), butt-ugly (far right) or elastic-waist shorts? (Middle photo, far left. Or perhaps slightly too-short shorts. I have no particular gripes about the third pair of shorts but they need to keep better company.) Which says "I love you" to you?

For rich dad we have bling. Note the quote under the little photo of father and son. Presumably the little boy is supposed to have said that but do the copywriters know what the idiom "you wind me up" means? So are we celebrating dad's magic ability to wind his kids up? Yeah, OK. Tasteless bling should do the trick.



And finally, I'm not sure what annoys me about this ad--too bad my scanner is too small for full page ads--but it does. Please fill in your own mocks.

Labels: advertising, clothing, fashion, father's day

Here goes. My last week of my 40s. So many worries and concerns.

For example, how will I look when my hair magically poufs up into the obligatory old lady hairdo? Can one still buy pink foam rollers for pouf maintenance?

Where do old ladies buy the sucking candies they carry in their handbags? (My grandma carried these rectangular fruity things that were filled with fruity goo. The first cum candy.) How long should they collect lint in the bottom of my handbag before they’re suitable for distribution?

I guess I’m going to have to open a Dillard’s account.


Too bad I look terrible in white pants, but what can I do? The fashionistas have spoken. And I hope Tom will love me all the same in white waist-high nylon panties.

It will be kind of a relief to give up all pretense of wearing cute shoes and just relax into comfortable. I'm thinking white sandals with nice thick gum soles and Velcro closures. And perhaps little gold tsatsakas dangling off them, to make them look snazzy.

Gosh, it’s going to be a busy week. A girl doesn’t age overnight, you know. What else do I need for this very important transition?

By the way, all you Metroplexites. My birthday weekend kicks off Friday night at the AllGood. Black and Blue will rock in my advanced age. If you’re out and about, wander that way. Music starts 9-ish. (Because we old folks just can’t stay up late.)

Labels: birthdays, fashion, midlife, milf, shoes, shopping

Lots of flotsam today so let’s get busy.

First, shameless promotion: Black and Blue and the AllGood Café tomorrow night. Meet me there! The Dallas Observer advanced the show here.

***
A month or so ago, my brother sent me this link to Missing Money, a site that searches for unclaimed property (i.e. money). He’d searched my name and found money owed to me. I went to the site, filled out the brief form and forgot all about it. Well shiver me timbers and blow me over—a check for $371 turned up in my mailbox last week! Try it.

***

The email subject line said: Press release

The message said: Hope your readers find this press release of interest.

The press release was an attached Word document.

If ever a presentation begged to be ignored, it’s this one. A subject and message that tells me nothing, and an attachment from someone I don’t know. Maybe it’s a perfectly legitimate release with information that my readers would find of interest but I’m not going to investigate. Hit delete, get on with my life. The world is full of cluelessness.

***

Here’s a nifty little tip from the NYT tech blog. If you use Firefox, you can bring up the Quick Find box to search a page by just hitting the forward slash key (same key as the question mark). Seconds saved every week!

***

Texas Tech University psychology department has launched a series of short podcasts about this and that, psychology-ish, featuring interviews with experts here and there. Here’s the homepage. They’re a little homespun sounding but that’s OK.

***

I don’t know why this story is buried on page 3 of the business section, but it’s big exciting news to me. Gas prices are causing people to “stampede” to small car. Can I get a HELL YEAH?

Unfortunately, this is bad news for SUV and truck manufacturers (i.e. American companies). But it's good for the planet, the highways and my blood pressure, since the mere sight of a Hummer makes it soar. I'm very sensitive that way.

***

Another of my pet peeves is the luxurification of the world. Have I discussed that before? How we seem to be devaluing all qualities—quaint, cozy, charming, kitschy—in favor of luxurious? It’s one of my favorite rants, I’m happy to go into it if I’ve neglected to rant it here.

Anyway, the DMN has a story this morning that seems to back my point, about a direct sales company called Home Interiors that was extremely successful until new owners decided to aim for the high-end market instead of the cozy low-incomers for whom the brand was developed. It didn’t work and now the company is filing for bankruptcy.

I love having my prejudices affirmed.

***

The snarky chick-oriented website Jezebel puts an interesting and believable spin on reports that the depression rate in women is twice that of men.

The Jezebel writer suggests that this isn’t because twice as many women as men get depressed but because women are so much more likely to go for treatment when they do. She speculates that many more men are depressed than ever seek treatment. If some dude is walking around depressed but undiagnosed, does he count? she asks.

It’s a good post, take a look.

***

Jezebel has also alerted me to a Ms. magazine article that sounds interesting, about self-objectification or "viewing one's body as a sex object to be consumed by the male gaze."

The post continues: More and more women are viewing themselves as sex objects, says Caroline Heldman, Ph.D., an assistant professor of politics at Occidental College, and it's due in large part to the veritable onslaught of advertising images that we're subjected to.

