A Sneak Preview

Defying Diana: A Guide to Fashion by the Hand Me Down Kid

Like many women of our generation, my attitude towards the very clothes I wear everyday is conflicted and confused. On the one hand, thanks to an indulgent twenty five year long diet of adverts, peer pressure, popular culture and magazines I am adept at reading the “hidden codes” behind the clothes we all wear. Like so many women I have spoken to, I learnt from a very early age that wearing the wrong thing can land you in all sorts of trouble. One bright summers day, when I was aged seven, the bullies in the playground battered me over my head with my bright green trainers that I loved but had bought from a market rather than a sports shop. At this moment I had the rather abrupt and startling realisation that this fashion thing wasn’t a passing trend, it was here to stay and how I reacted to it would shape my life. It was here the confusion began.

At such an early age, it seemed I had two choices, either to play the system: follow all the latest fashion trends and be thought of as stylish by all my friends. Or, on the other hand, I could rebel, refuse to conform and wear the green trainers, batterings be damned! I don’t think I am unique here. Consciously or unconsciously, every single child in mainstream education has to make this choice. Even when schools desperately clamp down and put uniforms in place, fashion has a way of seeping through in the little details, from shoelaces to bags to hairbands. The bullies have an eye for detail and will always find a way to separate the weak from the strong, the rich from the poor.

For many, conformity is bliss and for the children who choose to play the system, you can see why. They buy the branded goods and follow their favourite magazine’s “Top Tips for Hot Hair”. They dutifully lower their eyes to the ground when big, stilettoed Diana from year 10 is coming down the corridor. They hope to God she won’t notice them, because they heard what she did to Tracy Evans last week for the crime of having a dodgy perm. Who can blame them, really, for playing the game, and making their life at school just that bit less hellish? Of course, there has always been bullying as long as children have congregated and not all of it is fashion related. Yet, I feel that the pressure on our mother’s and grandmother’s generations to look the same and blend in was not as intense as we have experienced, due to the prevalence of advertising and dominance of global brands in the twenty first century. I have talked so much about the school system not because of lasting trauma (although that trainer did have a nasty sting!) but because these tender years are where our attitudes to the fashion machine are forged, shaping our adult thinking for the rest of our lives.

The situation is worse for girls than boys as they are targeted more ruthlessly by the media and fashion trends seem more fickle for them, changing at a bewildering speed. I remember many midnight conversations at sleepovers with teenage girl friends when they urgently confessed deep insecurities about being ugly, the wrong size, hideous, and unworthy. In a healthy society there simply should not be such a prevalent undercurrent of self hatred in the psyche of our female youth, a time of life when you should be full of self pride and vitality, not despair and an ever present feeling of hating your own skin.

In terms of my own journey, I did not, could not, and would not conform. Even aged seven, something did not sit right with me that anyone, however big and threatening, could pressure me into wearing something I didn’t want to. Moreover, it made me angry and defiant towards them. I clearly remember, standing in the playground with tears streaming and a bruised head, that I couldn’t understand why one shoe with a tick on it was better than one without. This acute sense of the absurdity of the fashion industry has stuck with me into adulthood. So, at school I wore my hand me downs with pride, and in my teenage years when I first became responsible for buying my own clothes, made a point of shopping in charity shops and jumble sales because I felt so angry towards a system that, as I saw it, caused so much misery. Although I didn’t have any political or analytical terms to criticise it in my vocabulary I instinctively felt the injustice and stupidity of the industry.


Several years and many run ins with Diana later, I escaped the school system and enrolled at university. There my relationship with clothes became even more complex. I was enrolled on a course that encompassed theory, politics and literature, and learnt about the systems that fed the injustices that I had only experienced on a very micro level. Now I was all focused on the macro, and it blew my mind. I developed a political conscience, learning about feminism and other women’s complex relationships with the fashion industry. I read about capitalism and globalisation and was shocked to read about the depth of the very real suffering that goes into production of the latest unnecessary fashion trends. In the West we are mentally imprisoned by what Alain De Botton calls status anxiety and the compulsion to conform. That is bad enough, but on a more global scale there are sweat shop workers all over the world working 14 hour days with no breaks or rights, companies pillaging natural resources, animal experimentation, even widespread use of child labour. I just couldn’t see many good sides, and whatever you might say to me about a healthy consumer capitalist economy, I still don’t. To me the whole thing stinks. We are slaves to the brand, and whilst the wheels of the fashion machine keep turning, so do the cogs of human misery, poverty and injustice that keep the whole thing ticking over.

