token girl: like a girl, but better

Wednesday, 16 June 2004

skirting the issue

the sun shone down on fitzrovia this lunchtime as sarah I graced the pavement outside the office. blonde hair lightened in time for the summer streaks brushed across her forehead
it's like looking into a fabulous funfair mirror, from black top to black toe.
these light skirts are fitted from hip to thigh, then flare to just below the knee. patterned, frilled, denim... They look great with single strap sandals for the day (birkenstock black/pink/white), but remember to look after your feet. this look will last the season. grrls

Friday, 4 June 2004

NOT body dysmorphic disorder

That would be the opposite.
Wake up with hair-to-go and a wardrobe of ready-to-wear outfits. Relax at the breakfast table because you can eat what you want and you don't get fat. Is that a spot? Only because it's that time of the month because you never breakout otherwise. Moustache? It's just the unflattering light, a mere shadow.

I have a collection of aspirational clothes that I'm dying to wear. Now, I haven't been a size 12 since 1996, but how hard can it be?

2nd hand shops trouble me. I'm big. A big TALL girl (be PROUD! said the doctor) just like they didnt used to make. A bargain will make my week, but hunting for the perfect dress (the current quest) is tiring. I know one vintage shop (BOUTIQUE) which labels their stock with sizes (Bang Bang, Goodge Street) and that's as upmarket you'll get this side of Ladbroke Grove. Where was I?

Essentially, to find the perfect dress, which I truly believe is out there somewhere, whether forgotten in my mum's wardrobe or stashed in the stockroom of a covent garden frockerie, I must only compromise my idea of myself and never my budget. You see, in the olden days, the days that vintage outfitters hark back to, ladies were ladies, corseted to the hourglass and pinchtoed to paralysis. While I covet the cachet and cool of the one-off-the-peg piece, is the disappointment and degradation required to reach the prize worth it?

1. ebay
2. blackoutII, endell st, covent garden
3. rokit, CAMDEN & covent garden
4. mystery store, mercer street, covent garden

Thursday, 25 March 2004

easily led

checking out prices of used copies of Nancy Pearl's BOOK LUST on amazon, i found one seller who described his copy as 'gently read'. what a perfect way to read a book of this nature.
it wasn't enough to make me buy it though.

Thursday, 12 February 2004

mean streets

everywhere i look i see women who can't walk in their shoes.

Tuesday, 27 January 2004

m-m-material grrl

'Sometimes I feel just like Bridget Jones. You know, like, how she aleays looks a mess whatever the hell she tries. That's me. Not too bothered...' January 26 6.55 pm

inside laura’s head: Material Girl as Good Charlotte oh-so tunefully observe, it often does appear that girls live for shopping sprees and not really much else. Most girls I know possibly have some kind of shopping addiction, in fact. They pay far more than they can afford for ‘that new item’, the item which, let’s face it, they’re usually bored with after one ‘showing’. and are already re-claiming they need something new as they ‘have nothing to wear’. ½ Why, when passing a shop I’ve looked around hundreds of times before and have a pretty full knowledge of what I expect to be in there, do I feel an overwhelming desire to go in? Even if I’m meant to be doing something far more important and am already late for it? It irritates me. I shop so much, I have begun to recognise which shops other people’s clothes and accessories are from. ½ The Selfridges’ summer sale advert urgently asks ‘do you have something missing in your life?’ If I do, it’s certainly not something I could buy in their store. Hmmm… I could probably spend a whole day looking, though. Selfridges is like some kind of museum, with its beautiful building and items in glass boxes. Although I try to ignore it, the constant knowledge that I don’t really need anything (stuff), except for a scrap of food and dribble of water, is what makes shopping so frustrating. Maybe Selfridges is right and I am missing something. Sanity. Otherwise I would probably stop spending most of my life searching for something perfect to buy. What really makes me do this? Is it an addiction, another unsatisfied appetite, or do I simply have nothing else to do with my free time?
I have a number of theories as to why I feel the need to go shopping so often:
1. It is something to do, which feels vaguely more productive than sitting in an airless room watching crap TV.
2. When I buy one thing, I need to buy something else to match.
3. I am, actually, addicted.
4. Maybe I want to look different each time I go out, so I can pretend I’m a different person.
5. Maybe I’m trying to satisfy a sexual appetite, which obviously can’t be done with shopping, yet I’m doomed to continue trying. Polly Young Eisendrath has written about this idea in Women and Desire. She suggests that ‘female material desire involves an obsession with attaining complete release from the pain of the past, unaware that these obsessions can never be satisfied through material means’….well, I may be aware, but it doesn’t help me.
6. I’m female. Shops were designed and created for my half of the species. Eisendrath mentions this too, how ‘shopping malls were created by male retailers (to cater) specifically for women’s needs and desires. The new, colourful, bright shopping environments promised women some form of individual freedom, as it offered them choice and let them develop a feeling of being in charge of one’s own being.’ The female desire to shop also seems to annoy men, maybe it seems like some form of rebellion. Yet, men made shopping for us. Hmmm, my desire to shop is decreasing rapidly.
The sad thing is, however much I shop, I don’t even like it very much. This is partly because I always wish I had more money. Its partly because sometimes I feel I’m not actually choosing to go shopping but that I just HAVE to but it’s mostly because I hate trying on beautiful clothes that never seem to fit and that seem to be designed solely to reveal my ugly bulges ever more prominently. It depresses me. So much for shopping therapy.


