What's it with all those shoes?

How come everyone, including the people that make ads and commercials, thinks women are completely, absolutely addicted to shoes? Why not clothes (eh, okay)? Why not books?

I’ve often wondered about that. It seems a given that a woman might own a few more pairs of shoes than a man, simply because her clothes may be more varied (not me, I have some sneakers for good weather, some ankle-high leather sneakers for bad weather, and some boots for winter/snow). A woman with a more varied wardrobe than mine might need some different pairs of shoes. To go with dresses and skirts, to go with pants, for winter and summer use. Even so, in most cases that would be what? Ten pairs? Twelve? Fifteen? Even if she has some shoes that only go with one outfit (because they’re colour matched), she would also have pairs that go with a variety of outfits (black pumps, for example, go with nearly every dress - and pants as well). Even if she also has shoes with various heel heights, she could hardly fill a whole wardrobe with them, could she?

Yet marketing people and screen writers (both for the big and the small screen) seem to think that every woman is at every time hunting down new shoes. Why? What would be the use of having two hundred pairs of shoes? You’d never wear them all. There would be at least one hundred pairs that you never wear or so rarely you could just as well not have them. (The same, in my opinion, goes for clothes, but they’re not the main topic.)

The woman who will do everything for shoes has become a trope by now. I, personally, think that “Sex and the City” is to blame, since at least one of the main characters had a serious shoe addiction. It might also be to blame for the many women who think that you should always wear high heels, despite the terrible things they do to your feet and body. Not to mention how often I have seen women hobble along in those shoes and thought ‘what made you think wearing those heels was a good idea?’

Heels on women’s shoes have been a little raised for a long time (since it became a fashion item for women to wear heels, the first heeled shoes were actually worn by men). But a little raised means an inch or two, not eight, ten, or twelve inches. Personally, I don’t wear heels at all, I usually wear flat shoes, but I don’t think wearing slight heels is that bad for a person’s health.

Women’s shoes come in a lot more variety than men’s shoes and that is not a surprise. But that doesn’t mean every woman wants or ‘needs’ to own a pair each of all the shoes out there. Yet you will find a lot of commercials which only seem to rotate around the fact that women always want shoes and can never get enough of them. And that’s outright stupid and might only make young women think they have to be like that to be ‘real’ women.

A strange post from me

If you have read more than this post here in my blog, you will probably realize I never wrote about ‘women’s products’ (not meaning sanitary towels or tampons here) before. I’m not what you would call vain and I have no problem at all going out without makeup of any kind. However, I have a certain obsession: Nail Polish.

It all started during my teens, when I started doing my own nails (first with my mum’s nail polish, later with some I bought myself). At that time I experimented with a lot of makeup, though. And yes, sometimes (make that often, from today’s POV) I looked like a clown had run amok in the bathroom while I was in it. I’ve never really mastered the art of doing a good makeup, may it be foundation, eye shadow, lipstick, blush, mascara, or anything else you can name. And, if you are female, chances are high you can name more makeup products than I can. Nail polish was the only thing that stayed. I do have a collection of makeup products in my bathroom, but most of it stems from my teens. I have a couple of lip glosses I wear whenever the weather is terrible in winter and I remember them in time (i.e. before I leave my flat). I have a concealing pencil, but I rarely remember using that, either. And I have a big and varied collection of nail polish.

Why the nails? Well, first of all, I had a bad habit of chewing on my nails as a kid. Sometimes, when I’m immersed in reading a story or watching a movie, it might still happen today (usually with my left thumb nail). I don’t chew when my nails are lacquered. So a regular nail polish was enough to put me off chewing, much less expensive than that specialized polish with the very bad taste. However, I have mostly conquered my habit (except for a high dose of suspense), so why do I still have that much nail polish these days?

Well, I love the texture of lacquered nails. I even like that slightly chemical smell they have. I like the way my fingers look, especially with a dark polish. I don’t really mind whether it’s glossy or creamy polish and I usually don’t do anything too special with my nails, such as French Manicure. I just like my nails covered by nail polish. During my late teens and early twenties, I experimented with a lot of colours, from regular red, rose, pink, or white to (then) less regular colours like deep velvet, blue, or green. Some weeks, I like a pale nail polish, just a sheen on my nails. Other weeks, I’m in the mood for a strong red. Then there are weeks when I pull out my old blue polish, because I’m in mood for something more unusual.

