Dress Pick

H & M: $24.99: Cute, form fitting, and could go great with a light cardigan or jacket.

Being on Set (round 2)

Conveniently K wrote her post about being on set, on a day when I was actually on set. While reading her account I almost had to wrestle myself to the ground to not share it with everyone there.

Being a female on a video shoot is beyond challenging. While on set there is such "man talk". You know what I mean: dirty jokes, harsh words, sudden accents that weren't there before, etc. As the only female most times, I tend to go along with it by not cracking jokes of my own, but just lightly rolling my eyes or smiling. I never point out that it bothers me, or that it's not professional. Honestly, half the time I don't even pay attention I'm too busy working. This has caused me to be considered almost androgynous. When a dirty joke is said, the response is "oh it's only T she doesn't care", or "right T?" and then laughs. I have decided I don't mind this role, the not really a guy, but not really a girl position.

But that day I was offended twice over. First, because when I asked why K needed to be on set they said "we needed someone to represent female engineers, so we wanted a blonde, good-looking female". Well, good one guys, I'm blonde. I jokingly said why not me, and the response was "well it's you, you know, we needed like a more womanly person".

So there you have it. Offense number one. Due to the card I play on set, I am not "womanly" enough to play the only female engineer in a two second spot.

Offense number two was obviously how they proceeded to turn the only female engineer into the random blonde babe. It just didn't make sense, and it completely objectified us females. They said it was just to be funny, but the client didn't find it entertaining, and K was off the hook in the final edit.

The day was a learning experience. It's real interesting to see how the way we play our cards can create some unwanted outcomes, but you win some you lose some. That day we both lost a bunch.

Tweet of the day - Margaret Atwood

Let me start this off by saying, I adore Margaret Atwood's books (i.e. The Handmaid's Tale) Her tweets are just as awesome! She usually says the most ridiculous things. Here's my favorite one for today:

(http://angelasancartier.net/girdle)

Vanna White Incarnate

The article T posted actually made me think about how there's a fine line between "confident sexy" and "objectified sexy." Maybe the difference lies in who the sexy is for.

A few months back, our Assoc. Creative Director asked me to help out on a video shoot for one of our clients. (We'll call him Brian) He said they needed a blonde female so I agreed to participate and asked him what I should wear. Shortly after, I get the email from him explaining my wardrobe:

"Hey, so I'm thinking your most vanna white-lookin' dress/skirt getup. Sound good?" - Brian

My initial thought: "Are you fucking kidding me?" So I obviously responded with this picture:

Anyway, the next day rolled around and I brought a variety of different "sexy" dresses. T actually ended up solidifying my downfall by bringing a stretchy, slinky, sparkly black dress that they all said I Must wear. Just to paint the picture better, T is taller and thinner than me. I'm legit curvy. This dress would be straight up Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune.

I change into the dress and come out to the set, obviously self-concious considering there's a slew of geeky engineers, colleagues and my boss standing there staring. At first, it wasn't so bad because they just asked me to saunter across the set during one of the scenes. It really wasn't a big deal. I understood they just wanted a random pretty girl for one of the lines in the script. Hell, I was a bit flattered they asked.

Then it got weird.

They asked me to pose on one of the chairs on the set for a few photos. I sware it felt like everyone was staring at me. They're all standing around, gawking, telling me to show more leg, etc. It was humiliating. And to top it all off, my boss Tweeted a picture of me! Without my permission!

The whole thing seriously made me feel objectified and dirty. I mean, this is my place of work. These are the people who are supposed to respect me and my opinions. I recognize that it's parially my fault for letting them get away with it. The problem is that once I signed up for it, I had to be a good sport. If I didn't cooperate with a smile on my face, I would have been the annoying prude who can't take a joke or have fun. Who wants to be that person in the office?

So I guess I'm asking where we draw that line? When do we lose our integrity at the price of being "easy to work with"?

Fashion and Women

Often times people hear the word feminist and they picture drab clothing, no lipstick, effortless women. This is not true anymore. Today's feminists might not even be aware that they are an active feminist at all, and probably love dressing up great as much as any woman who wears heels and lipstick. Here's an interesting article by Lisa Armstrong from The Sunday Times. She brings up the age old question, doesn't dressing good and wearing those heels make us woman feel empowered, and "give great pleasure"? Is it quite possible that fashion is still the one thing woman hold over men? Read her article and see how you feel.

Fashion is still a feminist issue

Did Miuccia Prada really say after last week’s show in Milan that she was a former feminist? I lent in closer.

Yes, that’s what she’d said all right. “Feminism?” she sighed, “it doesn’t really exist anymore does it?”

The British journalists listening to her exchanged knowing smiles and later agreed that, even more than an upwardly mobile set of sales figures next quarter, perhaps what Miuccia Prada really needs to lift her spirits is a copy of Natasha Walter’s latest bookLiving Dolls: The Return of Sexism. Not that it makes particularly uplifting reading for those who haven’t abandoned the feminist cause. But at least it’s addressing the case.

