The power of fashion

Clothing is an incredibly powerful tool. It allows you to control what people think of you and how they see you.

I love clothes, dressing up, playing with them. But Fashion has never really been my thing. There is something that has bothered me though about participating in the "fashion industry" as a consumer.
Given my opening statement I feel like the fashion industry has missed the point. Clothing should be about the person wearing it, not the item itself and definitely not the designer. If that's the designers goal they've missed the point and they haven't done their job. If they have done their job the reaction to someone wearing their clothes should be "wow, that woman/man looks phenomenal" , not "wow that's a phenomenal outfit/dress". No one wants to be upstaged by their clothing.
So the entire concept of models being invisble, walking coat hangers and the push for them to be so thin and blank that they meet that requirement is just the designers way of trying to wrest that control from the models and even more importantly, from their customers. Which is counter intuitive and the exact reason that something like lingerie (looking at you VS) is marketed completely differently. Because where high end designers can claim that their customers want their clothes to be recognised for their label, for a status symbol of their social position, you definitely don't want to be standing in front of your beloved in lingerie and for them to say "wow, that's a gorgeous garter". If they're looking at the clothes, they've missed the point.Even in the case of wearing gorgeous lingerie, as I do, simply because you know you're wearing it and that makes you feel you amazing, I'm still wearing it for how it makes me look and feel, not about the lingerie itself or who makes it.

So, though I think there are gender struggle issues at play as well that I'm not going to get in to this time around, I think that this inherent mismatch between the fashion industries market and marketing techniques speaks a lot more of the way that the industry itself views its customers. While its distributed argument for the exceptionally unrealistic body expectations put on its representatives is that it makes the clothes look better, hang better, and my personal favourite, that if models are heart crushingly skinny their body won't interrupt the lines of the clothes. Sweety, darling, if you're a designer who can't take into account women's (or even men's) genetically designed proportions then you need to find a new career. Humans, though the range of measurement does vary widely, it is not infinite. Humans are human shaped! If you can't design clothes that look good on someone that is inherently human shaped, seriously, get a new career because you're doing it wrong. Because, as I've already pointed out, the clothes aren't the point. The point is how they make ME look. Not how I make them look or how they look irrespective of me. If you're designing clothes that don't look good with some belly under them or draped over a rounded thigh then I don't want to wear your clothes anyway, status symbol or not. All that I think when I see someone wearing clothes that look 'meh' on them but I know they're such-and-such designer is that the person has more money than style and I definitely am not inspired to emulate that.

Girl or Grrrl?

I saw Kathleen Hanna.

A couple of weeks ago Kathleen was out here with The Julie Ruin. I've wanted to see Kathleen since I was about 15 and came upon the entire Riot Grrrl scene. It was well and truly over by this stage. In fact I was in Kindergarten when Bikini Kill formed and not even in my teens when they called it quits. But as many young women have discovered since that time the ethos is still incredibly relevant and I often lamented the fact that I had "missed that golden era" where people yelled "girls to the front" at shows and there were women active in the scene that you could identify with.

Still over the years I have often identified myself as a riot girl. Did you notice the spelling? It's not a mistake and here's why:

I identify with and support the idea behind the Riot Grrrl movement, I grew up listening to punk rock and only started to feel excluded by the scene when it became obvious there were gaping holes of issues that weren't being addressed and funnily enough these were all issues that women face in our society. Now, you could argue that the men in these bands don't feel like it's their right to discuss these things and sure, perhaps it would be better to seek out women who are doing that themselves and invite them to play with them. But this doesn't stop them from speaking out on other issues of prejudice or persecution that they themselves don't necessarily face (and thank goodness it doesn't) so this doesn't really explain it.

Don't get me wrong, there was a lot wrong with the Riot Grrrl scene as well, for starters it wasn't particularly intersectional or inclusionary, at least not from what I read (I wasn't there, remember).

I'm getting off topic however. I identified as a riot girl as I identified with the ethos. However, I have continually used the "traditional" spelling because to me personally it made more sense.