Length usually isn’t a problem, though. My nails aren’t as tough as my mum’s (I pity the fool who wants to attack her, they’re in for a painful surprise), but I type a lot and that makes them grow more quickly than normal. I love keeping my thumb nails long, for reasons even I can’t explain. And I don’t like those overly square nails you see today … I want the edges a bit more rounded, so I do my own unprofessional manicure. And even though the shape of my nails isn’t ideal, I still like having lacquered nails. They fascinate and amuse me for relatively little money.

I doubt there’s a nail polish user anonymous group out there and I’m not ashamed of my nails, either. Yet, this was a highly unusual post for me.

Update on my crusades

The fact alone that I have kept quiet for quite a while does not mean I did not follow my two crusades: “Killerspiele” and “Size 0”.

In Germany, the discussion about “Killerspiele” has died down quite a bit lately. We’re not close to any important election and there have been no big amok runs lately (and that’s very good). So there’s no initial reason for politicians or the media to pull the “Killerspiele” back into the limelight.

Still, we are missing a balanced discussion about computer games in Germany. Most people who are not playing themselves know next to nothing about them. Luckily, though, the number of people playing computer games has risen with the growing area of the casual games (which I, personally, like as much as I like ‘real’ computer games for seasoned gamers). There has never really been a documentary or infotainment program that would cover the whole of computer games (except for a special on MTV which only very few people above the age of forty or so would have seen).

So I still want the politicians to realize that a) computer games are not inherent evil and b) the age restriction labels could be twice as big and still wouldn’t work as long as the people at the shops don’t take them seriously.

There has been a lot of talk about “Size 0” last year, when a couple of models died because of their super-thin bodies. Every glossy magazine suddenly claimed to make sure the model on the front page was not unnaturally thin. Every fashion designer suddenly claimed their models were naturally that thin. Of course, that wasn’t the truth.

So far, though, only very few magazines and fashion weeks have really put a stop to the “Size 0”- and “Size 00”-trend. Spain is the only country I know of which currently bans models below a certain BMI from fashion shows and front pages. “Brigitte”, a well known German women’s magazine, has taken to put ‘average’ women on the cover and also avoids the super-thin models.

But if you take a look at the fashion shows, you will still see models that look far too thin (even on screen when you’re supposed to look fatter than you are) to be normal.

Once upon a time a model was supposed to show women of average build what a dress would look like on them. These days a model shows women of average build what they should look like … possibly a few hours before they die.

Update on Crusade "Size 0"

Before the year ends - and I stop bitching until the 2nd of January next year - I will give you an update on my crusades and other interesting topics. So be careful: Bitching ahead!

About my first crusade - "Size 0".

Still, whenever I look at the glossy magazines in passing, there's a thin model on the cover.

And I wonder why. Various models have actually died during the last year, because they had to be too thin to get work. More and more girls (and boys by now) get bulimic or anorexic - and some of them will do real damage to their bodies or even die. And the actresses of Hollywood slowly start to resemble zombies - even when they're not working for a horror movie. Scratch that, I've seen zombies with more decomposing meat on their bones than some of those actresses and nearly all of those models.

It seems as if someone has taken that stupid proverb about a woman never being "too rich or too thin" to the extreme. Unfortunately it has been someone who's got the power to actually enforce that female role model.

The distance between "what a woman looks like" and "what a woman should look like" (as dictated by the fashion magazines and designers) is getting bigger and bigger. While, in all so-called 'first world' countries, women and men are getting heavier (not healthy, too, I know), the magazines and designers in the same countries are designing 'fashion' (if something next to nobody outside the 'business' can wear, can be considered fashion) that will never, in a million, zillion years fit those people.

Girls physically 'age' faster than in the past. When I was a teenager, I started looking like a woman around the age of 14 or 15. When my mother was a teenager, she started looking like a woman around the age of 15 or 16. Today girls start to look like women around the age of 12. Mentally, of course, those girls aren't grown women, but they look the part and are easily mistaken for adults. And, like all kids that age, they want to be seen as adults and use that.

