Much Ado About Garbage Bags

These are strange economic times we live in. We are meant to be watching our dollars, buying investments rather than throw-aways, going all organic and green, simplifying and downsizing; and yet, there occassionally comes a moment that is really quite small, yet somehow so significant. Ok, that's a slight exaggeration, much like when fashion magazines claim baggy-crotch pants are hot, but sometimes little things stick with you as an indication of the times. Not surprisingly, my little epiphany came under the fluro lights of Coles (FYI, NEVER go there on a Thursday arvo when pensioners and bogans get 'paid'. It is a nightmare congestion of slacks, ugg boots, random children and painfully slow checkout lines).

Wandering down the cleaning aisle, I paused to ponder the best value garbage bags, as one must do in times like these, when I noticed a brand selling silver bags, so they can match your stainless steel kitchen. WTF?! The label had a picture of a lady looking as though all her dreams had come at once, and a quote 'I love my new designer kitchen, and now my garbage bags can perfectly match my stainless steel decor". WHO gives an arse about the colour of garbage bags??? I'm all for accessorising but if the biggest worry you have in your life is complementary waste disposal, then I wash my hands of you (but only if the soap colour matches the bathroom tiles).

Much like Posh Spice's $175k bag, it seems slightly vulgar. And a tad pathetic, much like our neighbour down the road who never fails to run out and get her garbage bins in the minute the trucks have rolled past. It's possibly sad that I know that she does, but they usually come by when I'm leaving the house. Actually I bet she adores colour-matched bin bags. I quite delight in leaving our bins out all day (oh the horror!) figuring it's a) a man's job to get them in, and put them out, hooray for sexism; and b) not a job worth mucking up my manicure for. Not that I have one, but just in case I did. The servants can do it, dahling!

Similarly, in this month's Madison there's a lovely lifestyle spread on a gorgeous family home in Sydney, but after earlier features on crime and disaster, it seems a bit odd to note on one picture "Mrs. X reclines on her leather pouf, her dress complementing the antique vase on the sideboard" (not quite those words, but it was "dress matches furniture"). I know I dare not enter my living room unless my shoes match the carpet, and heaven forbid entering the kitchen in anything but perfectly toned silver! Though I could always use those garbage bags and make a stainless steel-esque frock in case of such an unmitigated fashion disaster.....

The Departure Lounge

Yes, i am changing the side info thingy thre ---------> to "almost daily" blog or something like that; being inspired everyday to write about something is bloody hard work! And, after collapsing in an exhausted heap yesterday and spending the afternoon in bed with cups of tea and the Flight of the Conchords dvd, I am under strict doctors orders to take it easy and spend a month sunning myself on Santorini. Admittedly I wrote that particular prescription but I do feel it would work wonders. At any rate, the "taking it easy" vibe is a definite for summer. Getting through winter on minimal sleep and eating mainly coffee and nuts (as in, cashews and the like) has done wonders for a sz 8 figure but not so much for my state of wellbeing. It'll be a tie-dyed yoga and wheatgrass summer, baby. Oh and speaking of which, well sort of, I have just been in Melbourne to do the Winter 09 buying (not as fun as you might think, in fact it is quite stressful, especially when taxi drivers leave you stranded in random outer suburbs and quite a long way away from the safe confines of the sleek showrooms one becomes accustomed to); and come Jan/Feb you'll be in for a treat, all the ranges so far have been fabulous. A lot of them have been focussing more on modern designs, rather than rehashing "vintage" over and over again, and GRAB in particular have done the best winter jackets, like, ever. Get in early for those, they are smokin' hot. Everything seems a bit more grown up for 09 as well, less ditsy prints and girly cuts, and more of the effortlessly cool, softly tailored looks with lots of sheer, lace and zips thrown in for good measure. Exciting!

Actually one of the best and worst things about going to Melbourne is the observations one can make in the airport/on the plane. You can always spot the departure lounge for the flight headed to Tassie, one doesn't even need to look at the screens to find the gates. Just follow eitehr an RM WIlliams hat, bogan tracksuit, loud swearing or the over-hairsprayed/too much eyeliner/cheap jeans crowd, and you'll be on the flight home in no time. You might also end up in Adelaide, but it's a nice place to visit. Luckily on my flights there and back I did not get seated next to any smelly/loud/annoying/talkative locals, but they were definitely there. Oh, boy were they there. Behind me in fact. One particualrly attractive oversized lady with token scraped back hairdo and cigarette tucked enticingly behind her over pierced ear had two kids who climbed over each seat to get to theirs and kicked the back of our chairs the whole way home. I ignored this, knowing that kids and travelling don't always mix well. What I couldn't ignore was this woman's ridiculously loud swearing, at everyone else and her poor kids, her comments that "there are problems with the landing gear, I know it, I know thats what it is" when we had to circle around the airport twice (a common occurence when descending into Launceston, the runway is short and pilots can overestimate it. Alot, apparently); her loud chattter to herself apparently about how she has a 26 hour flight to San Diego at the end of the year, we can only hope it's a one-way flight and pray in unison for the people who get stuck next to her; and her oversized carry on bag, possibly in proportion to herself which she left in the middle of the aisle halfway up the plane while she chased her kids; meaning everyone behind her had to wait around to get to their seats for like 5 minutes til she moved. OH MY GOD. There's always one, isn't there. At least it was something to amuse me, there's not a whole lot of scenery on a night time flight over Bass Strait. I did have the latest issue of Madison ready to devour but couldn't concentrate enough. No matter, I'll read it on my newly leisurely evenings off. Bliss.

