Archive for Women

Burning fashion questions

{ 9 November, 2009 @ 9:46 am } · { Puzzlement, Women }
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harem_pants

I am subscribed to an email newsletter from the fashion-and-beauty magazine LouLou (no idea how I got signed up; perhaps a friend thought I needed some help).

I occasionally look at the newsletters, but usually find the fashion advice incomprehensible and the “looks” recommended mystifying, so I view them as more for amusement value than useful information.

Here is an example: the answer to the question I know you are asking yourselves: How do I wear harem pants to my holiday party without emphasizing my bust?

It’s fortunate that the answer (to this and other burning questions) is there, complete with shopping details.

The answer is basically “Wear a simple top [now why didn't I think of that?] and [of course] a pair of killer heels to elongate your silhouette.”

Breasts, III

{ 25 February, 2009 @ 10:55 pm } · { Dismay, Women }
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or, Breasts at the 2009 Oscars

In the category of Cups Running Over

SJPNo contest: Sara Jessica Parker. It appears to be such a difficult thing to get a strapless dress to fit properly. Actually, it depended on the angle: sometimes it just looked eye-opening, but at other times there was definitely a problem with spilling over. Too pushed up, Posh-style.

Where Are my Breasts Supposed to Go, Again?GH

Goldie Hawn, of course. A dress only approximately fitted to her body and falling too low on her chest allowed her breasts to escape over the top, under her arms, everywhere except the accepted place.

JAThe Strapless Dress That Fits

Jennifer Aniston. Elegant, not too revealing, nothing out of place!

Special Award

SLAnd a special Lifetime Achievement Award for Breasts goes to Sophia Loren. Although these days the rest of her is a noble Roman ruin (albeit with a remarkably timeless appearance from a distance), those famous breasts remain apparently youthful and nicely positioned in her Oscars dress.

Breasts, II

{ 4 January, 2008 @ 6:49 pm } · { Women }
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As an adolescent girl, I passionately envied those with large breasts. Why? I suppose my mind was saturated with media images of the desirable female body, combined with what schoolboys apparently fantasized over. Perhaps if silicone implants had been as available then as they are now I would have found some way to get them. As it is, I have had to go through life with adequate but never eye-catching breasts. Pregnancy and, even more so, breast-feeding have given me a taste of what the well-endowed experience but otherwise I have remained, contented but not exultant, in the world of the B cup.

Of course, as I get older the advantages are more obvious.

When I was growing up in Britain, I remember reading an article by a serious reviewer predicting the future success of movie actresses Julie Christie and Sarah Miles. The article stated that, although they were both very good actresses, Christie would be the more successful because Miles was “flat-chested.” This had the weight of authority — it was not a newspaper that had a Page 3 pinup — and was a pronouncement of awful finality.

When I first came to Canada, I started going to a gym. In the changing rooms and the showers, I was amazed to see the variety of women’s bodies and that women whose bodies did not fit what I considered the norm were nonchalant about displaying them. After I got over the initial surprise, I was filled with a rush of love for humanity in all its diversity. Celebrating the natural body became part of my feminist beliefs. I looked back with pity on that narrow-minded, old-fashioned movie reviewer.

Today’s Sarah Miles is Keira Knightley: her slight and delicate figure is exquisitely alluring in a wet camisole in Atonement and it does not seem to have held her back in her career. (Actually, Sarah Miles seems to have done OK, too.)

Breasts, I

{ 30 December, 2007 @ 1:05 pm } · { Women }
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The subject today is breasts. (That should get the stats up a bit.) I’m inspired to muse on this fascinating part of the female anatomy by Mrs. Victoria Beckham, who visited Vancouver recently with her Spice sisters to kick off their reunion tour. posh.jpgPosh has made the unnaturally pushed-up breast fashionable again. She is rarely seen with her bosom in a relaxed position. Perhaps surgical intervention means that the gravity-defying globe is her new natural position?

That refusal to accept gravity was popular in the seventeenth century, and was achieved by a corset that pushed the breasts up. They were then lightly covered by a flimsy fringe of lace atop the overdress. Very fetching, but it looks rather uncomfortable. How strange that we should have been through an entire feminist revolution where women passionately demonstrated the desire to get away from those kinds of constraints — and now a woman who has enormous amounts of money and is inevitably a role model for young girls chooses this look.