But while girls are physically growing up a lot faster than before, fashion designers make it 'chic' to look like a pre-pubescent girl, even if you happen to be 29 already. The woman in fashion isn't a woman with all the curves and shapes that meant once. It's an androgynous creature, a little girl playing an adult, a being that could, with different clothes, easily pass for a teenage boy.

This seems to be what men want - or at least what the fashion industry thinks men want: a little girl. I won't say men today are paedophiles, because that would be wrong, but what they seem to want isn't a grown up, self-assured partner. What they want is a little girl that will look up at them and find everything they do and say awesome.

Of course, that's not what all men want. But, at least to a certain degree, it's an ideal a lot of men seem to be able to live with.

Fashion and beauty ideals were always dangerous. Women would even take poison to get that 'in' look (while paleness and wasting-away were 'in'). But the trend fashion has today, is far more dangerous, because more people subscribe to being 'trendy' than in the past.

What about my crusades?

Currently there isn't much moving with either of my crusades. "Size 00" still exists, but there haven't been any special things happening. And, of course, the politicians still debate about "Killerspiele," but with no lasting success.

That doesn't mean I have forgotten about them. But there's no point in writing long posts about them as long as nothing moves.

But nevertheless here's a short update on both topics:

"Killerspiele" are not the major issue at the moment, but the politicians still have no idea what they are talking about, that much is obvious. There has been a discussion as to whether or not put more games into the category of "18+," but that's rather stupid: most games they are talking about are already "18+." The problem is not how the games are categorized, the problem is whether or not the games are only sold to people of the right age.

Just as with alcohol or cigarettes, vendors usually do not ask for the age of the person buying computer games. That's not a problem when it comes to "6+" or "12+" games. But there's games "16+" and "18+," games that should not be sold to people beneath those ages.

Currently, there's actually a huge discussion about the government sending in children to buy alcohol - to check whether the vendors actually sell alcohol to people beneath 18 (which is the new limit for buying any alcohol in Germany). But where was that discussion when TV-stations sent out children to buy computer games - to show how easy a child could get "Killerspiele?" It's one thing when the government lets children buy alcohol (which, of course, they don't get to keep, but is taken from them immediately). It's another thing when a company that's at least nominally not part of the government does the same thing with computer games (as they only do it for a documentary or a report). Not to the media, obviously. Maybe the editors and reporters always sent out their own children to buy them alcohol and don't want that to stop... But I can't prove that, so it's just a theory.

"Size 0" and "Size 00" still exist, too. And there's still loads of women out there who either really thin down to wear those sizes or at least try everything to make it. I personally rather find it scaring, to be honest.

It's one thing to go for a healthy weight, to keep in shape and do sports moderately in order to keep fit. But thinning down to a weight normally associated with girl much younger, hardly eating anything and looking like a refugee from a third world country, that's not what I would call healthy.

And as long as there's still women's magazines (though I can hardly understand what's so great about them...) out there who show a thin model on the cover - and a diet to reach the same weight the model has on page 3 -, women will still try everything possible and impossible to reach that weight. Because, ultimately, those magazines suggest that "all will be perfect" the moment you reach that weight and can wear those clothes (provided you can afford them). You'll find the perfect guy, get the perfect job and live happily ever after. At least it was much easier for the princess once upon a time: the prince was doing all the work, after all. And she didn't have to be that thin either.

So you see, I'm still following my crusades, but there's an armistice right now, so I'll regroup and wait for the next battle.

Size Double Zero

People are strange sometimes - and some seem to be outright mad. As I've learned today, there's a new size out there: double zero. (By the way, in Germany 00 is a sign for the toilet ... think about the strange coincidence.)

The article with mentioned it, also mentioned a couple of really thin actresses who mostly have thinned down because of their husbands/boyfriends. That is something I would never do.

Those women are famous by their own rights (there were Keira Knightly, Angelina Joli, Terry Hatcher and some others mentioned), why should they even heed the commands of their boyfriends/husbands? It's not as if they would be left in poverty after getting a divorce.

And if a producer told me (provided I had a normal shape, which I haven't, admittedly) I had to get really thin, just because that's fashionable at the moment, I'd ask him to get a brain and a firm grasp on the concept of 'healthy' body shapes. It's not as if those women mentioned up there could not live off their money for the rest of their lives...