Grrrl, for me identifies as a few specific things. It relates specifically to those bands and women involved in the Riot Grrrl scene in the 1990's (for which I was way too young), it relates to women who identify as being something a-typical to the usual "girl", as used by some members of the LGBTIQ community and while I'm a staunch supporter, I identify as a straight, cis female (with all the privilege that entails) and so this didn't seem right to me.

Finally, I don't believe that the word "girl" is in any way an insult. It is often used as a slur, to be insulting or infer naïveté. I was never taught that there was anything wrong with being a girl, so I have no problem owning my girlhood, even as a woman. As such I want to see the word girl used more, in positive ways, in ways that imply strength, intelligence, creativity and compassion.

I'll leave you with something that sums up how I came to take pride in the label 'girl'.

When I was younger my dad played AFL which meant my family often went to the football. At one of these games my mum and I were sitting in front of a group of rowdy guys. At one point, they were heckling, as you do at the footy, and one of them yelled out "you kick like a girl".

My mum turned around slowly, looked the guy dead in the eye and said quite calmly "is that supposed to be an insult?"

He didn't say anything and I can guarantee he never used that line again.

The Art of Songwriting

I'm a firm believer in the craft of the creative arts. That is that while the creative spark, the idea, the concept is one of imagination and spontaneous generation, I believe that to fully realise that idea there are tried and trusted methods of transferring that idea in order for it to reach its maximum impact.

Basically, you can have whatever idea you want but unless you know how to make people understand it then it will never be as great as it could have been, and we humans have a pretty set way of comprehending the world. We take things in through particular methods that we have developed over a millennia of trial and error. This is the reason that we write, that languages exist and that when we are confronted with any sensory input be it words on a page, music from a speaker or pictures on a billboard, our minds process all of that input in ways that have developed to allow us to spend as little time as possible on anything that doesn't further our survival.

If you're so inclined you should check out Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff. It has nothing to do with the creative arts but it does a hell of a job explaining how the human brain processes ideas, and how understanding this can assist in convincing people to buy things from you.

I believe this idea applies to the creative arts though. It's why painters study nature, colour and technique. Why writers study form and structure of language. Because if you want to make people feel, see or think about something the way that you want them to you need to understand how they go about doing these things.

To this end, when I realised that the thing I was meant to do with my life was music (not be a lawyer like the majority of my other high-achieving friends) I decided that if I was going to do it, I was going to know all about it and do it deliberately and with focus. I set about learning the art of songwriting.

I would have loved to have picked up my life, moved to Boston and enrolled at Berklee College of Music but I simply didn't have the money to do something like that.

So I set about self-educating.

The next best thing to being at Berklee is doing their online courses. However this still posed an issue as it wasn't a whole lot cheaper, well it was, but I still couldn't afford $1200+ per course.

So instead I went through every online songwriting course on the Berklee site, dug out their list of textbooks, and then visited book depository to place my order. I have slowly made my way through most of them now and while it probably hasn't been as efficient or intensive as the full courses I hope that I have managed to learn the majority of the content for a fraction of the price. All up I believe that the books cost me about $150.

I've attended workshops and conferences whenever possible (see my previous post about Song Summit) and when at a Pat Pattison workshop about a year ago he mentioned that he would be doing a free online course for Coursera I jumped online and signed up for the first one.

Berklee Online have graciously delivered a few other courses to the MOOCS platform, including intro to guitar, and music production, jazz improvisation, and musicianship.

I'm currently doing my second round of the songwriting course and am still finding a huge amount of value in it. 

Low maintenance girly nails

Now in my previous morning post I mentioned that I am not lazy. At least this is the delusion that I'm labouring under. I do however aim to keep my life as low maintenance as possible which means that I tend to drop a lot of the more difficult preening rituals that have become attached to being female.

A key one of these is nails. Now my flatmate is amazingly dedicated, a master nail-lista if you will.

Some of her amazing creations:

I however, have neither the patience, nor the dedication to build up the skills to do anything nearly as impressive. I also don't have the budget to get my nails done professionally which would be my other option. Enter the best nail cheat sheet since fake nails:

Pre-formed nail polish strips.

