Women’s Woes

Posted in Lifestyle by bngillies

Being a woman is hard. We can parade around in overalls and headscarves chanting anti-testosterone bullshit all we want but the reality is that we are biologically hardwired to struggle more than men.

Germaine Greer, if you’re reading this, please let me explain before you start throwing things at me. I agree that women can be physically stronger, taller, fitter and smarter than men. We can run our own businesses, buy cars without a man’s help and fix the dripping tap in the bathroom without having to call a plumber but in the end, the oestrogen is our major downfall.

I haven’t done the research, but I’m pretty sure the only reason women fought so hard to join the workforce was because staying at home watching daytime television left us in constant danger of drowning in our own tears every time an advertisement with a talking puppy tried to convince us to buy a different brand of washing powder.

Unfortunately, while women have evolved to be arguably the more superior sex, we still haven’t quite worked out how to turn off the hormones and get stuck facing challenges like these on an everyday basis:

Tearing apart your wardrobe in a hormone driven rage because you can’t find anything to wear that doesn’t make you look too fat/thin/tall/short/smart/dumb/etc. Guys don’t get it. You just throw on jeans and the closest t-shirt that doesn’t smell like feet and you’re good to go. Shoes and underwear are apparently optional. Our underwear have to match, fit perfectly, give support and sit invisibly under out clothing or risk looking like one of those old women who have given up hope of ever looking good again.

Apparently Kim Kardashian has evolved past this and threw on the nearest couch cover instead…

The genuine fear that every stitch or bout of the hiccoughs is potentially fatal. Hypochondria is not a joke. It’s an illness as real as the aneurysm we diagnose ourselves with every time we get a headache. Panadol doesn’t cut it in times like those- we need brain surgery and we need Doctor McDreamy to do it. Stat!

Crying while watching life insurance advertisements on several occasions and not just because of the terrible acting. That old couple enjoys playing tennis and walking on the beach at sunset? Holy shit. I enjoy playing tennis and walking on the beach at sunset! I might as well be old and old is nearly dead and BAM! Cue waterworks.

Ads where the toddlers talk. I don’t even like using fabric softener but that little ginger-haired kid with a lisp was so damned cute I bought a bottle of it even though it just sits in my cupboard. Well played, Cuddly Soft… well played.

Brooke and Ridge just had another fight. Seriously, you know they’re perfect for each other, every woman in the world knows they’re perfect for each other and yet they still leave you heartbroken after 26 years. We wish we didn’t care, but secretly we all do.

You honestly feel that every attractive woman you walk past is out to get you- because you are the most important person in the world obviously, and everybody’s life revolves around you.

All we want is chocolate, but chocolate makes us fat. So does the bread we really want to eat, the cheese we love, the beer we drink but fuck it, we’re going to eat it anyway and then blame the closest man for letting us do it. Why? Why the hell not.

Disney films. Women don’t grow out of Disney films. Ever. We’re all searching for a Prince of our own and even if we find him, we’re searching for a talking fish or a pet unicorn.

Every other film. Since we’re on the topic of cinema I should probably admit that women will cry during just about anything. I cried watching Die Hard because just for a minute there it looked like Bruce Willis wasn’t going to save his wife at the end. And also a little bit because Bruce Willis is amazing and women are constantly forming irrational emotional connections to celebrities.

Sobbing uncontrollably when you see small animals. Don’t judge. Just bring tissues and appreciate how cute this duck is with me.

So men can laugh and roll their eyes when the nostalgia-induced tears from a Backstreet Boys song interrupt our train of thought, but they should consider themselves lucky. They have been blessed with testosterone and can thus enjoy a stable, emotional-breakdown free existence while we, the unfortunately fairer sex, are busily typing symptoms of our stubbed toe into Google to prove we have gout.

– by Blaire Gillies

16Nov2013

Men Get PMS Too!

Posted in Lifestyle by bngillies

We’ve all heard of, and many of you have probably fallen victim to, the dreaded Man Flu; a disease so feminist it was probably invented by Germaine Greer herself as it only attacks the male species. But while many of you attempt to ward off the misandric virus, you are dangerously ignorant of a more grievous condition – Paused Masculinity Syndrome or PMS.

That moment when Noah and Allie break up…

Paused Masculinity Syndrome is to men what Pre-Menstrual Syndrome is to women; an excuse to eat unlimited chocolate, complain about fat, cry and do nothing for five days straight. Granted, males don’t experience the soul-destroying pain their female counterparts do, they still suffer through the mood swings and hectic hormones that make life a living hell.