I've stated before that I don't see the point in "Size 0" - or in women looking like they'd just been found locked away in a basement for a couple of months without food. A woman is a woman and is - in my book - supposed to look like one. That means a female shape with some nice padding above the waistline (and I'm sure men would appreciate that, see post above for more details on the seedier sites of the net) and around their lower backside. It's what makes us women, damn it!

Yes, there are women around who are very thin by nature, but even they don't look as skeleton-like as the models and more and more of the actresses do these days. The way she looks now, for example, I don't want to see Angelina Joli as Lara Croft again. Lara has often been accused of not looking realistic, but she was never accused of being thin, either.

"Double Zero" is even more of a fallacy from my point of view. Women are reduced to little more - at least in looks and weight - than pre-pubescent girls. That's not 'girl power', that's rather power over girls (and women). A woman that unnaturally thin (as opposed to a woman naturally thin who will never look like that) is easy to control and to overpower. A woman that thin is not a strong woman, although she might think differently. She is caught either in a nightmare of her own (like a lot of people with eating disorders are), then she needs professional help. Or she is caught in the dreams of people who don't want her best (like actresses or models that have to heed to their producers or designers dreams), then she should free herself from those restrictions.

Yes, in a way you could even say that "Double Zero" is a proof of the fact that feminism still hasn't really caught on... What a shame.

I've not forgotten about "Size 0"

Admittedly my two crusades have been taking the back seat for quite a while. I've written something new about "Killerspiele" not too long ago, but I haven't commented on "Size 0" in ages.

The whole concept of "Size 0" still bothers me a lot, to be honest. I've never been thin (being normal-sized would be nice, though) and I've never wanted to be either - rather unlike a lot of women.

Whenever I see a woman - or more often a young girl - with a good figure saying things like "I really need to loose some more weight, I'm still too fat" I want to jump into the TV (or whatever) and ask "Where the hell do you want to loose weight? Your brain?". That was bad even while I was still a teenager myself, but over the last years, with the blasted "Size 0" and the actresses getting thinner and thinner, it has gotten even worse. I really pity girls these days, their role-models are a lot thinner than those I grew up with - and even they weren't what became of me.

The modern means of manipulating pictures make it even worse, of course. In the past a photograph was, more or less, a precise picture of the object (or person) on it. "The camera doesn't lie" they said - and it was true then. What the lens saw was what you got.

Even then a picture could be manipulated, but then it meant a lot of work - quite usually with a pair of scissors - and a good chance people would see it had been manipulated. Then the computer came and with it - rather soon, at least for those using the Mac - the possibility to manipulate graphics. By now a lot of rather cheap programs can do the same stuff only high-quality, very expensive programs for specialists could do. In other words even I can manipulate every picture to the extreme, if I want to.

I know that, so I don't trust the pictures in the glossy magazines. I know the models there aren't that perfect. I know a specialist has been at work with them, has removed every imperfection the model might have had, has made her look even slimmer and less like an 'ordinary' human being. But the young girls who buy the magazines and want to look like the models don't know. They really believe a human being could look that perfect. And so they diet, they visit the solarium, they spent time, money and quite often health trying their best to look like that - and they can't make it.

Today nobody really knows what will become of this trend. It will, in some cases, take years until the effects on the health and lives of the young girls can be seen. One thing seems sure, though: it's not really healthy. Neither is being overweight like I am, of course, but there's no fashion model making people think being that heavy is fashionable.

"Size 0" should not be worn by grown - or almost grown - women, no matter what fashion designers and the editors of glossy fashion magazines say.

Paris without an end

I would never have guessed I would one day write a post about Paris Hilton. It's not that I hate Paris Hilton - I don't care about her at all. But reading about her almost every day (although I only read the online news, usually) has made me want to comment on her.

From the very beginning I've never grasped the 'idol' that was Paris Hilton. She's rich, so what? She's an it-girl, so what? That's nothing other people aren't as well. Apart from being wherever the Paparazzi were, she never did anything important.

