Discobolus

More stockings combined with the Olympics being omnipresent and irresistible here in London led to a flirtation with an ancient Greek. It's simultaneously admirable and depressing that so many of the female athletes manage to complete an event looking fabulous, in full slap and without a hair out of place (kudos to the hair product). L'Oreal should consider becoming a sponsor for Rio 2016.

Frankenstockings

Vertically challenged as I am, I've often thought it would be nice to be able to don a pair of long, sleek legs as easily as you can put on a pair of stockings. These legs are unfortunately pre-photoshop, rendering them rather more Frankenstein than Victoria's Secret, more surgical than sartorial, but the wishful thinking is there. 

Laying It On With A Trowel

A couple of weeks ago I read an article in the Guardian Weekend magazine called 'Face Off' (14.07.12, Katie Puckrik), about the recent appearance in public of several celebrities without their makeup. The author elaborated on the theme by herself undertaking 'the challenge of going a full day without wearing makeup'. Well, the challenge for me would be to last a full day wearing the stuff. In our family, we tended towards the rather Victorian notion that only women of 'loose morals' indulged in makeup. A rather glamorous and soft-focused studio shot of my mother at 18 inevitably (still) prompts my father to comment, 'Of course, she really didn't need lipstick'. Well, I need lipstick. I need all the help I can get, but my nature and background unfortunately militate against it. Denied maternal instruction and encouragement as an adolescent, and instinctively loathe to waste time and money, I have to grit my teeth to wield the primer and the powder, the blush and the gloss. Some cognitive behavioural therapy required, I think. It's a tough, tough world out there.

Debit/Credit

Another article about cosmetic surgery in one of the Sunday newspaper magazines (The Sunday Times Magazine, July 15, 2012), this one featuring a surgeon who is performing liposuction on a twenty-one year old student. In terms of income, she can't be that common, accompanied as she is by her Louis Vuitton handbag, and able to shell out £8,000 (from her 'savings' rather than her student loan) in order to have fat removed from thighs and bum. Some of the fat will be reinjected into her breasts, and some will be frozen and banked on the offchance that it will come in handy at a later date, for medical treatment rather than for roasting potatoes. Why is she undergoing this rather nerve-wracking and expensive procedure? She's quoted as saying, 'I've always been curvy, and I've got small breasts, so I wanted to be more in proportion. I'm young, I want to be able to wear what I like, and don't feel I can at the moment.' 
Well, naturally, a variety of thoughts spring to mind upon reading this, but I have been doing a little course in bookkeeping recently, and my brain currently processes all information as some sort of double entry. I'm only a beginner, of course, but in this case it would be something like this: Fat Account: Debit - Bum and Thighs, Credit - Breasts and Biobank.

Brief But Sweet

Chocolate

A friend (a smoker) surprised me by claiming that he was no more addicted to cigarettes than I was to chocolate. This gave me some pause for thought. I don't think peer pressure got me started on the stuff. I didn't gather with other miscreants behind the bike shed at school to surreptitiously gobble a bar of Cadbury's. It is true that I cannot keep it in the house; milk or dark, if it's there, I eat it. I used to imagine that I had the self control to ration my progress through a box of chocolates, but it ain't so. Once that box is open, the contents are despatched at a rapidly accelerating rate: full to empty in a matter of days, or even hours, depending on mood. And the older I get, the less resistance I seem to put up to immediate gratification. No backbone. And probably seriously damaged internal organs, too.

Mona Lisa at the Counter

 Mona Lisa, after five hundred years on a wall, might well have welcomed a visit to the makeup counter for an update. Time to look less 'enigmatic', and more 'empowered'.

After thirty minutes' work on the part of the sales assistant, however, she still looks somewhat pouty, perhaps because she remains in black and white, when she had in mind something a little more colourful. It always surprises me (and it shouldn't) that women renowned for their beauty can profess dissatisfaction with this or that aspect of their appearance.

Not entirely happy, perhaps, but decidedly more cheerful given the restrictions of the copyright-free engraving in which she here resides. The sales assistant has gone for the 'natural look', as Mona Lisa is, after all, a virtuous wife. She has added definition to her subject's previously rather sketchy eyebrows, and, after minimising the under-eye shadows with a cream concealer, has  highlighted those lovely large brown eyes with a light dusting of taupe eyeshadow and the restrained application of some volumising mascara. The final touch is a very pretty pink moisturising lipstick which can only enhance that expressive mouth.