WTF?!

It's my argument that you can never really go to a wedding without something on your head. A hat. A fascinator. SOMETHING. This is mostly because I love hats and fascinators and would wear one every day if I could get away with it. ONE DAY it is my fervent dream that I will get to buy something from Pearls and Swine, particularly something huge and delicious and bonkers like THIS ONE, but until that day your ordinary, everyday wedding fascinator is the only chance I'll get. *sigh*

So, to go with the navy dress and it's laceness, and the shoes and handbag (which also feature lace), I got this very plain fascinator.



Which looks like this on my actual noggin:



So it's lacy, and the lace pattern featured a little five-petalled flower, which echoes the flowers on the shoes and bag. (Full disclosure: the fact that it is harmoniously lacy is really just a bonus. I bought this because it was on sale and I wasn't spending £40+ on a bloody fascinator).

BUT

It's dark, and my hair is dark, and I feel like fascinators usually have an element of MOVEMENT about them - generally acheived with feathery bits - which this is lacking. SO. Here's the list of STUFF I BOUGHT to jazz up this fascinator, and tie it in with my shoes and handbag:

• One stem of artificial hydrangeas
• One stem of artificial forget-me-nots
• Blue pearl flower stamens (not the right navy blue, but gawd help me everywhere I tried was SOLD OUT of navy blue)
• Greyish pearly flower stamens (technically to salvage the handbag first and foremost. Not a perfect match for the stamens on the shoes, but as near as I could humanly get AND I KNOW because I bought silvery ones that were ALL RONG and then bought some more and... gah)
• Clear fishing wire
• A cool melt glue gun and glue sticks
• Modge Podge for fabric
• applicator brushes
• Navy blue superfine (nail art quality) glitter
• A half metre (because I have no idea of sensible fabric measurements or how badly/how many times I might Fuck It Up before I get a fabric flower right) of navy blue satin
• A half metre of periwinkle satin
• A sheet of deep blue felt

If you're thinking that that sounds very much like I might now have spent more than £40 on a bloody fascinator... I think you might be right. I'm avoiding tallying up the costs just in case!

My plan is to discombobulate the artificial flowers and sew some of the flower heads onto some of the loops of the fascinator bow, glitter some of the other loops, leave some as plain lace, and create one navy and one periwinkle satin flower to put in the middle, rather like the shoes and bag. I MIGHT also, depending on how that goes, suspend some of the small forget-me-not flower heads on fishing wire and dangle them out of the centre of the bow, for movement.

This is THE PLAN. What I am capable of might be very different. Wish me luck!

In the light of it being Friday (AND THANK FUCK FOR THAT), I invite you to check out these Unicorn shoes.


Mouse Twist Heel - schuh.co.uk 


I think these should be uniform for all Bhuzsnarkers. Controversially (given that red is my favourite colour), I'll actually go for the yellow. I've noticed this twisty unicorn horn style heel in a few shoe designs lately, and it allllllways makes me think of a few of our favourite Unicorns. >o)

Have a squizz at this advertisement, which appears with IRRITATING regularity on my television.

REALLY?!

First off, I absolutely, just cannot fucking STAND the start of the song Shout. I cannot abide it. Poor old Lulu screeching "WEEE-EEEE-EEE-EEE-EEEEE-EEEEEEEEL" immediately has the effect of making my scalp retreat (which happens when I'm REALLY, REALLY ANGRY - I think it's some kind of evolutionary mechanism like when a cat flattens it's ears), sets my teeth on edge, and has me reaching for the remote to furiously jab the "mute" button or to change channels.

What IS it with goddamned feminine hygeine adverts where they have to be so fucking NOISY and VISIBLE? Did you think this symbolised "fun!", Marketing Team? Because what it really symbolises is "FUCKWITS". Or "INCANDESCENT RAGE". Or straightforward GET THIS SHIT OFF MY TELLY RIGHT NAOW.

I'm not sure these ever played outside the UK, but remember the Bodyform advert? Where the fucking rawk chick (FUN! You too can be a rawking rawk chick! Even when your uterine lining is sloughing off!) yelled WHOAAAAAAAAAH BODYFO-ORM! BODYFORMED FOR YOOOOOOOOU!!!? That advert used to drive both me and my mother absolutely INSANE. My mum would yell "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, BAHDYFAHRM!" like an enraged muppet, which was quite entertaining in a "must lighten mood before we smash the fucking television" kind of way.

You know, Marketing Team, the thing is - we women kinda know about that whole menstruation thing. We know how it works. We know the kind of products we might buy. And while we might appreciate the dollars you're putting into making these product better for us, we kind of DON'T want you SCREAMING about them in our living rooms, 'kay? It's bad enough we have to put up with the PMS and the cramps and the INCOVENIENCE of the whole thing when it happens, but to have you SCREECHING your upbeat adverts  in our homes in what little non-PMS time we have, all "PERIODS! YAAAAAAAY! LOOK, WE MADE TAMPONS WITH LITTLE SHEETS ON LIKE LITTLE GHOSTS! FUN FUN FUUUUUNNNN!" makes us want to fucking rip our scalps off and firebomb your offices. This is perhaps not a successful marketing strategy, is what I'm saying. (Also, that if I need my tampons to have little wingy sheets on them to fill out some kind of VACUOUS CAVERN and catch resulting extraneous free-falling fluid, MAYBE I HAVE A WORSE PROBLEM THAN JUST MENSTRUATION.)