I am no economist. I don’t have all the answers to the global problems. I know there are some positives to the fashion industry, I’m not denying that shopping for clothes can be enjoyable, or give you a sense of creativity and pleasure. All I can say is, as far as I’m concerned, count me out. For me, clothes are mostly functional things that keep me dry and warm in winter and cool in summer. Sure, I have a couple of “best” outfits and clothes that are suitable for smart occasions and going out. I live in the real world, I do regular stuff and my wardrobe reflects that, it isn’t particularly outlandish or strange. But I mostly buy second hand and I buy what I like rather than what is fashionable. I don’t read beauty magazines, I believe (as the song goes), they only work to make you feel ugly. I don’t wear makeup, I like my own face. I haven’t shaved in years, yet my husband worships my body. I recycle and pass on things I’m not needing and gratefully receive it when people do the same for me. I don’t own anything branded, second hand or not, I believe I’m a person not a billboard. I don’t watch adverts so I hardly even know anymore what is cool and what isn’t. If all this is the most unbelievable mortifying thing you’ve ever heard then know this, I can’t tell you my life is perfect, but I do feel free. I have a thriving body image and a guilt free conscience and all this serves to make me a happier person in the long run.

My rejection of the fashion industry does not give me an easy life or the right to look down my nose at those who choose not to, the purpose of this article is not for me to guilt trip everyone into making the same choices as myself. But all the time I save not being a slave to fashion means that I actually have a lot more hours to do things that matter to me. As a small example: clothes shopping is a twice yearly rather than a weekly event for me, so that gives me so much more extra time, energy and space to read a book, take a walk in the rain, have fabulous sex or even write this article! Think of all the precious time in a week you give to the fashion industry, either by shopping, preening, talking, reading, or just thinking about it. Then think about what else you could achieve in that time. For me this is the whole crux of the issue. Any doubts I occasionally have concerning my choices and way of life are resolved by asking myself these two simple questions: are there not many more interesting and important things in the world than contemplating my own fingernails, hair, clothes, tan and makeup? If so, shouldn’t I, just possibly, be doing them?

(Due to be published on the 19th July on the womans collective website: 'Imagining Ourselves' in response to a call for articles about fashion and image around the world. I thought I'd give my blog readers first dibs!)

Get Forked

I love rain. When I’m caught in a torrential downpour, I feel so alive. I love it when the heavens open and just let rip. Thunderstorms, the perfect combination of falling rain and deadly electrical forks are beautiful and thrilling. I never quite feel so lucky as when the hair stands up on my arms and I walk through the warm rain with flashes in the sky and deafening crashes of thunder watching the drama of nature unfold all around me. I love the smell in the air, the charge in the atmosphere, the fear in people’s eyes as they all scurry home to their brick boxes where they feel safe and protected. I love not being one of the scurriers, but one who flings her arms out with the sheer joy of it all, dances through puddles and opens my mouth to drink the heavy metallic tasting rain. I get scared, more so than in any horror movie but I somehow love feeling that I could die at any moment, that I am dicing with death. Yes, of course I am reassured by the odds of the situation, but still we’ve all seen the tree split down the middle, we’ve all heard the rumours of the kid who never made it home.

To me a walk in the thunder encapsulates both the sheer miracle of life as well as it’s transient nature; it makes me realise that I am not in charge here, that there are greater forces of work. I understand why humans have always given their head gods the thunderbolts. To see a fork of lightening, and be physically shaken by the many deafening claps of energy is both terrifying and exhilarating. You realise how tiny and fragile your body is, how at the mercy of chance you are every day you are alive. It makes you ask those kind of questions, the wondrous questions that you will probably never answer but are shaped in fascinating and beautiful ways simply by asking. To me, a walk in a thunderstorm is the spiritual equivalent of drinking ten cans of red bull, I come home from one of my long strolls feeling like I am bursting out of my own skin, like I have connected with the essence of energy itself. So, if there is one thing I would recommend for you to do this summer, especially if you have not done it before, go and walk in one of the steaming summer thunderstorms. Go alone, and take your time, but not an umbrella. Sing. Shout. Get somewhere quiet. Go out to nature. If possible, walk near water. There is nothing more spectacular than watching the lightening reflect in the lapping waves of a lake or river. Take my advice; get truly and properly forked up this summer. You will not regret it.