I think this is right on right on but the only solution offered, evidently, is to avoid media images objectifying women, but that would pretty much mean locking oneself in a dark room.
Read the post yourself.

I certainly wish I could stop constantly comparing myself with other women--both media images and women I see every day. It’s a miserable pastime, a distracting little drone in my head: I’m fatter than her…I’m thinner than her...fatter…thinner…fatter…fatter…older…younger….fatter…

What a useless waste of brain energy.

***
Hey, the cool website WorldHum linked to my post this week about how rising travel costs might discourage dabblers from traveling. OK, so I alerted an editor to the post in a bit of Shameless Self Promotion, but he liked it enough to link so that was very gratifying.

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Finally, in what may become a weekly voyeuristic feature as long as I feel like it, this week’s Google searches that brought people to this site are:

xoloescuintle price

Thank God I books for sale Castagnini

inside the brain of a narcissist

Narcissist Bully

negative reviews of elizabeth gilbert's eat, pray, love

gmail emails not reaching their destination

derivation of lithium name

cashmere bouquet plant

customer support gmail

crossdresser in saree

outlook autofill subject line

mayeaux pronunciation

odd looking dogs

give me obama email adress and guest 2008@yahoo.com

Xoloescuintle Dog

jack kent cooke Conundrum

gmail to yahoo not getting sent

Labels: automobiles, beauty, black and blue, culture, economy, fashion, fat, feminism, flotsam, jezebel, news, nightlife, personal growth, psychology, public relations, rolling stones, sexism

Clothing was a big player on this trip. My newly purchased items were OK but didn’t entirely cut it, especially for the wedding, and I ended up shopping for yet more clothes so as to not stand out. While men mostly wear Western style clothes in the cities, most women wear traditional dress.

It struck us as kind of funny that while saris reveal an expanse of skin from just under the bust to the waist , modesty requires shoulders be covered. The bride whose wedding we attended wore a sleeveless top one day, inspiring comment from one of her aunties, who said, “My, aren’t you modern.”

My theory is that while women’s stomachs range widely in attractiveness, especially as years and gravity take hold, shoulders usually manage to remain alluring.

Catherine and I took a walk around the lake in Hyderabad one day wearing our Western clothes—nothing sexy, just jeans and loose (although scandalously v-necked) t-shirts. We were kind of sweaty and really not looking our best but were nevertheless hollered by passing men as if we were hoochie mamas. This convinced us to change our style for the duration of the trip.

Don’t you love saris? They’re so beautiful—all those mouth-watering jewel tones, the drapes, the trim. The bride bought saris for all the women in her wedding party and so our first day in Hyderabad included a stop at a sari shop for last-minute fittings. Most of the women had already mailed their measurements for cholis, the little tops worn under saris, but we then spent a while sitting in a closet-sized shop surrounded by beautiful fabrics while they were measured again and shown the colors they would wear for the wedding.

We also all shopped at a department store as well as at a chaotic market for the more casual uniform of the Indian woman: the salwar kameeze, which is long full pants worn under a tunic and accessorized with a long scarf.

This outfit fascinates me not only because it’s incredibly comfortable and appropriate for the climate but because I love the simplicity of having a uniform. Women all wear the same thing in different colors and patterns with slight variations in the cut of the pants, the length of the tunic (I’m told shorter tunics are more modern), the way they drape their scarves. And everyone looks beautiful in it. I purchased three of these outfits and I’m trying to decide if I would look foolish wearing them in Dallas.

Shopping in the market was fun. You slip off your shoes and sit on the padded floor of a stall while the owner whips out outfit after outfit for you to admire. It’s like prestidigitation—magical piles of colors and patterns, sparkle and silk until you finally walk away or succumb to one, two or as many outfits as they can persuade you to buy. Bargaining wasn’t difficult, although who knows if I got the best price. I got prices good enough for me—a full outfit of salwar, kameez and orhna could be had for about $10-$20.

This also was my first experience of seeing many women in burqas. While I wouldn’t want to be required to wear a burqa, I confess to finding the sight of dark almond-shaped eyes looking out from the heavy black drapes strangely alluring. And, having blossomed to bodaciousness at an early age in New York City, where many men imagined that kissing, sucking, hissing noises were appropriate appreciation of women on the street, I also could imagine enjoying the freedom such a covering would provide. In fact, through much of my hippie-dippy adolescence, one of my favorite garments was a vintage nurse’s cape, which provided me and my overdeveloped body some protection.

I did note, however, that lots of women wore sassy shoes with their burkas, and the clothing didn’t prevent them from being among the many courting couples we saw in city parks.

Today I am a hoochie mama in sweatpants and a 20-year-old sweatshirt. I miss dressing as an Indian.

Labels: fashion, india, travel