lozginger@smalltownflirt.co.uk

Wednesday, 7 January 2004

stain removal

emailed at 12.15 pm Oh no. so I treated myself to a mocha from pret yesterday morning. Got into the office and dumped my bag & drink on my desk, turned around, and dull thud. Chocolate coffee all over the floor. The carpet is the ultra-absorbent rented workspace style stuff and I've been stained into bad fengshui with ugly dried puddle next to my desk. As if this week wasn't going to be bad enough! Ugh. Oh double ugh!

Anyone got any tips for stain removal?

what they said:

Dab, don't wipe.

Ignore. Deny all knowledge. shoot shifty sideward glances at anyone with a coffee cup. Blame office idiot (unless thats you). Spill carpet coloured syruppy drink on stain. Sit and wait for the foul smell of festering milk to envelop the office. Have a nice glass of squash. Remember the good old days before polystyrene cups and third degree burns... before we were forced to drink water out of plastic pop-up nipples... when the only choice was between Mars and Twix. When tomato sauce sachets splurged all over your fingers and like totally not your ...errr food - Fuck it, that still happens.


Richard Vlietstra 12:29


My favourite line from that reply: " Blame office idiot (unless thats you)."

Excellent!

Richard Kershaw 12:30

I would suggest changing the entire office around so that the stain is relocated by somebody else's desk - solving the problems of bad feng shui and possibly redirecting the blame at someone senior enough not to get bollocked for it

Nick Gadsby 12:38

Who do you think we are? Women's weekly household tip specialists? Um, in the past I've tried those spray on &scrub out carpet stain remover jobbies, but get this THEY DON'T WORK.

Um, cut a square of carpet to match said area, preferably from somewhere inconspicuous in the office eg inside the stationary cupboard. Cut out stained area to same size, gently slot in fresh unstained carpet and hey presto. No.

Hire a professional carpet cleaner person with a very expensive dyson.

Michelle Kilfoyle 12:23

i dunno anna maybe you should have a go with Boot's hair lightening kit. i remember the time (the morning of my last A-level exam) when i thought it would be clever to get up extra early on the morning of my last A-level exam to touch up my fuschia-coloured streaks and bam.. down fell a large splodge onto my parents' pale pink bathroom carpet. didn't have time to sort it out before going to school, so instead of rejoicing with glee at the handing in of the said exam paper, i solemnly trudged home contemplating my imminent bollocking. after the bollocking i then spotted the aforementioned hair lightening kit and applied some to the stain. and magic! it worked! ... (actually i've probably told you this story before..) so you could have a go with your coffee stain and see what happens...

Katie Jane Anderson 12:56

lick it up

Daniel Bates 15:36

Sunday, 16 November 2003

get your Purse:

Admittedly I was thrilled to see an un-airbrushed, bruised&beautiful newly renamed Brody Dalle on the front of Kerrang’s October 4 issue. It’s not every week that EMAP’s flimsy metal mag has an excuse to photograph a worthy female RAWK st*r for the cover. It’s just a shame that they then have to cheapen the credibility of the main feature, promoting the Distillers’ new album, by noticing that *WOW* there are other women in the industry not making pop music 21 other ladies This predicable selection are patronised in a 5-page spread (how generous), which embarrassedly blows away the cobwebs from the K! photo library’s token girl files (EYE CANdy). Shirley Manson and the Donnas are profiled next to Drew Barrymore and Dita von Teese in an assortment comprising indie-porn pin-ups and writers alongside musicians. The feature simply highlights the cultural anachronism which is women’s too-often-compromised place in the macho metal scene. As long as publications such as K! continue to lazily compile annual ‘women in rock’ issues, women will remain marginalized and discouraged.
CANNOT IDOLIZE OWN generation
(FEMALE-FRONTED BANDS ARE THE NEW ROCK’N’ROLL).
Brody herself has prematurely been branded an Icon by a soundbite hungry press.
THE PRESS RELEASE MADE ME DO IT What makes an Icon? one Warner album release, one magazine cover, one marriage, one divorce, one tour…? Is the Icon a made or a found thing? The word has become another pointless cliché for writers to label their subjects with, its meaning diminished through over- and irrelevant use. In Brody’s case, to elevate her into Iconography is to deny her unique voice by valuing her uncompromising image over everything else. Before The Distillers’ single gets any radio airplay objectify her body, film her life story as video for MTV2 (lasting 3 punk rock minutes), use her CD as a coaster and the case as an ashtray.