She has no talent for music, she can't act (at least not in a movie - see "House of Wax"). She's never done anything that would warrant the interest the public has in her life. But everywhere there's Paris: Paris going to a party, Paris getting arrested, Paris going to jail, Paris leaving jail, Paris going back to jail, Paris finally leaving jail again, Paris' old mobile number earning a young student loads of trouble. You just can't escape her.

I don't think Paris is as vain and empty as most people believe she is. She has been building up quite some fame - and quite some money for herself. You can't do that when you're stupid. So I suspect she acts like this on purpose, but is far more intelligent than she seems.

That doesn't really make it any better. Admittedly, we have a "prototype" of Miss Hilton in Germany, too. Verona Feldbusch (now Verona Pooth) also made a lot of money by making the people think she was stupid, but she never took it as far as Miss Hilton does. But then, she put up her act in Germany, we're less interested in what our celebrities do, on the whole. By now, she's happily married and has a son. She's still working in the public, but she has dropped most of the 'stupid girl'-act by now.

But Paris is different, by the way it looks. I doubt she'll grow out of her current reputation soon. And it's a shame, if you want my view. There's a lot of good things she could do, both with her money (as she'll inherit a lot of money from her parents one day anyway) and with her name. But she doesn't do it. She seems to be too wrapped up in her "naughty, little girl" idea to turn away from it. And thus she's wasting a good opportunity.

And I wish I could spent more than one day without reading something about Paris Hilton. It gets on my nerves!

Thin, Thinner ... Gone

For quite some time I thought it was just me, thinking the Hollywood-stars were getting thinner and thinner. But it seems I was right and not just delusional (well, at least about that, I've got loads of other delusions, after all), as the picture of Cate Blanchett above shows.

What I really wonder about is the reason. First the models who have to fit into Size 0 (here goes my Crusade again...), now the actresses too. What's the point in that?

I know they say you're looking fatter through the camera - and I wonder why, as the camera shows the reality, nothing more, nothing less. Maybe we perceive ourselves a bit thinner than we really are and the camera shows the truth? Who knows?

As you might have gathered from other posts I did in the past, I don't see the reason in Size 0 anyway. I don't think two pears on a wooden board make up a human body - especially not a female human body. And if modern fashion designers aren't able to design clothes for a normal-shaped woman, then they either have the wrong job or should learn how to do it.

The same goes for me whenever actresses are concerned (actors too, but usually they don't have to do it for nothing, they have to gain or loose weight for a special role and mostly that's justified). There are loads of different types of characters and so there should be just as many different types of actresses as well. But the only 'type' of actress you see these days is the super-thin one.

And because all the women in public (or at least most of them) are thin, 'normal' women think, they have to be as thin, too. Where does that lead? Sickness and death in really hard cases.

I've quoted this before: "A woman can never be too rich or too thin." I still don't get it. There's a line for everything, even wealth. What good would it do me to own all the money in the world? Nobody could make anything for me to buy then. So there definitely is a "too rich". And "too thin" for me starts when it's really making me sick. And nobody can tell me that the 'super-thin' models and stars really are healthy and will stay so until old age.

Even though "Bridget Jones" isn't my kind of movie, I liked the idea of a movie showing a woman with 'normal' proportions. A

nd I would like to see more 'normal' women in a Hollywood movie (Bollywood does it better, they still have all the types).

In the past Hollywood had some real 'sex goddesses' (even though I don't really like that term). But today? A woman like Marilyn Monroe would not even get through her first casting, she'd be "too fat" for a movie role. (But who really wants to see Gwyneth Palthrow do the scene on that ventilation grid?)

Sometimes when I look at the photographs of stars these days, I think "Are they all auditioning for a new zombie horror movie?" and other things along the line. The models and the stars don't look like living people, they rather look like the walking dead (but they move a bit better, probably because their brain is still working in most cases).

And there even is a "Skin and Bone Diet", it seems, reducing people to exactly that: a walking skeleton. I've seen zombies with more flesh on their bones, although it was rotting.

Honestly, who would want Lara Croft to look like that in her next movie?

I don't. And knowing the way most men - at least most young men - think, they won't either. So who's doing all the casting these days? The Lord of the Damned? I'm sure, even Dracula and Lucifer would prefer women with a little more flesh on their bones...

