Sorry, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, but I don't buy into this idea of a female shelf life
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Version 0 of 1. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, the model, has been pondering that her career is limited, saying: "Looks go, and you fade." Well, good for Rosie – a canny young woman, looking for ways to maximise her earning potential, not feeling ashamed or anxious about the future, but instead thinking ahead, getting organised. Saying that, it would be a shame if the mantra "Looks go, and you fade" becomes one size fits all, even for Rosie. Who has ultimate control over the shelf life of female beauty? After all, "Looks go, and you fade" is really only applicable to model employability. It should never apply to non-models, but still in a weird way it does. This feeling, this pressure, that there is an ever-shortening shelf life for female looks, and, by association, psychosexual appeal. Real lives played out against the sparkly but sinister sand of an egg timer, constantly falling: signifying, on the one hand, not just biology, but also judgment, gloating, sometimes even hate – on the other, dread and powerlessness. A pressure that taps into female vulnerability, making them feel that their very viability is determined by shadowy outside forces, and out of their control. Of course Huntington-Whiteley was referring to her own profession – a tiny enclave mainly comprised of very pretty thin young people, who do indeed usually have short shelf lives (though not all of them, as evidenced by the still-strutting Kate Moss, et al). Complaints about the fashion industry, and the toxic messages it sends out, rage on, and it's good and healthy they do. However, right now, in this flawed reality, sobbing over the short shelf lives of models seems as illogical as becoming upset that most sportspeople retire while still relatively youthful. In this way, for the model, "Looks go, and you fade", is a practical career self-appraisal, akin to a footballer ruefully observing that he missed a goal because he's not as fast as he used to be. The difference being that men would respond to this, probably by yelling: "Too right, you useless overpaid prat!" You'd never get hordes of men wailing: "No, footballer, don't put yourself down, you're just displaying a different more mature, kind of footballing speed, and anyone who says otherwise is ageist and sexist – and sport needs to change!" This just wouldn't happen, and that's partly because women have vastly more to put up with on myriad levels, and thus are far more likely to support each other. But also because men would never feel that a footballer's legs directly relate to them – not in terms of getting older, or anything else. They wouldn't say: "Oh no, that reminds me, my legs are ageing too!" Odd then that a model's, or any other famous female's comment, about her looks fading, so often automatically becomes framed as an anguished lament applicable to all womankind – not just by paranoid women, but by those particular men who seek to keep them paranoid. In truth, outside professional modelling, "You lose your looks, and you fade" is not a reasonable or logical mantra, rather, it's self-defeating and self-hating. This also applies to Huntington-Whiteley – who, even once she's left modelling would doubtless be turning heads, nowhere near "fading", for years to come. For a non-model, it should be even simpler. All a woman has to do is look around and notice that she's being suckered – that men also don't stay in the same physical shape as in their youth, and they don't seem too bothered. So, isn't it about time the specious concept of a shelf life specifically for female beauty was similarly marginalised? This is what the smart females have known all along: that in all the important ways, female ageing is really not that different from the male variety. Not only that, perception is completely in women's own power, and always has been. Save me from Salinger fans JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye is 60 years old – so, happy birthday to a tediously overrated book that would sink without trace today. Let's face it, Holden Caulfield and his "phoney" droning wouldn't last three episodes as a character in The IT Crowd today. The only use I ever found for Catcher, was, when young, sorting the wheat from the chaff in people I knew. Just as posters of, say, James Dean, were a worrying sign that perhaps someone was a tad underpowered on the hinterland side of things ("I like attractive people who've died"), the declaration that Catcher was someone's "like, yeah, personal bible!" usually gave you a clear indication that said person had about as much imagination and individualism as a banana. They'd heard that Catcher was an important book, therefore (ta-da!) it was. Akin to the Beatles White album, or Munch's The Scream, it was a stock piece of art even the stupidest could name check without fear of contradiction. I know this because I did it loads of times with The Scream. Catcher was also one of those books that compounded the myth that it says something about a person to have one favourite book. When all it really says is that you probably need to read more books. When I was at the age when Catcher was supposed to ignite my senses, I much preferred everything from John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces, to Marge Piercy's Woman On The Edge Of Time, to Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas. Did any of these tomes define me (little moi) as a person – no, if only I'd been that interesting! Sometimes the books we love do not define us, they dwarf us, and aren't we all the better for it? Give Obama brush-by the brush-off It's been a humiliating week for British political party leaders. First, we heard of the proposed "brush-by", during which President Obama would, well, brush by a meeting held by Ed Miliband in the White House. It sounds like a bloodless drive-by shooting, the slaughter of a British opposition leader's credibility, as Miliband waits pathetically in his fake meeting, waiting for The One to brush by. A bit like being a teenage girl, waiting for the popular boy to call, and make your life complete. Come on Ed, have the self-esteem of a self-respecting teenage girl, and give the brush-by a brush-off – you could always tell Obama you're washing your hair. As if this wasn't enough molten shame to deal with, then David Cameron was caught doing a high five with his European Commission bête noire, Jean-Claude Juncker. Oh dear. They looked as though they were engaged in a high stakes game of pat-a-cake. It could only have looked worse for Cameron if he'd offered to share his lip balm with Juncker, and yelled: "Let's be BFFs and never fight again!" Should our politicos be banned from the world stage because they keep showing us up? |