Friday, 10 October 2003

wow, have u heard of…

being SpikE Jonze: a top 4
Before the indie skate-vid hero Spike Jonze went all Hollywood and award-winning and genre-defying Filmmaker the only awards he was getting were for 3½-minute music clips. STORYTELLING He paid the rent with these MTV-revolutionising pop videos, eschewing the standard dance routine/lip sync format for the delights of the short film. Scratch the surface and you see a careful dissection of middle American popular culture which references everything from the geographical centre of small town life by filming bjork stomping down Main St USA to Hollywood by choreographing a Christian dance troupe outside a movie theater.
OH YEAH In the meantime he was shooting knee-busting throat-cutting (SIC) skater shorts, live action footage and proto-jackass CKY stunts. Skilful.
subjective list/my favourites
1. Daft Punk ‘Da Funk’ (1997/8) in which the track is relegated to a mere hum on a teen-puppy’s beat box. In this miniature snatch of NY street life we learn all we’ll ever need to know about the existential predicament of a teenage New York canine with a love of French disco-pop. As the dog hobbles around the downtown streets on a crutch we see him discriminated against and ostracised, not because of his ostensible bestiality but because of his plastered, crippled foot. Not his most influential work, but the most challenging.
This came later: Roger Sanchez ‘Another Chance’
2. Chemical Brothers ‘Electrobank’ (1997) At the height of big beat Jonze transferred the ‘Dig your own Hole’ filler to soundtrack a tense gymnastics tournament showdown starring Future Wife Sofia Coppola. Will she or won’t she land safely? The Chems make a cameo, briefly glimpsed inside the high school trophy cabinet in a portrait of 2 award-winning basketball jocks. Totally rad and, tragically, scarcely broadcast.
3. Puff Daddy & Family ‘All About the Benjamins’ (Rock Remix feat. Dave Grohl) (1997) an early appearance by a teenage Lil’Kim makes this one worth tracking down. In one fell swoop she transforms from pretty prom queen in pink taffeta to smut-lipped rapper in black leather. What’s a high school prom got to do with Puff Daddy’s dollar-praising business (rap) core? Who cares.
4. Weezer ‘Buddy Holly’ (1995) these weirdo emo geeks constantly belie their miserable image with witty and memorable promos. ‘Happy Days’ have never been so sad.

Others: the Pharcyde ‘Drop’, Sonic Youth ‘100%’, Breeders ‘Cannonball’, Bjork ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’. What have I forgotten? Remind me.

Saturday, 4 October 2003

BETTER ON PAPER

believe in me, i believe in you

(not the blog) Small Town Flirt #1 (autumn) – the nothing to say issue (print)

(about) Small Town Flirt is apathetic, un-ambitious, anxious, pretentious,
frightened of taking itself too seriously but would never say so … [those who
reveal that they don’t take themselves too seriously shouldn’t have too. STF
will never repeat that it doesn’t want to be taken seriously for fear of people
thinking that it’s too worried about what people think…]

In this way it is also a reaction against all those Bad Things and challenges
what our generation has come to represent. I once wrote about THE FIRST women OF
THE 21st CENTURY. I'm going to again. In the long term (you know how long
'nothing to say' took to materialise? well, longer than that) I am aiming to put
together a commentary on how young women are presented in (blahblah) The Media.
It often seems to me that the most overrepresented and overexposed section of
the population have little to do with how they are presented by the books the
films the magazines the newspapers that exploit their youth and beauty. Really.

STF my little bloid-zine...
bloid-zine: part [ta]bloid in its small word-count and reactinary opinions.
part-zine: written in the same DIY staple'n'paste spirit & with the faux-naïveté
of the 'zines of old. let's RIOT.

(insides)
‘i’d like to thank my stylist’: news report on a new trade union for
fashionistas.
coming of age in the public eye: how to become a woman
you're not my mommy
that charming man: pete retires from indie scene (EXCLUSIVE)
michelle on the lost art of letterwriting
small town shirt: nick on cave-painting and charles saatchi
pitch for a column: my letter to various magazine editors asking them to give me
a column
saralee - my style icon: me and sl ‘in conversation’ about clothes.
top 5… videos… songs…actions... indulgent

(how) by the end of this week STF will really really exist. if you want a copy
email me back. most of you know that you'll inevitably have one shoved into your
hand while you're trying to hold a gin&t refrescante and a fag, so not to worry.
everyone else you know what to do.

xSxTxFx
Anna-Marie Editrix

annamarie@smalltownflirt.co.uk

Thursday, 11 September 2003

HOP, SKIP & A WEEK

ever watched sex & the city while drunk? samantha's new bitch is hot. burger go home. carrie: we love you. miranda: you are my laura on TV. charlotte & harry? made me cry.
that's SATC while drunk then.