Madison Mag: Brazilian Waxing is not for 14 year olds

There's a lot to get you fired in up the current, Green issue of Madison magazine: aside from the obvious hypocrisy of the fact that a glossy magazine is printed on the most anti-green commodity out there, paper, there's an article about tweens with personal shoppers, which also mentions Brazilian waxing. Disturbingly, this is printed under the "trend" section.

Before we get started, a few points: you can always get great all-round mag reviews over at Girl with a Satchel. Madison has this month interested and infuriated me so I'll be focussing on a few particular points only. Editor Paula Joye does a great job of addressing the inherent contradiction of printing a "Green" issue by stating that Madison is a media outlet with a duty and responsibility to inform and inspire. Fair point, especially considering that knowledge is the first step to power, and if we're going to be green, we need to be informed. There's a cute spread with "celebs" spouting all sorts of obvious but still useful go-green info - the best comes from comedian Tim Ross: "I don't wash my clothes, and I have a doona made of John Butler".

So, all this greenery makes you start thinking about taking responsibility, being more careful with the precious resources we have, and feeling guilty about consumerism. I don't know whether it's intentional or not but the fashion pages* consequently annoy me (mainly, the fugly as all fug Armani handbag on page 133 which costs $14,000 - I'm hoping this is a misprint. Presumably if it costs this much it wasn't produced by 5 year-olds in Vietnam, but then it's most likely made of real animal. Green, planet-friendly and responsible? Not really. And man, it's ugly) and stories such as pg 92's "Are You Cooler than a Fourth-Grader?" are thus made all the more poignant.

I have a daughter and I love shopping for her. So, in some respects I can understand why the New York advertising exec mother (naturally) in this story likes to spoil her 9 year old - it's fun, and a type of expensive bonding experience. However, her daughter has a team of personal stylists and shoppers, at a going rate of $650 per day. They "make it easy" to find the perfect outfits for back-to-school, parties, and whatever else it is that 9 year olds do. Like play. No, not that. Apparently, personal care products for teens and tweens nowadays are worth $8.5 billion in the US. Ok, so I read all that, and just sort of scoff at how ridiculous Americans are (though the whole tween industry in Aus is projected tor each $10 billion next year), and how surely people have better things to spend money on, and how these kids are going to grow up totally bratty without backbone nor brain cell. THEN I read the most disturbing part of the article, beneath the bit about 12 year olds with more makeup then their teenage babysitters and Nair's Pretty hair removal line, aimed at 10-15 year olds: the website girl.com.au, apparently the number 1 website for girls aged 9-14, ran a feature on Brazilian waxing, stating that "nobody really likes hair in their private regions...it has a childlike appeal". Stop, stare, re-read. Oh. My. God. Thankfully, this line has since been deleted from the site, but the point is: somebody put it there in the first place. Somebody thinks private hair removal is appropriate for primary-school aged kids. None of my friends even shaved their legs until we were in year 7. And it was probably not until year 9 or 10 when you start wondering about giving those sideburns a trim before swimming in PE. No wonder girls these days (listen to me, it was only a decade ago I was 14, and thinking more about Clearasil rather than pubic waxing) have an alraming rate of eating disorders and low self-esteem. When you are a child, and you're told by that most influential force in your information-soaked life, that your child like looks are not good enough, that nobody who's anybody should look like or want to look like a child, what are you going to do? You're an impressionable pubescent already uncomfortable with your changing body and emotions, and to be told things like this, and think it's normal?! As you can see, it completely freaked me out. If our kids are taught to be embarrassed by normality, uncomfortable with themselves and always being told they can be better, what hope will the planet have when we put it in their hands? Ben Lee's enviro-quote on page 61 perhaps gives us a good starting point: "I am interested in creating social change in a positive way...". Social change is going to go hand-in-hand with the massive lifestyle and environmental changes we are slowly beginning to make. Is our culture and our society able to change, or have we become so self-absorbed with ourselves, our looks and our posessions that we won't be able to handle learning to take less, use less, and respect more?

Hats off to you, Madison, for creating an issue that encourages us to do that most dangerous and worthwhile of activities: to think.

*Yes they need fashion pages in a glossy magazine or it wouldn't sell. There's a great story on pg 138 "The Green Fashion House Effect", profiling eco-friendly designers such as Stella McCartney, but Madison falls a little short of practising what it preaches, on the surface. It's like the Green part of the issue (which is a good 2/3, thankfully) is just there for the sake of it, and then the rest can revert back to good old-fashioned selfish indulgence. Without meaning to sound harsh, this is honestly the feeling I get from this issue, and usually I quite enjoy Madison. How can you print pictures of the devastated Styx Forest, and then really give a stuff about the latest "it" eye shadow? In this instance then, Madison has done it's job of opening up one's eyes to the real issue at hand. 'Cos, you know, I love makeup and pretty sparkly things as much as the next female. The fact I don't care to read about them in this issue means the most important message has come through loud and clear.