Sometimes I feel so temporary

Cardi: thrifted. Dress: Dorothy Perkins via eBay. Boots: Duo via eBay. Necklace: Next.

Strange day. I spent the first half of the it feeling oddly self-conscious of being much more dressed up than nearly all of my colleagues. And I have no idea why. My colleagues were their usual jeans-wearing selves except the other women who, like me, prefer a work/home sartorial separation and enjoy the opportunity to vary outfits to a greater degree. I’ve even worn this very outfit before and generally feel good in variations on its theme. But still I felt oddly, nigglingly conscious of Being Different all morning.

And then look what Sal posted while I was still feeling that distracting sense of Not Quite Happy In My Environment ondressing up while others are dressing down. Wise words all, as ever from her, and somehow just reading through possible responses and solutions melted my feeling away.

Sal, lovely, how in the world did you manage to time that so damned conveniently for me?

The walls will fall before we do

Cardi: Wallis. Dress: Dorothy Perkins via eBay. Boots: Duo via eBay. Necklace: www.mockinghorse.co.uk

She may be dead to you but her hips sway a natural kind of faith

 Shrug: New Look via eBay. Dress: Dorothy Perkins via eBay. Shoes: Dorothy Perkins via eBay. Necklace: www.mockinghorse.co.uk

Phew. Work is decidedly hectic at the moment. I have a to-do list of increasingly alarming proportions (and, of course, everything on it is high priority), I’m still training up my new staff member, and there have been a few significant process shifts within the business.

It’s all very much for the right reasons and hugely positive – I’m actually really looking forward to getting my teeth into the various things that are coming up - but while I’m enjoying it the early planning and discussions phase isn’t half tiring!

Science runs through us, making us gods

 Cardi: Wallis via eBay. Dress: Dorothy Perkins via eBay. Boots: Dune via eBay. Necklace: Next. Belt: thrifted

Now this outfit is more like it for a dark Autumnal day!

This is the season that suits me best, really – and not just in terms of my personal style. I’m all about the rich colours and the layered clothes – but I’m also all about cooking up vats of stew, soup and curry and curling up with my hands curled around a cuppa and a home-made treat handy for dunking. There’s enough warmth and sunshine around for comfort and smiles but enough of a chill in the air for woolly things and cuddles to be all the more welcome.

What more could you want, really?

It started slowly & I thought it was my heart but then I realised that this time it was for real – there was no place to hide, I had to go out and feel

Shrug: thrifted. Dress: Dorothy Perkins via eBay. Shoes:  via eBay. Belt: thrifted. Necklace: www.mockinghorse.co.uk   

It’s Making Monday again, so what have I been up to? Well, mostly, making a start on things and making dents in a few of those ‘I really ought to’ sorts of job. None of it seems to be very photogenic, though, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I swatched for a Mata Hari, in the Rowan Cashsoft that’s among the first jumper-sized batches of yarn I bought, years ago. It’s probably the biggest swatch I’ve ever done, and like the awkward person I am I’ve decided to knit to a tighter tension than recommended because I far prefer the fabric and want a fairly fitted jumper. The maths tells me it should work out – time to find out what the knitting has to say about it! It’s just a few rows of ribbing at the moment, though, so there’s not much to show off.

I made an apple crumble, which is significant because it involves the first of the apples from the tree in our garden. It’s a fairly early fruiter, obviously, so the apples are just beginning to be ready. They’re delicious eating apples, and there’s loads of them this year. Reminds me a little of my first home – my parents had owned the house for a few years before I was born and had added damson, apple and plum trees to the Bramley apple and Victoria plum trees that were already in place. There was always something to put in a crumble when I was a kid! Not to mention a few homemade wine experiments on Dad’s part…  I’m incredibly happy when I’m growing and tending edible things, and it’s so satisfying to make a meal with the things you’ve grown yourself, but oh good grief I hate the weeding and the patio maintenance side of gardening! I’ve been a bit lax about growing veg in the past few years for various reasons, though, and need to make an effort for the coming year.

Perhaps that can be a Making Monday to come?

