5 things not to wear

1. The fiftyish woman I saw yesterday in the bus mall had her look together except for two long grey braids. Her hair was scraped to the sides so tightly that her part looked like a bald spot and her ears hung low. A grown woman using Pippi Longstocking as her fashion muse is just pathetic. Let me spell it out for you: if you no longer get asked for ID at the pub, you cannot carry off pigtails or plaits. If you want to drop 20 years from your perceived age, maybe try a facelift, not hair baubles.

2. This really ought to be obvious but unless you are a toddler or pregnant, don’t wear jeans with an elastic waistband. This includes jeggings (denim look leggings) – especially if you’re overweight.

3. A young woman at work took off her shoes the other day and rubbed her feet around on the carpet. The smell nearly made me gag. Wearing bare feet is fine in the privacy of your own home, especially in the shower or in bed. But, let’s face it, feet are not the most attractive or alluring part of the human body. Taking off your shoes in public is disgusting, even if you have a great pedicure.

4. Don’t wear anything that could be mistaken for a tablecloth. Heavily checked shirts, plaid pants and tartan socks are not cool. Okay, I concede that if you’re rounding up the sheep, a flannie might be okay; and if (God help you) you’re playing the bagpipes, a kilt is probably appropriate. If you really can’t resist the urge to swathe yourself in checks, don’t mix your patterns – impersonating a tea towel is one thing, impersonating a pile of them is a whole other basket of laundry.

5. I’m a big bling fan. Wearing it shows you’ve made some effort with your outfit. But don’t wear so much that people need sunglasses to look at you or that they mistake you for Mr T. And don’t wear bracelets that clink incessantly or the person at the next desk will likely take you out with a stapler before lunch.


Image: Michelle Meiklejohn

Old-fashioned fashion rules to break

My dad tells a story about my grandmother travelling three hours from her home in the north of the state to attend a special church service and then realising she had forgotten her hat. Though church rules about head coverings had relaxed by that time, Grandma could not bring herself to attend without the proper noggin attire. She stood God up rather than offend Him with her locks and returned home spiritually bereft.

Clothing rules change.* Here are five fashion rules from my childhood that need banishing.

1. Shoes and bags must always match

Your shoes have to go with your outfit but a contrasting or complementary bag can often create a jazzier look than strictly matching accessories. In fact, sometimes matching shoes and bags can make you look like a try hard. A mismatched handbag can dress down a style that’s a bit 'too much' and a bag with a pleasant clash adds some zing to a conservative outfit.

2. Shoes and bags must be leather

Leather is no longer a must. Pleather, raffia, canvas, silk and other fabrics are fantastic alternatives for handbags adding spice and texture – and often costing a lot less, so you can have lots of different bags without melting your credit card.

Synthetic footwear is also okay but a leather lining is advisable for closed shoes, so your feet don’t sweat too much. Yes, they wear out sooner – but you’re probably sick of them by the time they do, anyway.

3. Don’t wear black with brown or navy

You’d wipe out the wardrobes of half the city’s young women if you enforced this rule. I particularly like the black tights/brown knee highs look that’s popular right now.

You are also meant to skip brown shoes or suits after 5pm if you want to be taken seriously. But you’re probably meant to skip the glass of sparkling, too. To hell with it.

On a similar note, my mother used to say: ‘Blue and green should never be seen without a colour in between’. What a load of piffle!

4. Women must wear stockings or pantihose to work

Maybe this was true in the days before waxing and spray tanning but smooth, (faux) tanned bare legs are perfectly acceptable – and more comfortable – especially in the summer.

5. Don’t wear high heels with jeans

What??? And look like a squat midget? It’s stilettos all the way, babe.


* Some clothing rules will never change, so if you own Superman blue tights, anything with a Sportsgirl logo on the front, real fur or tensel overalls, just burn these items now.

Image: Tea

My partner is a kleptomaniacal cross dresser

My partner is a kleptomaniacal cross dresser.

That is, he steals my black socks and wears them. It doesn’t seem to matter if they have pink stripes, yellow polka dots or purple daisies. He wears them anyway.

You would think that after spending all day every day in a room with thirty hormonal, judgmental 12-year-olds, he would succumb to pre-teen pressure and desist. But any tween ribbing (good natured or otherwise) seems to slide right off him like eggs off Teflon (or socks off sweaty feet).

You would also imagine that working in an industry where the ratio of men to women is something like 1:30, one of his female colleagues would have gently worded him up on his fashion faux pas. But if they have, it’s had about as much impact as a nerf ball on a Sherman tank.