As crazy as it may seem, PMS has actually been scientifically proven. It’s called something more boring and clinical than Paused Masculinity Syndrome (which I just made up to prove a point) but is classified as an acute state of hypersensitivity, anxiety, frustration, and anger that occurs in males and is associated with biochemical changes, hormonal fluctuations, stress, and loss of male identity.

It occurs in a regular cycle as the male body attempts to cope with fatigue and physical over-exertion which causes testosterone to be released and burned at an accelerated rate. When this occurs, the body goes through a brief period of being testosterone deficient. While most prescribe rest and a healthy diet, Doctor Blaire prescribes a metric tonne of rocky road icecream, multiple viewings of The Notebook and a hot water bottle or heat pack.

I also recommend building your wife/girlfriend/female housemate a Jodie Foster style panic room to live in seven days a month because everyone knows that when two or more women cohabitate for any length of time, their cycles tend to link up. If both of you are busy crying over Finding Nemo and feeling fat, who’s going to be there to open pickle jars, heroically tackle spiders or move heavy furniture around the room when the feng-shui isn’t healing your cramps because there’s too much tension between the lamp and the ottoman?

I’m sure that most guys tuned out of, or actively repressed most of their high-school health ed. classes out of sheer embarrassment so the poor little dears had to learn the terrors of pre-menstrual syndrome by being tortured by hormonal sisters and girlfriends (one behalf of all women, I’m sorry!). Nobody thought to teach them about the challenges of Paused Masculinity, so I feel that it is my responsibility to help you boys get through your time of the month.

Identifying and treating the symptoms of PMS:
Insomnia: occurring shortly after the horrible nightmare about your totally metrosexual favourite pink paisley shirt not fitting right. Insomnia is one of the first identifiable symptoms of what is, in your case, ‘manstruation.’

Dehydration: suddenly finding yourself overcome with the need to drink a billion litres of water is not uncommon curing PMS but if the thought of sitting with your equally irritable and thirsty girlfriend makes you feel even more girly, a nice cold beer is a good way to remind yourself that deep down inside you’re as manly as Elton John when he married Renata Blauel.

Inexplicable waterworks: crying over nappy ads, RSPCA commercials or that ad with all the talking red-headed toddlers is completely acceptable. It’s just like The Big Lebowski says, “strong men cry too.”

Headaches: often linked to dehydration, headaches can be cured by drinking plenty of water throughout the day, however keep in mind that with the fluctuation in chemical and hormone levels, your body might be craving sugar. This is your cue to eat raw cookie dough and drink unlimited hot chocolate!

Backaches and cramps: Suckers! You still suffer this part as much as those of us with the XX chromosome. A heat pack helps to reduce soul-destroying pain in the lower back, while staying in bed curled in the foetal position also has a delightfully calming effect. This is the perfect opportunity for you to play endless hours of CoD without your girlfriend making you feel guilty – she’s probably in the next room watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians in exactly the same position.

And finally…
The dreaded mood swings: zero to bitch in .01 seconds. It in these moments when you can go from being absolutely in love with the women in your life to hating everything about them from the way they flip their hair and pick their nails to the way they constantly wear your clothes and leave them in some floral reek they like to call perfume. Invest in a stress ball and a teddy bear. The first is to carry around in your pocket for the sudden burst of aggression and the latter is to keep in your bedroom to cry to at night when you remember that Dawson and Joey never got back together in season 6.

Paused Masculinity Syndrome is equally as debilitating as Man Flu, and it is important to remember that while you may feel that you’re dying or that you look too fat in your favourite jeans to be seen in public, you will get through it. You will live to see another AFL season, eat more pies, ogle more boobs and drink more beer while discussing manly things like cars, fishing and proper chainsaw maintenance.

– by Blaire Gillies

P.S If you’re sick of The Notebook, apparently there’s a love story hidden in the plot of Die Hard…

12Nov2013

Sharing Is Caring

Posted in Opinion by bngillies

…Except when it’s really, really annoying.

The internet has made everything seem trivial. Our entire lives can be shared and updated in seconds and can be edited or deleted at will. Waiting to share life-changing news with someone face-to-face was once an exciting event but ‘ZOMG! Just got engaged! ILY 4EVA’ has a delightful immediacy to it. The major drawback here is that instead of cracking open a bottle of champagne and celebrating with you, your five billion Facebook friends just click ‘like’ and keep scrolling down to the pictures of cats in tights.