Everyone looks like a skeleton one day (after rotting in a casket for a few years), there's no reason to do it before dying!

A hairy problem

There's one thing about 'modern women' I simply don't get: The hair-thing.

What I mean is this: from the moment a woman sprouts hair anywhere except for her scalp, she's in trouble. There'll be decades of shaving or waxing ahead of her - or a long treatment with lasers to get the hair off once and for all.

What I don't really get, is the reason. Women have hair on their bodies, so what? It's not as if men shave everything as well (with some, you have to be happy if they remember to shave their chin...). Why does a woman have to go through shaving almost every week or two or waxing once a month? It's painful, it takes ages (especially if you're dark-haired like me and have hair growing almost everywhere) and there's no real use to it.

We all had a fur once - and the body hair we still have is a remainder of it. It doesn't really serve any purpose any longer (well, most of it, eyebrows and eyelashes are still useful), but it's not hurting us to have it either.

I can understand why the statues of Greek goddesses don't have body hair - it would have been quite difficult to sculpt them that way. But most statues of Greek gods don't have body hair either - for the same reason, I should guess. Ever since then - or maybe earlier - the female ideal of beauty has been hairless - at least in Europe. But all the time men have been showing off their body hair.

I personally am sick of shaving - and waxing with all the hair I have on my body? I'm not a masochist, if anything, I'm a sadist.

I really want to find the person who decreed women could only be 'real women' by taking off all that body hair - and drown him or her in a large pool of hot wax.

Digital Beauty

First of all: I've first seen this clip in a now defunct blog - actually the blog which inspired me to get one myself. It's not only defunct, it even has been deleted and the link now leads (or at least once led, I haven't checked it out in a while) to a website with sexual content. But I remembered this clip because it made me think "every young woman should see this clip, preferably before she hits puberty" then and it still does now.

The link to this clip actually was presented to me in a new thread of the "MangaSzene"-Forum, together with another one I will show as well, but at the bottom of this post.

The clip is titled "Dove Evolution" and, as you have probably seen, shows how much work, both in the 'real world' and the computer, is necessary to create the perfect image of today's models. The problem is: most women don't realize this.

They think that there's only some make-up and maybe the perfect lighting and that's that. The whole, rather new process of recreating the whole picture in the computer is something they don't know much about.

'Recreating in the computer' to them maybe means smoothing over a few pimples and correcting a few areas where the light wasn't optimal. But they would never think you could actually change the whole face, lengthen (or shorten, but to that, see the second clip) the neckline and, basically, rebuild the whole picture. Even I could do some of those things at home - and I'm neither a professional, as far as that is concerned, nor do I have some top-of-the-line professional software (my image processing software did cost me shocking 15 euros at the closest electronic market and, from my point of view, has been worth every cent).

That's, basically, what the new thread I mentioned is mostly about: the question whether or not our idea of 'beauty' is still realistic in a time when everything can be created in the digital world.

Well, 'beauty' was always a little bit unrealistic ... that's what images are all about, usually. Someone, a person, a painter, these days a programmer maybe sets a trend and everyone tries to follow it. Ever since Twiggy, the ultra-thin model of the Sixties, models have become thinner and thinner.

That is, I think, basically also because in the modern world, at least in those countries usually called the "First World", we have more than enough food, so very thin people are an exception. When, in the dawn of mankind, people rarely had enough to eat, they idolized fat women. In the western countries women with a slight Asian look are considered 'exotic' - in Japan women invest a lot of money to get their eyes 'opened' a bit more through surgery (so they look like someone from the west) and dye their black hair to look less Asian. In other words: Fashionable isn't as much 'fat' or 'thin', 'Caucasian' or 'Asian', but always 'exceptional'.

So, in a few years, there ought to be a backlash from all those super-thin models, provided enough women use everything at their disposal to get as thin as possible ... then the 'fat' women will be an exotic minority. (Well, a woman can dream, you know.)

But now to the second clip. It's called "slob evolution" and was linked in the same forum. As is often the case, there's at least one possible parody to every interesting movie you might find online. And as the "Dove Evolution" has had quite a lot of viewers, somebody created the complete opposite: how to turn a good-looking young man into the guy you get after having been married to that cutie for twenty years. It's shocking...