Face Value

I have one thing to say today and one thing only. If I ever get to such an advanced state of delusion and paranoia that I actually invest twenty pounds or more of my hard earned cash in a pot of anti wrinkle cream (or age reversal moisturing products as they’re tactfully labeled to avoid the W word.) If that occurs, then you, dearest readers of this blog, have my express permission to shoot me. I think if I ever sink to such a moral and intellectual low, even if I am starting to have a face like an elephants behind, then I will be so far gone and so far removed from sanity that the only kind thing to do would be to put me out of my misery.

Seriously though, I was waiting for a phone call this lunchtime and eased the hanging around by watching some daytime TV. This is something I have an explicit policy not to do, but hell, I was feeling rebellious and bored and thought ‘fuck it’. In hindsight, I wish I had thought ‘read Shakespeare’ or ‘listen to the new Grinderman album’ (which is excellent by the way) or even ‘go for a shit’ but no, instead I thought “let’s watch ‘This Morning.’ That will kill a few minutes.” Anyway, I didn’t even get as far as watching Fern Whatsherface and Suited Man because when I switched on it was the adverts. In one break there were about three commercials for anti aging products, each more stupid than the last. By the time I turned the TV off five minutes later I had lost faith in humanity. Not middle aged women; in some ways they’re the people I blame the least. They’re just the victims of this stupid manipulative, pseudo scientific, anti integrity, paranoia feeding and hate spreading propaganda. As express targets of this highly charged emotional headfuckery, I feel that sort of diminishes their responsibility to see through it. But why are we, as sons and daughters and friends of these women not attempting to point out the whole stupidity of the ridiculous scientific claims the adverts make, why are we not telling them the truth? Why do we buy them these products for Christmas even when we personally think they are nonsense? At the risk of sounding weird why do I, when I go home to stay for weekends, always sneakily have a sniff of my mum’s moisturiser that she keeps on the bathroom shelf and feel comforted? Hell, why are we not complimenting their wrinkles, they’re only folded bits of skin after all?

I have been thinking about these questions, and whilst things like career advancement, fashion and social pressures answer some of the questions, the answer that cuts right to the heart of the matter is expressed in the following equation

Age + wrinkles= imminent death.

Most people are terrified of death. Most people are also terrified of their wives, their girlfriends, their friends or their mothers dying. We love them, we need them. Wrinkles are a very visable sign of the aging process and therefore transform the hidden taboo of death into an surface marker of decay that nobody can ignore. We generally recoil at things that are taboo. Including wrinkles. What an anti wrinkle cream offers, in a not so subtle way, is a magic potion, complete with a modern scientific formula, that promises to prolong life and maybe even elude death. It’s very, very seductive and cuts right to the core of our psyches. So even if we suspect it might be nonsense we all play ball. Hence the multi billion pound industry. Hence ‘Oil of Olay’ being the number one Christmas present for mums. After all, it’s morbid to dwell on death. Much better to pretend aging and death isn’t happening, and now you have a secret weapon to help you. Much better to act like an ostrich than face the fact that life is, as my meditation teacher jokes, a ‘100% terminal sexually transmitted disease’. There ain’t no potion that’s going to help cure it, let alone a face cream based on ‘Aloe Vera and micronutrients from crushed pearls’.

WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. YOUR LOVED ONES ARE GOING TO DIE.

YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.

The Buddha said,

‘Contemplate death like your turban is on fire’

I doubt wiser words have ever been said. As a culture we need face our own mortality. We hide signs of aging with creams and under layers of botox, foundation and makeup. Then, as the ‘disease’ progresses we commit atrocities like locking those 'suffering' from its advanced stages in virtual prisons letting them rot unseen and unheard. Rather than doing this, we should listen to the dying man, talk to the old woman, prepare ourselves for what, one day we will all have to go through. If we did it with great urgency rather than telling ourselves we’re Peter Pans, then maybe we would have a more peaceful death and a less delusional life. One thing I can tell you for sure, this Christmas my mother isn’t getting her usual Boots moisturiser wrapped under the tree. And one of these days, when I’m feeling brave enough, she’s going to get a compliment on her wrinkles.