In short, through the constant barrage of status updates, tweets, Tumblr posts about every mundane thing in life has led everyone you know to make the same conclusion; we’re just not that into you.

We’re not into Candy Crush, or Farmville or any of the other stupid games you want us to play and we’re not into the stupid events you keep inviting us to. Sorry to say it, but The Battle For Middle Earth is never going to happen.

We’re also really, really, absolutely not at all even remotely interested in cats as you are. Please for the love of God don’t share every single misspelled picture of cats who desperately want a ‘cheezbergr’ that finds its way into your newsfeed.

The only cat in the world I don’t hate.

As a general rule, people who are truly your friends think you’re pretty great. Instead of hounding them with undeniable proof that you’re actually far from it, you’re better off being more selective about the things you say and share and making sure your social media accounts reflect the best of you.

Great things only become great because someone took time to think, plan and care about them enough to perfect it before unleashing them on the public. It took Homer years to write The Iliad while he could have been out playing golf or something with his mates, but it was worth the effort considering we still read and discuss it 2000 years later. If Homer had merely logged onto Facebook and written ‘Imagine if Achilles killed Hector!? How pissed off would Patroclus be? LOL’ we probably would have scrolled right past it.

Granted, it only took two days for Martin Luther King Jr to write Normalcy- Never Again (more commonly known as the ‘I have a dream speech’) and change the lives of millions of people, but you sharing an anonymous quote about the power of sunshine isn’t really helping anyone. Especially considering it’s the 8000^th quote you’ve shared that day. King’s speech was so powerful because the likes of it had never been heard before and have rarely been heard since. Quotes on social media are very much an example of the ‘less is more’ rule.

I can almost –almost- stomach the mindless sharing of every meal you’ve ever eaten in your life. It means you’re not one of the people who shares those “challenges to repost” images. You know the ones-the pictures about how your mum/dad/brother/sister/best friend’s flatmate’s sister is the best or, call me callous, the ‘how many likes for this kid’ putting flowers on a grave or amputee athletes etc. I care about these people as much as anyone can care for a complete stranger but I detest the ‘let’s see who likes this’ caption, glaring at me like some kind of gauntlet being thrown down by the karma gods. Well F**k you, I’m not playing your game. I’m not reposting your chain letter. If I am cursed with bad luck for seven years or wake up dead tomorrow then so be it; I can’t say I wasn’t warned. But using pictures of sick kids and intimate family moments of people you’ve never met to get likes is far more despicable than me choosing not to join in.

I know for a fact that I’m guilty of almost everything I complain about, but I’m a pretty firm believer in the old “Do as I say, not as I do” thing. My friends already know I’m annoying, so I’m not too concerned about being blocked from their newsfeeds, but the rest of you have time to prove that you are wise and wonderful social media users whose every word is as powerful as Homer’s.

– by Blaire Gillies

9Nov2013

Satisfashion: The Fashion Fruitbowl

Posted in Lifestyle, Satisfashion by bngillies

Women are constantly told by fashion magazines and ‘celebrity stylists’ that their body type fits into a certain category: apple, pear, asparagus, carrot, butternut pumpkin (also known as the hourglass), etc. Has anyone else noticed that clothes shopping now feels like a trip to the local green grocer? All I want is to buy a sundress, not the ingredients for a low-self-esteem fruit salad.

There are better ways to dress an apple

I firmly believe that no matter what size you are, or what sort of fresh produce your silhouette most resembles, you can and should love your body. Everyone has the ability to look as good as they feel. It’s just a matter of knowing how to identify and flaunt your assets.

Apple figures can be hard to dress due to the positioning of weight in the belly and bust. Luckily for you though, you’ve got killer cleavage and slimmer legs. The key to highlighting these assets is body control underwear. I know it sounds like a kind of ‘old-lady’ idea, but it will work wonders to sculpt your silhouette by drawing you in at the waist and giving you smoother curves. Now you’re less like an apple and more like an apple core (yay!). Once you’ve got that sorted, it’s time to work on the clothes:
-Open up your neckline. V-neck t-shirts or leaving a single button undone on your work blouse doesn’t make you a hussy.
-Vertical stripes act to elongate the body and have a slimming effect.
-Drop earrings help to elongate the face and draw attention to the jawline and cheekbones. Lengthening the facial features can help balance out the rounded figure.
-A-Line skirts make the waist look slimmer and can be worn with tights to highlight your legs in winter.
-There is no excuse for granny-jeans. Structured, straight-leg jeans and knee length boots will draw the eye down to your gorgeous legs.
-Fitted blazers add shape to the torso and add what I can ‘points of attention’ as the deep V made by the lapels encourages the eyes to move downwards rather than across the body.