You can laugh, it’s kinda funny the things you think at times like these

Cardi: H&M. Dress: Dorothy Perkins via eBay. Shoes: New Look via eBay. Necklace: www.mockinghorse.co.uk 

Some thoughts about the way women are trained, from children really, to fear perfectly normal things. If mention of rape is triggery, look away now. And don’t listen to the corresponding tune when I put it up.

I walked past a van with an open door on my lunchbreak.

Yeah, that sounds like a noteworthy experience, doesn’t it? But the thing is, I realised it was. Because I didn’t just walk past it. I risk assessed it.

As soon as I saw it parked near the only pavement, door open, I instantly assessed how close to it the owner was and what he was doing, whether that was appropriate to context, whether there was anyone else in the van, whether there was anyone else around in general etc etc. And I didn’t do any of that consciously. I just automatically went into threat assessment mode because I’ve been so conditioned to regard it as A Possible Threat.

Because Be Careful Around Vans With Open Doors is on the same list that includes Don’t Walk Home Alone and If You Must, Keep To Well-Lit Areas and Keys Can Be Used As A Weapon If You Need One.

You know that list, if you’re a woman. I bet you’ve even seen it actually listed out in handy Rape Avoidance Tactics lists, as if rape doesn’t happen to people that don’t get into unlicensed taxis or keep a hawklike eye on their drink at all times. And as if rape is something that, somehow, its most likely victims can prevent through a series of Do Nots.

I wonder, have the people that write these lists ever, say, been on a work night out? Because we all know that most rape is committed by people known to the victim, someone they may already trust. Or even love.

And this is the thing. All of these actions do, most likely, reduce the risk of the type of rape that involves strangers dragging you down alleyways or fake taxi drivers taking you to their friends instead of your house. But they also add a whole slew of Rules For Life that we internalise in a way that our menfolk tend not to, even though statistically they have more to fear from random assaults than do women.

I was incredulous when a friend at university walked home through the underpass because it would never even occur to me to either walk home late at night or venture into the underpass unaccompanied. I keep my car doors locked at all times. If I’m in my car and must speak to someone, the window comes down only slightly. I am discouraging to men I don’t know if they talk to me in the street or the coffee shop or the bus queue. I ask for ID from police officers. I check cabs have got licences displayed. If I have to make a short walk at night, I am hyper-alert – and have my keys handy. And all of this is completely normal.  I know, from speaking to other women, that I’m not the only one doing it. And I don’t even think about it or have to think to do it. Cosmo trained me in my early teens and now it’s just what I do.

Because rape is special. It’s assumed to break us, to damage us forever. And to be potentially around every corner. And so we must guard ourselves against it, not invite it, constantly. I remember my astonishment at seeing an anti-rape bus advertising campaign locally that was actually aimed at telling people not to rape. Really? Placing responsibility for the crime firmly on the criminal is so unusual as to startle a feminist?

And stranger rape isn’t even where the biggest risks lie. The biggest risk to any given women from rape are from people around whom she’s already let down her guard.

The List of Rules for Life doesn’t protect us from that.

Finance, feminism and the fashion blogger

Cardi: Next. Dress: Dorothy Perkins via eBay. Belt: from another dress. Shoes: Accessorize via eBay. Necklace: a gift – handmade by www.katcrossjewellery.co.uk

Yes, I felt so much like I’d dressed as a bar of Dairy Milk the last time I wore this dress I thought I may as well go the whole hog and accessorise with chocolatey brown this time around. Well, why not?

This week on the Feminist Fashion Bloggers network, we’re considering the theme of finance, feminism and fashion blogging.

It’s an interesting topic, and one that I know has done the rounds a bit with regard to those sections of the blogosphere that are perhaps more focused on the latest trends and magazine-style photoshoots than my ponderings here are every likely to be. There’s a picture-perfect, fabulous new and expensive clothes at every turn, feel to some places – and that’s totally fine for those bloggers if they’re happy and able to support the lifestyle and the blog, but it’s not for me.