And seriously, Libra (back to the advert currently filling me with rage) - are you REALLY trying to tell me that your screamingly amazing new tampon developments are so great that I'll join the FLOCKS of women screaming with Boyband-worthy glee in the tampon aisle of my local supermarket? That I will DROP MY EGGS (and seriously, is there a hidden message there? Is that a euphemism or what?!), or clutch my long flowing hair and scream scream scream, or PASS OUT ALL CROSS-EYED WITH EUPHORIA?

Dudes. "Rounded tip". Well, HOLY SHIT. It's not like any other brands of tampons have been doing that for, like, EVER.

KNOTTED STRING. Oh dear god above, that is THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER HEARD OF! Revolutionary! What did we EVER do before this?! I WAS USING A SHOEHORN. *eyeroll*

Twist wrap! Well! That's maybe the ONLY vaguely innovative thing that you have here, Libra. It's marginally less annoying than the cigarette-wrapper-style pull tab. But it's HARDLY worth screaming and passing out over.

You DO make me want to shout, Libra. And what you make me want to shout is: "FUCK OFF!!1!"

I spent all of my childhood, most of my teens and most of my twenties overweight to varying degrees. I lost about half of my excess weight through diet in the year when I was 25/26, and when I was 27 I split with my (very) long-term partner and lost the other half of the excess weight very quickly.

Losing the weight was something of a revelation. When you're overweight by a reasonable margin (without being extremely overweight where you unfortunately become MORE visible to a seriously assholey section of society), you become strangely invisible. You are not a sexual being, so no-one of the opposite gender notices you.

Now I assume that for people who are NOT overweight and never have been, they're familiar with being "visible", and have coping strategies for dealing with attention of both positive and negative kinds. When you have never been on the sexual radar, though - it's a horrifying and vulnerable position to be in to suddenly be viewed with hungry eyes. You have a kind of naivete that makes you incredibly gullible. Oh, look, this person wants to help you with your bags - WHOAH, WHOAH, who the hell said you could step inside my front door?! Oh, how nice, you have a couple new friends (guys), but why is that girl giving you the evil eye? And ohhhh, all of a sudden my male friend thinks he can make a move on me, this is totally horrible and awkward and what the hell and I supposed to do now? People who would never have glanced at you twice talk to you now. You don't have a "filter" for their bullshit yet. It's a learning experience, and one which can be quite painful - particularly, I have to say, when you find yourself suddenly single and seem to be emitting some kind of "SINGLE CHICK! OMFG!" pheromone that seems to make every douchebag within a twenty mile radius think you're interested in his nonsense. <sigh>

I've since gained the weight back again - almost all of it - and am invisible again. It's comfortable, in a way - but depressing. I'm embarking on the journey to get it back off, but it presents me with a strange conundrum. Sexual advertising - that is, the suggestion that what you wear/how you move/how you present yourself in general is a form of advertising your availability and attractiveness to the opposite sex. It may not be your intention, but it's how you may be interpreted.

As a fat girl, I don't need to worry about that right now. I don't wear anything that could be misinterpreted. I wear jeans. All. The. Time. Bootcut, of course, to balance out the booty (boy, do I have booty - when I'm slim and when I'm heavy, I am blessed with the bubble-butt). I wear a fleece almost like a uniform at the moment. I don't always wear baggy shirts, but the clothes I wear are generally dark-coloured, not terribly imaginative or decorative, in a word - functional. I do wear high heels every day, because some things you just don't let go.

I have a passion for trumpet skirts. The kind that hug the booty, and kick flare a little away from it. I love some sexy retro styles that emphasise shapely curves. I love accessories and eyeliner and all of the frivolity that you can indulge in when you're a chick. I *adore* high heels and feel that absolutely every woman (without exception!) should own a pair of red shoes. I have long, dark hair - which is currently tied back 90% of the time, because when you'r fat and invisible, why make the effort, right?

So underneath, I'm the same person as I always was. I'm just currently going incognito as a fat chick who doesn't make too much effort. When I lose the weight and go back to being a 10/12 (UK, so that's 6/8 US), I *will* be able to wear the type of clothes tat I find attractive - pencil skirts, fitted suits, silk blouses, booty skirts and jeans galore. And every conceivable sexy pair of shoes I can lay my grubby little hands on. And I find myself worrying about sexual advertising again - I might be abke to wear these things, but what will it mean for the way I find myself treated? In my mind, I've always been the same person. I'll be the same person when I'm standing in front of you wearing a form-fitting retro 50's red skirt, high heels and white silk blouse as I was when I was hiding behind my desk in black trousers and black shirt. But I'll suddenly be a dark-haired, red-high-heel wearing vixen instead of just me.

Reasonable? Unreasonable? I don't know. It's peculiar to think about it now, as it's something I never thought of when I intially started losing weight. I just looked forward to wearing whatever I wanted to, to shopping with abandon, to all of those gorgeous things that had been denied me for so many years. I didn't know what I was getting myself in for then, perhaps - and now I'm more aware of the fact that you attract attention in a way you never experienced before when you're no longer camouflaged by being considered undesirable.

I'm very happily spoken for, by a lovely man who has no jealousy issues. I'm taken very seriously at work where I am frighteningly good at what I do. How will these things change or be tested when I look completely different?