Pear shaped ladies should flaunt their bust and graceful shoulders. The trouble with this figure is the fear that yes, perhaps your bum does look big in that outfit. Invest in a good quality padded bra. A little extra oomph upstairs can balance out your hips and butt.
-Strapless dresses should be a staple in your wardrobe! Your ideal summer outfit is a strapless maxi with a thick belt to cinch in your waist and show off your gorgeous feminie curves.
-Shoulder-pads are not just for 80s disco parties. A structured shoulder in military jackets and blazers lengthens the horizontal line of your shoulders, allowing them to meet the line of your hips.
-Embellished tops have a similar effect and when paired with simple jeans or slacks keep the attention on your face and…er, ‘assets.’

Asparagus shaped women are straight up and down and have what if often referred to as a ‘boyish’ figure. The major upside of this shape is that there are no critical danger zones in your fashion world. The downside is that we asparagus girls don’t have a classically feminine figure. Invest in a Wonder-Bra. Or three.
-Avoid scoop necklines which show your obvious anti-cleavage. Even with a push-up bra, scoop necks won’t flatter you. Empire waistlines emphasise the lines of your bust and give the illusion of volume. Similarly, dresses and blouses that tie up at the back will flatter even the smallest of A-cups.
-Your legs are your best friend. Short dresses and skirts will compliment your shapely legs.
-A-Line skirts and belts will add definition to your waist and give your more distinct curves.
-Embellishment and detail on dresses and tops gives the illusion of a bigger bust as it can create a three-dimensional effect.
-For those who aren’t into florals but still want to feel feminine, opt for softer fabrics that gently fall over your natural figure while acting to soften the appearance of harder lines.

Carrots, you tall, elegant beauties. You are the Elle MacPhersons and Liz Hurleys the rest of us wish we could be. What advice can I possibly give you?
-Pale jeans and dark knee high boots will flatter your long legs.
-Cropped blazers and Bolero jackets will give you that effortlessly cool look. Selecting block colours will also add definition to your torso and flatter your waist.
-Soft materials and draping styles that fall elegantly over your frame will add an added degree of class. Trapeze jackets and cowl-neck jumpers will look gorgeous.
-Emphasise your bust with scoop neck tops and chunky statement necklaces.
-Thick horizontal stripes made by belts or sashes etc. cut 5cm off your height and help to balance your stature with your natural horizontals.

Butternut pumpkin girls have got the Golden Trifecta. Nice bust, thin waist and a booty worthy of a Beyoncé song. Unfortunately though, not all styles can flatter everything at once. When in doubt, remember you are the modern Marilyn Monroe. The 1950s is never out of style so while everyone else is looking stupid in galaxy leggings, you simply ooze timeless elegance.
-Peplums are a fantastic way to add detail to your waist to balance it with your hips and bust, giving the illusion of a straighter silhouette.
-Darker wash jeans slim the hips and smooth your thighs so you get a cleaner line down the leg.
-The magical pencil skirt sits on, and thus emphasises, your beautiful waist, flatters the hips and draws the eyes upwards to bust and face.
-Rockabilly is a cool style on your figure, too. High-waisted shorts in summer act to lengthen the legs and give the appearance of slimmer hips and thighs.
-Don’t overdo the embellishments on tops. Block colours are best, but clean, smaller prints will define the bust without adding the illusion of extra bulk.

Some things to keep in mind no matter what shape you are:
-Skinny leg jeans do not make your legs skinny! Unfortunately not everyone is blessed with supermodel pins and that’s perfectly fine, but bootcut or retro flares will sit better and look better in the long run.
-I don’t care who you are, tights are NOT pants.
-Leggings are best worn with tunics or under long blouses. Camel toes are not a good accessory.
-Beware of clingy materials. Bodycon dresses and tight tops can look absolutely stunning on figures with smooth curves, but can also go disastrously wrong. If you find that the material is tucking into your body at all, you’re better off going a size up than risking looking like Kirstey Alley on a bad day.

Finally, just remember: everyone has got something to brag about. Happy dressing, ladies!

– by Blaire Gillies

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Author Archives: bngillies

Women’s Woes

Men Get PMS Too!

Satisfashion: The Fashion Fruitbowl