When we first cohabited, he announced that any black socks in the house were his. I thought he was kidding. Then I found everything from my black trouser socks to my lacy love heart socks in his drawer and realised he was serious.

I think he was amused by his black sock rule. I think he thought I ought to be amused, too. After a month of having to hunt for any pair of my black socks, I no longer found his little sock foible endearing. After a year of  finally tracking down my expensive silk socks, only to find them pilled and stretched beyond recognition, I could no longer see the funny side. After a decade of living with a partner whose sock drawer closely resembled a black sock devouring vortex, I was more than a bit over the sock saga.

I tried pointing out the vast differences between black Explorers and frilly black knee-highs (you Tarzan, me Jane) to no avail. He still wore my black socks. I tried explaining the question in to which he placed his masculinity every time he donned floral footwear. He still wore my black socks. I tried crying, shouting, joking, bribery and the silent treatment. He still wore my black socks.

I could have worn his socks, but floppy, holey Explorers were just not my scene. I could have hidden my socks but he’d only have hijacked them during the laundry process. I could have just capitulated and gone with blue or green or magenta but there really are some occasions where a girl needs to wear black socks. Besides, by the time we had hit the second or third year of our relationship, he had manoeuvred well in to the navy, forest and scarlet realms with the excuse that they all look black in his drawer in the dark. My two excellent points (one: turn the light on, two: why are my socks in your drawer in the first place?) seemed to bounce right off his ear drums like a kid on a castle.

I continued to pursue a solution in a non-screaming-and-tearing-my-hair-out kind of way.

And he relentlessly, systematically and heartlessly continued to kidnap my socks.

Finally, after more than a decade, three pairs of miracles materialised. I found them in Target: black socks with iridescent rainbow stripes/stars/dots on the bottoms. For all intents and purposes, black, but totally and unmistakeably feminine and distinctly mine, even in the dark...or so I thought.

He wore them today – the ones with the stripes.

But that’s okay. It won’t happen again.

On my way home from work tonight, I am going to K&D to buy a chainsaw to cut his feet off. Then he won’t need socks anymore.

Mwah-ha-ha-ha!

The Monstress foody myth busters #4

I received an email the other day, claiming that microwaving food in plastic wrap or plastic containers releases dioxins into the food and that these dioxins cause cancer:

Is this true?

In a word: nope.

Firstly, most plastics used in food wraps and packaging containers do not contain the chemical constituents that can form dioxins. Producing dioxins with these plastics would be like trying to make a ham and cheese sandwich without the ham...or the cheese...or the bread.

Secondly, dioxins are a family of compounds that are produced by combustion at high temperatures – I’m talking above 700 degrees Fahrenheit. In other words, even if all of the dioxin ingredients were present, you would need to have a very hot fire in your microwave oven, in which case, not only would your food be cremated but your  microwave would be melted and you would probably have to call the fire brigade to put out the flaming inferno that was once your kitchen.

If you’re really intent on reducing potentially harmful carcinogens in your food during cooking, give your frying pan a rest instead.

Frying is the only form of cooking that produces trace amounts of dioxins in food. Oils and fats used in frying contain substances that begin breaking down into known carcinogens at high temperatures.

But for Thai fried rice, I'll take my chances.

11 new collective nouns

A collective noun is a word used to define a group of objects. For example, in the phrase ‘a pride of lions’, pride is the collective noun.

Here are some that I reckon should be added to the official list:

1. An ambush of salespeople.
2. A gush of sycophants.
3. A hatchet of restructures.
4. A huff of exes.
5. A google of geeks.
6. A lechery of priests.
7. An absence of waiters.
8. A flounce of teenagers.
9. A nag of inlaws.
10. An ulcer of deadlines.
11. An excess of bloggers.

Do you have any to add?

Top 10 things not to eat on your first date

On her first dinner date with my father, my mother ordered spaghetti bolognaise…and immediately wished she hadn’t. My dad's too polite to say more and they ended up getting married, so it can’t have been that bad. But I do have a vision of slurpy sauce-coated pasta slopping down her chin.

A first date is stressful enough without worrying about tricky utensils, flying food, smears on your face, gunk in your teeth or bad breath. Think carefully about the implications of your order before you make your selection. Aside from stringy pasta, here are 10 menu items that should send you running.

1. Pesto anyone? Not unless you want your smile to look like a shrubbery. Avoid any clingy, leafy greens including spinach, seaweed and coriander.

2. Poppy, strawberry and sesame seeds are harder to dislodge than the aforementioned greenery. This goes double if you have braces.

