Fringe Or Foe

Last year fringing was everywhere. Literally. I can’t name one person (apart from myself but I haven’t washed my hair in 4 days so I’m too gross to count as a person) that didn’t own rather a handbag, t-shirt or cowboy boots embellished with that shredded tissue paper-esque design otherwise known as a trend. Unfortunately for me, I misread the memo. When I heard fringing was going to be big, well, I had a fringe cut.

In autobiographies or (if you’re not famous enough to have needed an autobiography) photo albums, people often split their lives into the following key moments: graduating with a useless degree, getting first job completely unrelated to said degree, buying property, marrying, having two children, divorcing, remarrying, repeating a few times before retiring to Switzerland to avoid tax. No one, however, ever mentions the commitment involved with having a fringe. Until now. Because sadly it isn’t all style goals and looking like Zooey Deschanel.

Problem 1: I have curly hair. Perhaps this was my own fault, you see all those Women’s Health articles like ‘Who even are you if you don’t know your hair/skin/body type?’ and I always ignore them because I question my existence enough without Women’s Health adding to the mix, however knowing your hairtype is probs v important before making a decision like this. I have to straighten Jess jnr. (as the block fringe in known) every morning else I look like the dog from Annie. For someone with commitment issues, it’s a big commitment.

Buggles

I’ve been blogging for almost a year now (I realise, upon reflection, 11 months really isn’t that long at all considering most of you were essentially birthed onto a WordPress dashboard but still. I have commitment issues) and there are still so many things I don’t understand. I thought blogging would be all rock up, pick a domain, write some stuff, delete the typos/blasphemy and voila instant internet success. But no. There’s hierarchy and etiquette and advertising and social media and so I thought I’d document it all in a hopefully #relatable post (awks if it’s just me) containing my Blogger Struggles. Or Buggles if you want to feel a bit more video killed the radio star.

Comment Etiquette: You know that awkward ‘handshake? two kisses? okay this is okay shit is he going in for three?’ uncertainty you get when you meet a stranger- to me comments are like the internet equivalent. You comment on my post so I reply and I know the relationship is solid. Meanwhile life is running smoothly *insert pictures of some baby lambs or mini eggs or something* BAM you reply to my reply and suddenly I’m like woah, do I reply to their reply of my reply? Is that what ‘being nice’ is these days? I just can’t keep up. This is why I’m no good at tennis.

Stardolls in their eyes

After the success of a post back in August where I revisited Club Penguin, it only felt right to endorse my nostalgia further by revisiting another childhood site: Stardoll. The harmless dressing up game aimed at tweenagers. I know what you’re thinking because I’m thinking the same, Jess it’s half term you should be writing that essay about 1848 Revolutions in Germany, revising how to draw an alpha glucose molecule and reading Tess of the D’urbervilles, instead of spending three hours deciding which hair colour looks best on a virtual doll, but I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s not like Tess is 60 chapters or anything…

Quite possibly the most tragic part of this experience was before I’d even really begun- the part where I realised Stardoll have deleted my original doll due to inacitivity. RIP Laceilee (in my head this scene is happening to the When She Loved Me music from Toy Story 2 and involves lots tears as her Bonjour Bizou clothes are donated to dolls which a) aren’t premium members and b) don’t appreciate the amount of denim needed to duplicate French couture). Crying over, I made a new Stardoll and gradually began to notice elements of the site that massively encouraged the stereotypical woman- regardless of whether this stereotype is good or not, the problem seemed to be the lack of alternative. It got me thinking, is Stardoll a feminist site? 

When you begin you’re given a white, skinny, blonde doll as the default model, which seems strange because surely you could just be given a completely blank mannequin? For a site that encourages creativity, giving you what is essentially an Ellie Goulding stunt double doesn’t make sense. Plus you’re given open toe shoes which is just gross- put your feet away gal.

A Whore New Wor(l)d

If you buy the same tights as me (which you will because where else can you buy tights if not M&S?) then you will know your basic hosiery geography. At the bottom there’s a foot, the expensive ones that I can’t afford have a reinforced toe and specific pouches for your heels to prevent you putting them on back to front, then in the middle there’s some legs which are destined for laddering, taking us to the top of the tights which is home to a rather itchy label and slag lines. The rules of the game are as follows: if your skirt is above the lines then you’re a slag and because we all know that ‘slag’ is the last thing you want on your emotional résumé, the fear of judgement will encourage you to wear those super long pencil skirts that restrict each footstep to about 5cm. Simples, right?

The only time I ever thought about these lines in great detail was when I was trying to cover them up- maybe that’s why it took me so long to realise the damage a single word could do. I mean, what actually is a slag? After a quickie with my boyf, otherwise known as Urban Dictionary (my saviour on many occasions including the time when I was about to have a full throttle conversation with someone about the latest Ellie Goulding album because I discovered smh didn’t mean Summer Music Hits) we find the definition: an individual who cares not for relationships beyond the realm of the sexual.

The Barbie Dilemma

I have a confession that Aqua summarised perfectly in 1997: I’m a Barbie girl. Maybe not so much anymore, but bb Jess had all her latest luminous pink gear inc skipping rope, bike, shin pads, themed parties and sunglasses (which I dropped in a river when walking the dog and cried for at least a week #CountryBumpkinProblems) so no one was more excited at the news that Mattel had reinvented the Barbie doll than my 8 year old self. And initially Twitter seemed pretty excited too.

Gradually, as more investigating was done, people started to turn on the new dolls as not being ‘enough’, but I think before we explore the dark side we should focus on the positives (I feel a bit like the David Attenborough of doll world ngl).