High Altitude Harbingers of Change

I last wore shoes like this when I was about 17. I remember red ones with a bow on the front, just like this sketch of mine. (Only there were no imps playing inside.) And I had some super-glam gold lamé ones. That is ‘lamé’ with an accent on the e to denote glittery fabric, which is now so out of fashion that you may not have heard of it. Without the accent you’ll think I’m writing ‘lame’ which is a whole different word. Although if you wear shoes like this for long enough you get quite lame quite fast.

I’m careful about confusion these days because I was interviewed by a journalist for Sunday magazine before Christmas for a story on optimism, and gave her a list of qualities which I thought were good to have if you wanted to live a cheerful life. I gave her words like gratitude, calm, playfulness etc and included civility in there. She wrote that down as servility. Just a little bit off the mark!

Anyhow, back to shoes. I note that in the fashion-show world, heels have never been thinner or higher than they are now. You too will have seen leggy models falling off the things on slippery runways. (Who knows why they’re called runways, because models lope, stride or teeter or but are rarely seen running. Shoes like this would, anyway, make that impossible.)

But given that it was the 1960s when heels were last like this, I begin to wonder whether women’s shoes and times of great change are not somehow connected. The last time girls wore stilettos was a pretty crazy period when old ways were crumbling and everything was shifting from post-war to new-era. And now, here they are again, just as everything seems new and challenging all over again. It’s as if the more uncertain the times, the higher the heel. I await the next few years with interest. Watch for women’s heels to go shorter and wider next year as the world strives for more balance and stability. Like the impish fellow on the slide, we are in for a ride.

Cheerleading for cellulite

It's raining here today - the first cool, grey day for a long time in a summer when we've equalled the highest Auckland temp ever recorded, back in 1872 or therabouts. Who knew there was anyone recording temperatures on this colonial shore that long ago? When it's over 32 deg C and humid as well, it feels like Singapore.
So today (when I've even had to put on socks for warmth!) there's no-one on the beach, not even any dogged dog walkers. And certainly no skinny gals in teensie bikinis. Welcome then to the kind of girl I'm happy to see on the beach any old time. She's my cheerleader for cellulite.
Someone this big is usually called obese. But let's hear it for women who are not those angular glowering colts who canter the runways at the world's fashion shows. Let us praise women who are full-bodied, rounded, laughing exemplars of beauty.
I've long despised the mantra, invented by the beauty industry, that insists women must do all in their power to get rid of cellulite or 'orange peel' thighs.
It seems we've forgotten that every society in history has admired young women who are slim of waist AND broad of hip - sure indicators (as they thought in ancient times) of a woman's ability to bear children.
Today's girls are filled with woe if they fail to possess lean and boyish thighs that, preferably, don't touch at the top. Once 'feminine' meant curvy. Now it means that most nebulous of terms, toned. Today's female body is now required to be thin, hard and sculpted. How bullied we are by the arbiters of style. Nothing wrong, I say, with flesh that's allowed to jiggle. Not a lot. But a little. Cellulite and all.

OBAMA'S BUBBLE CAR

It was a mighty fine day when Obama got inaugurated. Wahoo, we all went! Of course, the size of his task is already growing and growing - along with the dimensions of the new presidential limo. What a horrible vehicle, so very indicative of the grim and bloated condition that its maker, GM, is in. The media quickly dubbed it The Beast.
Apparently able to withstand attacks of the most grievous kind, The Beast shuts Obama off from the world so well that he might as well be in a submarine.
In olden times, emperors rode in open coaches or chariots so that their adoring people could see them. Of course, the downside of that, even in fairly modern times, has been that it's made even well-loved people horribly vulnerable to assassins. Viz Archduke Whatsit of Sarajevo and President Kennedy.
And now, Prez Obama lives in such a perilous world that he must be enclosed as often as possible inside bullet-proof glass. It is so thick, that glass, that during the great presidential parade it all but obscured the First Family. I think I spotted one of the girls, her profile so murky that it was like seeing her through green swamp water.
Apparently the president chafes at the bubble in which he must now live, and so has persuaded his minions that yes he can carry his Blackberry so he can communicate with real people and not just the government.
It all reminds me of Eisenhower. After he left the White House (back in the 50s)he picked up a telephone to make a call and wanted to know what the funny noise was. Because aides had always made his calls he'd never heard a dial tone before.
You get the feeling Obama will resist such isolation and insulation. But oh, that car. Inside The Beast he must feel like an old-time deep-sea diver in heavy helmet and thick face visor, speaking through a tube to the space out there where the sun shines and breezes flow.