How depressing it must be to live in Berlusconi’s Italy. Four-ply cashmere and sex scandals on tap but no decent debate about women’s roles in society. The land that gave us the Renaissance and Visconti is now engaged in a dialogue about women’s sexuality that begins and ends with Donatella Versace’s and Pucci’s slashed-to-the-thigh, plunging-to-the-navel aesthetics.

Arguably the Donatella Look has been one of Italy’s most successful cultural exports in recent years. It’s all over Britain and America — marginally less so in France — and flourishing in Australia and South America. Let’s not blame Donatella though. We lapped it up.

Fashion magazines embraced a mode of (un)dressing they dubbed porno-chic.

Laced with irony and layers of contradiction (some conscious, others less so) the once shocking porno-chic filtered down — minus, naturally, the irony.

Porn-star hair extensions, porn-star lips, porn-star white-tipped nails, sex shop bondage shoes, fetish underwear, T-shirts for teens with Porn Star emblazoned across them, halternecks for tots, bum-revealing jeans and lashings of black-studded leather. “When did women start dressing like prostitutes?” a well-known theatre producer asked me at a Bafta dinner recently. I licked my lipgloss coated lips uneasily. It’s gloopy and tacky — but I’m addicted.

So it looks as though, in 2010, even lipgloss is political again. OnWomen’s Hour the other week, Jane Garvey asked whether it’s possible to wear lipstick and be a feminist. Not that old canard, I thought. Don’t people realise that sometimes what seems oppressive — high heels, corsets — can also, for reasons of status and (self) control, give great pleasure?

Can’t they see that fashion and beauty are two industries in which women operate on an equal (or possibly superior) level to men? Just look at Helena Rubinstein. Or Elizabeth Arden, Estée Lauder, Coco Chanel and, more recently, Donna Karan, Diane von Furstenberg and, for that matter, Donatella. On the other hand, women on the lowest rungs of the fashion ladder — in the sweatshops — might not feel so empowered by their labour. Or perhaps they do — knowing that they could have even more exploitative jobs, in the sex industry for instance.

But Garvey has a point. Clothes and cosmetics can still unsettle — just look at the kerfuffle over Katie Price’s decision to lard her two-year-old daughter’s face in blusher, lipstick and false eyelashes.

Everything we consume — no matter how right-on — brings with it another set of dilemmas. The anti-fashion dungarees of Seventies feminists were mighty impractical when it came to going to the loo (plus the androgynous aspect drove some men wild). As for the thrift shop coats and trilbies — weren’t they part of a mainstream drift towards vintage, most famously defined by Annie Hall? Even when we kick against the fashion system, we end up adopting a fashionable boot.

The power to unsettle is good by the way. Part of fashion’s job is to challenge society’s norms. Sometimes it does this in the only way it knows — pendulum swings that last one season. It’s hard to say whether Prada’s latest demure, almost prim (and all the more erotic for it), collection will stick. Marc Jacobs pulled off a similar trick the week before in New York and the fashion editors, for the most part, swooned. Grown-up, covered-up clothes at last. Only Luke Leitch, my esteemed colleague, demurred. Didn’t I think, he asked, that all those folds of fabric might, actually, be anti-feminist, or at least anti-female, or at least anti the female body? I haven’t decided, but at least fashion is asking some interesting questions.

Short Skirts

Yes, it's true I tend to wear pants over skirts because I had a very strict mom growing up who insisted on not letting me wear clothing that made me look "slutty". This included anything too far above the knees and string tank tops. Somehow this, and her ban of soda, managed to stick. I am extremely uncomfortable in skirts that are too far above my knees. I not only have long legs for my torso but since I'm on the thinner side they start to look stringy. I therefore never combine short dresses and heels at work because I find that people spend more time looking at my legs than taking me seriously.

Now to make sure you all understand K's dress length I made a diagram to prove that the dress is not that ridiculously short, if it was I would have told her immediately to go home and change! There is a fine line between playing the "sexy" card, and looking like a fool. K does not cross that line with this dress. It looks very classy and adorable on her.

Now If I were to wear this dress it would fall about halfway on the thighs, and yes, this is too short for me at work. Sorry K no time soon will I be borrowing this dress!

Fashion and cards

You forgot to mention why you always choose to wear pants to work. I do love pants, but for meetings, events, etc., I actually like dresses better. They show off my legs, I can wear tights and cute boots, and it always looks comfortably dressy. T was just telling me the other day how she doesn't like wearing skirts above her knee because it shows off her legs too much (hers are much longer than my 5'2" figure). It seems that our personal styles are truly affected by the cards we play in the office. What do you think, T?

Check out my new favorite dress from Zara. Mind you, that dress doesn't look quite so short on me!