nourishing obscurity

Fair enough, style is in the eye of the beholder and tastes change.  One man’s stylistic icon is another man’s abomination.

In the case of these two above though, I mean, WTF are they?  More to the point, who the hell “designed” them and why did anyone think that one eye was somehow cool?  What do they mean and what on earth have they to do with Britain in any way?

Why couldn’t the mascots – not that mascots were needed in the first place – why couldn’t they have been an indigenous creature, like the Russian bear or American eagle?  Why must everything, including stadia, be futuristic, when futuristic simply means dated in a few years?  If you look at one of the 50s sci-fi films, you’ll know what I mean.

Classic though is always classic.  It can be given a facelift to make it sharper but classic lines are surely the best, particularly for a nation which relies so heavily on its tourist industry, which is based on history and heritage, after all.  Tourists don’t visit to see some pseudo-Spanish Mandrake and Wedlock – they visit these islands to take in the heritage and culture which they imagine we still haven’t thrown away.

Two days ago, one of the railway rags showed a two page spread of Mandrake and Wedlock introducing us to the 2012 Olympic stadia or whatever.  For a start, there’s something wrong with the velodrome which is floating up in the air on stilts but we’ll let that pass.

There’s nothing beautiful in these designs, nothing whatever.  From the Millennium Fund-sucker Dome to London Eye, to these monstrosities they’re building with our funds for a cheapo 2012 Olympics, they’re all polystyrene tackiness and “cooler than thou” showcases for diseased minds outdoing each other to see who can be the least classy in a disintegrating UK.

And those washed out, insipid colours – ugggghhh!

Downunder

It’s not just young, award winning dog’s breakfast “designers” in the UK though who are producing these cultural abortions.  Downunder, it seems it’s just the same:

Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper said the costume [below left] was “a national joke” and members of the fashion industry have agreed.  Clare Maclean, fashion features editor of Australian Grazia magazine, described it as a “travesty”, but admitted that bizarre costumes were part of the Miss Universe tradition.

Now that costume was the result of taking a bit of something “representing some minority”, tacked onto a bit of  “representing some other element of Australia” and the result is simply an offence created by a committee.  Who are these “designers”, who tells them their designs are not woeful, who fetes them?  Who are the members of judging committees who allow these things to go through?

What sort of culturally bereft minds are these and who let them get into positions of power like this?

Size and shape

While we’re on about it, who got this idea that tall beanpole women are beautiful, with babyfaces stuck on the end of stalks?  Once again, sizes change but it’s pretty obvious that the right size for a woman is roughly between 5’2″ and 5″7″ and outside that range, the person just lives with it.  For a man, it’s between 5’9″ and 6’2″ – obviously not hard and fast but somewhere around there.

I feel sorry for the stick insect in the photo here and clearly there might be some who like that sort of thing but to put her forward as somehow beautiful has the head shaking in disbelief.  No one puts up a 5’3″ man or a rotund woman or someone with three eyes so why do they put an extreme up as an ideal?

Don’t get me wrong, this is no attack on outsized people – I’m one myself but I don’t put myself forward as any sort of ideal.  Yet this weirdly shaped woman in the photo is utopian?

There is a serious side to this.

My ex-gf, physically, was a combination of curves, all of which blended into a pleasing whole, nothing too large, nothing too small – in short, she was close to ideal.  Yet she was forever moaning about not being one of the clothes racks on the catwalk.

She also needed glasses but refused to wear them for fear of looking “defectni”.  Some of the most beautiful women in the world wear glasses – but no, she wasn’t having it.

It’s this insistence on an unbeautiful physical form held up as an ideal which has caused untold heartache for those who don’t meet the ridiculous criteria.

Filed under: Politics & economics