Jenny Holiday

Pack your bags for happily ever after

fashion

“Look at the youth,” said Lulu

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“Look at the youth,” said Lulu, waving her arms around as if there were youth to be seen, as we sat in her office. She was trying to convince me not to get my new jeans shortened. They were slightly longer than I wanted them to be, so they kind of runched up at the bottom. “Look at their jeans.”

“Jeans are like curtains,” she said. “They’re supposed to come to the floor. And anyway, there’s nothing worse than a woman in heels whose jeans are too short.”

“But I don’t have any heels.”

“You might get some. Seriously. Don’t waste your money. Those jeans are hot.”

She felt so strongly about it that I decided not to get them shortened. So when you see me with the bottom of my jeans all runched up around my ankles, it’s Lulu’s fault.

You know you’re old when…

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I went to the mall yesterday and as I was standing in line to pay for my black and white diagonal striped skirt that looked exactly like something I would have worn to a school dance in 1985, David Bowie’s Space Oddity came on the Muzak. Then when I got to the front a teenager named Britney whose name tag said she had “served two years” asked me if the gray streak in my hair was natural. It was, I said. “Awesome,” she said.

I am not making one word of this up.

It is a reverse fairy tale, complete with the anti-princess dress

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Are we all loving the news of Princess Sayako of Japan, who abdicated to marry a commoner? She is moving from the palace into a one-bedroom apartment! She is having grocery-shopping lessons! It is like a reverse-fairytale, complete with the anti-princess dress.

sayako

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was terribly cute and I adored it, but Cinderella at the ball it was not. How not-Cinderella was it, you ask? Well, I read in more than one place that it was inspired by Japanese anime. How much does that rock? And when are they going to start producing Princess Sayako and Commoner Husband action figures?

I for one would have stuck it out in the lap of luxury, but I digress. The best part is that her abdication is apparently calling attention to the so-called crisis of succession in Japan, where the royal family has produced nothing but girls for 40 years. This is also true of my family. We of course are not having any crises of succession. But we all think that it’s high time they let women ascend the throne over there. Come on already.

It bugs me when people try to foist babies upon you

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“I try to pay her a compliment at least two times a week,” says Lulu about her boss, who is of course now my ex-boss. “She always looks so nice,” she explains, “and, more importantly, she tries.”

I was upstairs near my old office the other day, because a co-worker on maternity leave was visiting with her baby. Everyone was trying to make me hold the baby. Now, Chicklets, this was, objectively, one of the Cutest Babies Ever, but I don’t like to hold random babies and it bugs me when people try to foist babies upon you. It is exactly the same as when newly-engaged women whip their rings off and say, “want to try it on?” Um, no, and no. And did I say no?

Now, I adore my old boss and actually quite miss having her as my boss. So when she tried to get me to hold the baby, I very much relished having the opportunity to say decline and say, “You are not the boss of me.” Because, really, how often does a girl get the opportunity to say that and mean it in an utterly literal sense?

But she did look cute—the boss, not the baby. Well, the baby, too, but I digress.

Lulu’s philosophy of trying to pay people compliments is actually based on the fact that, outcome aside, she has great respect for their effort.

“My attitude,” she says, “is, I’m sitting in front of a computer all day, so fuck you ALL!”

Here’s to casual Fridays, Chicklets. TGIF.

 

I want the scheming and vile among us to suffer a little bit first

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Why do celebrities look good in hats and normal people do not, no matter how objectively cute the hat in question?
Why do celebrities look good in hats and normal people do not, no matter how objectively cute the hat in question?

Lily has been saying for years that the Kate Beckensale character in Cold Comfort Farm is actually a fictional version of me. She has been adamant that I rent it, and I finally have. What’s funny about this is that Kate Beckensale is Mr. Mock’s pretend-girlfriend, or one of them. She’s the one who would play his girlfriend in the movie of his life (he would be played, in the indie version of the movie of his life, by a young Alan Rickman; in the mainstream Hollywood version, by, I am sorry to have to say, an older Macaulay Culkin.) I will say in his defence that his affection for her predates her boob job, which is a good thing because this is where she and my double-A-cup self part ways. But I digress.

Chicklets, Lily’s interpretation of this whole thing is:
a) erroneous, and
b) flattering

Let us for a moment explore B, because isn’t that really the more fun option?

Reasons I would like to be like Kate Beckensale’s Character from Cold Comfort Farm:

a) Her clothes are projections of the best version of me, set in a different era, of course. Half schoolmarm, half simmering chanteuse, they are very out of place on the titular farm and yet they are somehow still eminently practical and not fussy. And the hats! I am swooning for those snug little hats atop that clean little bob.

b) She wants everyone to be happy, even the most dreadful sorts of people. She is cheerful and relentless in her machinations and manipulations; they are all for the greater good. She arranges elopements! She cracks the veneer of cranky matriarchs by giving them fashion magazines!

And now, in the interests of symmetry and even-handedness, let us explore Option A.

Reasons I am unlike Kate Beckensale’s Character from Cold Comfort Farm:

a) I do have some cute clothes, I will give myself that, but for every quirky piece I buy for the price of a small sedan at Comrags, I have a dozen ugly, shapeless, mass produced pieces of crap from the Gap that I purchased because they were cheap and did not require ironing. In other words, they appealed to the very worst in me, to my cheapness and laziness. I blame this on my non-private sector, low-public-contact job.

b) I want everyone to be happy, ultimately, but I want the scheming and vile among us to suffer a little bit first. In other words, I want them to have to work for it, if only slightly.

Still, it was a nice thought and I shall remain flattered. More importantly, I now have a concrete persona to which I can aspire.

Signs that the end is nigh

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Both from Lily…

I bought a blue jean miniskirt 2day. Am I going 2 die?

Poppy Z Brite has stopped writing books about androgynous boy vampires making out, and started writing books about straight couples who own gumbo restaurants. She attributes this 2 maturity. It is 2 puke.

Context is everything

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This morning on the subway I had a 60-second crush on a man reading The Economist. He was dressed in a dark green and black checked blazer and dark pants, but somehow it worked in an old-schooley kind of way. I could see over his shoulder that he was reading the theatre reviews at the back of the magazine – he was working his way through a review of Macbeth. I loved him because I thought he was a stock broker who secretly flipped to the back of The Economist first to read the reviews. I mean, who cares about what Turkey’s membership in the EU is going to do to the Euro when Lady Macbeth is stalking around raving and trying to wash her hands?

Then, unexpectedly, he got off at the subway station on the university campus. I realized with a thud that he wasn’t a stockbroker reading the theatre reviews in The Economist, he was a professor of classics reading The Economist. And then I didn’t care. Context is everything, Chicklets.

Studded belts are so four years ago

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The latest from Lily:

I went 2 a bunch of clubs with Nathan on Sunday, and I’m SO over it. God, somebody wear SOMETHING besides a studded belt, PLEASE! I can’t believe I’m saying this, as 4 years ago nothing would have made me happier than the sight of the aforementioned item. 4tunately, I haven’t run out of admiration 4 the asymmetrical haircut yet. I’ll keep U posted.

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