Not stickers mind (or nail "wraps"), I've tried these as well and they last about an hour before tearing or smooshing up, at which point I get annoyed and pull them off.

I've tried a few versions. The best things for me were that there's no dry time so I can't smudge it (which I ALWAYS do when I paint my own nails), the finish looks professional and it lasts about as long as a salon job. Also, unlike fake nails it's just nail polish, no glue, so no damage to the actual nail.

I came across the Manicare Glamnails strips a few years back. From memory I think they were even on sale then, perhaps they were ahead of their time but I thought they were awesome. Eventually they were discontinued and I began buying up as many packs as possible when I saw them on sale. 

They were easy to apply, they looked pretty much flawless even with my terrible handiwork and the best part was they lasted until they grew out. Technically I think they state "up to 14 days" or something but they lasted way longer and it took quite a while for them to even start to crack.

If you look closely at the above photos you can see how much they've grown out while barely cracking or chipping. This suits me as I can't be bothered doing this more than about once a month (if that) and these seems to last about that long until they start to look raggy. 

The other issue with painting my nails is that I'm constantly cutting them short to allow me to play guitar and I can actually cut my nails with these on and the edges rarely chip. Pretty impressive in my book, see above re: low maintenance.

So when these began to be hard to come by was about the time that I came across the Sally Hansen versions. They were more expensive, even ignoring that I got most of the Glamnails ones on sale, but Sally Hansen is a renowned nails brand so I figured they'd be worth the money. I have to say, I was more excited by the designs available as this wasn't really an option in the Manicare ones. However, I wasn't as impressed with the result. While they were definitely just as easy to apply and claimed about the same shelf life, I found that these ones began to crack through after just a day or two and the more they crack the more they chip and flake off. If you're the kind of person that wants to change their nail polish regularly this probably isn't an issue and overall they did last as expected, only really starting to look shabby over the week mark but for my reasons for using them I wanted them to be very hard wearing and they just didn't quite get there. This for me is the main benefit of the product, a salon like finish that is cheaper than a salon and but lasts longer that normal DIY from a bottle. Given the higher cost of the Sally Hansen products compared to the Manicare ones I had been using I wasn't stoked.

This was about the time I tried a few of the sticker varieties. They failed on all fronts. I will say though that I occasionally still use the left overs when I tear a nail too far down the nail bed to trim, as the plastic nature of them can usually seal off the hang nail until it grows out enough and it stops me from causing myself constant pain from catching it on things. This is one area where nail polish doesn't cut it.

Now, lucky little thing that I am, just as I was starting to get to the bottom of my Glamnails stockpile Christmas rolled around and what did my nail-lista flatmate give me? A whole new option for nail polish strips. They are called Incoco and as it turns out they're actually the company that made the Manicare ones (if you look closely at the top pic you can see a little logo "Technology by Incoco").
I had been wondering about this because I couldn't figure out how the Manicare ones were discontinued when they were clearly a brilliant idea which many other suppliers were trying to get on board with.

They work and last exactly like the Manicare ones which essentially means they're high quality, low maintenance, exactly-how-I-like-it-thank-you-very-much-and-I-don't-have-time-to-do-my-nails-this-week-and-they'll-last-anyway-so-awesome-next-gig.

The Incoco ones that I got came from a little market store and they don't appear to come with a file like the other two packs do, which could be considered environmentally friendly (I mean, how many mini nails files does one person need?), and I have lots of them from all the packs I've used in the past, but there was something about being able to throw the pack whole into a travel kit and do my nails on the fly (anywhere from hotels to dingy pub bathrooms) without having to remember extra bits. I'm definitely going to invest in some more of the Incoco ones from the website next so maybe their full packaging includes a file. Either way it's of minor note.

So that's my cheat sheet for low maintenance girly nails with minimal fuss. Even I find them hard to mess up, they look great and last through the rock and roll ups and downs. 
(Oh yes, and Incoco ships to Australia!)

Happy polishing

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