3. Corn on the cob is a horror show waiting to happen. Not only will the kernels get stuck in your teeth, there’s no neat way to eat them and chances are you’ll end up with butter dribbling down your chin.

4. Garlic and onions - either of these pongy culprits could ruin any chance of a goodnight kiss.

5. Tacos ¬ putting your tacos together makes it hard to focus on your date. Tacos also have a massive potential slop-on-shirt factor.

6. Asian food - unless you’re confident with chopsticks. Eating Chinese with a fork looks uncouth and pathetic.

7. Spicy foods - gasping for breath, turning an interesting shade of beetroot, sweating and gulping your drink is not sexy.

8. A Big Mac.If you are on a first date at McDonald’s and you are old enough to watch an M-rated movie, this is utterly lame. If fast food was your date’s idea, ditch him. Now. Forever. If it was your idea, just go and shoot yourself.

9. Lobster - the other end of the spectrum but also fraught. Yes, it will look like money is no object but it stinks and it is harder to eat nicely than corn on the cob. You need a bucket of breath mints and a bib to even attempt lobster.

10. Beans - beanz meanz fartz. You don’t want to spend the post-dinner movie blasting the big brown horn.

Image: Paul

Gold would be worthless...

Apart from being an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, imperfection is said to be a human affliction… But maybe we could see it as a human comfort – or even a cause for celebration, instead.

Look, don’t get me wrong, a perfect life would have its advantages: cars would never break down, your skin would never break out and your favourite shoes would never wear out. You would always have change for the parking meter, you would never forget your wedding anniversary and when you asked for 200 grams of Primo mild salami, the deli girl would get it right the first time, every time.

But let’s face it, human perfection, apart from being completely unattainable would be dead boring. If my life was perfect, there’d be no point getting out of bed.

Perfection has no character. It is the human equivalent of dark denim that stays dark forever. No designed-to-fade, no pre-fab holes, not even any worn out hems from where they dragged under your sneakers. There is no scope for perfection to wear in to your unique shape. Perfection is bland one-size-fits-all, off-the-rack uniformity.

Perfection has no entertainment value. Imagine having a Monday morning tea room chat that went like this: ‘The curry night was flawless, my outfit was immaculate, I did every speck of housework faultlessly and enjoyed every moment of it, and I had exactly the right amount of sleep.’ Your colleagues would either puke or fall asleep. Describing flopped kofka, stapled hemlines, hiding the mess in the geek cave and sleep deprivation because of the neighbours’ three a.m. domestic are much more engaging. It’s our screw ups that make us endearing – and real.

Perfection is no fun. Without imperfection, there’d be no rom coms or sitcoms, no email funnies and no stirring up your mates. Many of these are based on error and misjudgment. The funniest ones are the ones we identify with. We can really imagine ourselves unknowingly wiping our girly bits with a glittery washcloth on the way to the gynaecologist. It’s the ‘OMG, that could have been me’ factor that really makes these stories rock.

Perfection is monotonous. What would you strive for in life if you were perfect? There’d be no room for phrases like ‘personal best’, ‘medal for bravery’ or even 'Darwin awards'. There’d be no more trying to hone your muscles – you’d already be built. There’d be no more experimenting with hair colours – your hair would be exactly the right shade already. There’d be no more messing with recipes – your soufflés would work first time. Everyone would have a McMansion, eight percent body fat, a Lamborghini and a limitless supply of money. And it would all be meaningless – common as mud. In short, there’d be no bigger/better/faster/more anything.

Perfection is drab. Imagine living without amazement. You’d see a brilliant Olympic athletic performance, read a breathtaking poem or enjoy a mind blowing orgasm and go ‘oh, yeah’. Perfection would make miracles ho-hum.

Perfection is plastic. Freudian slips are natural. Text templates are not. Wormy apples are natural. Multivitamins are not. Body hair is natural. Silicon implants are not. Hey, I like an eyebrow wax as much as the next girl but sometimes we become so focused on some elusive idea of perfection that we forget we’re humans in the real world, not Barbies in pink townhouses. It’s bumps and freckles and receding hairlines that make us unique and special. Every scar on your body has a story attached to it. And every story is a testament to your fallibility.

Barbara Bloom says: ‘When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.’

Take a leaf out of her book. Don’t think of your imperfection as being faulty, broken or incomplete full stop. Think of your imperfection as being faulty, broken or incomplete – and lovin’ it because imperfect is exactly as you should be.

Appreciate the quirky, the wonky, and the cockeyed. Love that teddy with all its fur sucked off. Embrace that cardigan with the missing button, delight in that odd shaped bowl you made in Prep and, most of all, love your hairy toes.