Traditional women’s magazines (Of which I end up with a pile every time I visit my mother. I use the recipes and very little else.) speak the language of the snake oil merchants. They encourage consumption to keep up with trends, even when they’re acknowledging we don’t all have thousands to splurge on clothes, shoes and handbags (you too can have a slightly-less-hideously_expensive version of this designer thing you don’t need and that won’t go with the rest of your wardrobe! Look, here are three versions of it in various pricebands so it’s a bargain really!). They encourage you to love yourself in one breath while preaching diet messages and telling you how to dress to cover various bits you’re assumed to wish to cover due to their unacceptable nature in the next.

This. Is. Not. Me. It’s not feminism-friendly, it’s not supportive of my personal goals, it’s not practical or interesting or stimulating or encouraging of my emotional or intellectual wellbeing, never mind my physical or my financial wellbeing. I turned away from it all years ago, feeling unrepresented.

And I found the style blogging world.

Take a look through the blogs on my sidebar, and you’ll see that almost all of them have a tendency to embrace the delights of second hand and vintage shopping, as do I. Several of them make their own clothes and accessories a fair amount, as do I. These are women whose wardrobes and shopping styles illustrate their love for vintage styles, the thrill of bargain seeking, a need in some cases to seek a cheaper option combined with a wish to remain stylish, the skills to craft perfectly fitting items themselves, and a desire to take a more ethical and environmentally-friendly approach to fashion than is encouraged by the veneration of Primarni.

Without exception, these women are an inspiration to me in a way that is completely lacking in women’s magazines, and perhaps some of the high-fashion style blogs.

I enjoy their creativity in putting together stylish and individual looks without assembling them from a clothes store’s emailed suggestions. I love their ability to bargain hunt. I enjoy their skill in spending a little money and time on rustling up a garment more perfectly fitting than they’ll ever achieve in the high street. I love their words and their supportive-of-themselves-and-their-fellow-women philosophies as much as I love their looks. These are women whose consumption is thoughtful and constructive.

As for my own finances. Well, when it comes to clothes I rarely buy full price items these days – where you see something in my credits which doesn’t have ‘via eBay’ or ‘thrifted’ after it there’s a pretty good chance that it’s either a sale item or something that’s been in my wardrobe for years (step forward this Next cardi, which I vaguely remember buying at least two jobs ago).  I spend within my means and I spend nothing like the proportion of my income on clothes that, say, my other half spends on football-related things. And I spend wisely – I buy what pleases me and what works for my wardrobe.

The style blogging world has, then, for me at least, not derided consumption in the way that I feel the consumption of clothes and make-up can be derided as frivolous, but neither has it encouraged consumption for the sake of it. Rather, those corners of it that I inhabit see spend on clothes as akin to spend on dvds or football or any other hobby in its harmless-and-fun-as-long-as-you-can-afford-it sense. And they encourage a thoughtfulness of consumption, whether with regard to ethical clothes manufacture or with regard to buying and dressing to focus on the good rather than focusing on the ‘bad’ by swathing it in items from the Suits XBodyshape box.

Dairy Milk

Dress: Dorothy Perkins via eBay. Cardi: thrifted. Shoes: Dorothy Perkins via eBay. Necklace: www.mockinghorse.co.uk

It was only when I saw myself in the mirror of the ladies at work today that I realised that I had basically dressed up as a Dairy Milk for the day. Hee!

It’s an outfit that provoked a few interesting conversations through the course of the day, because it’s both incredibly comfy (jersey dresses are so amazing for looking polished whilst feeling like you’re wearing pyjamas!) and rather shape-revealing, but I think I’ll save the more serious ponderings for the Feminist Fashion Bloggers event later on in the week. On the dafter side, having realised that I’d dressed up as a chocolate bar I suddenly found myself speculating about how I could use my current wardrobe to make other outfits. Chocolate limes would be easy, and black, gold and red for Mars bar would be simple enough. I do red and blue for Wispa bars and mixed browns for Galaxy all the time. Blue, white and brown for Snickers? Hm, worth a try.

And after all that, I regard it as a minor miracle that I refrained from going to the supermarket and filling a basket with every chocolate bar in existence!

Not sure I’ll be doing Smarties or Jelly Baby inspired outfits any time soon, though