It’s an ad promoting safe gay sex and it was on bus shelters around Brisbane.
Among their complaints that would definitely earn them 100% on a logic exam were these:
“Firstly, one of the men is wearing a wedding band. This suggests that either (A) they are a married gay couple (which is illegal in Australia), or (B) that at least one of them is married and is cheating on his wife.”
“[It] promotes sexuality as a desirable lifestyle; suggests that homosexual intercourse is ’safe’ with the use of a condom; [and] confronts children and impressionable teenagers with images of a lifestyle the majority of their parents would not want their children exposed to.”
If you’re going to complain about something, you should at least have the guts to say what you really mean: gay people make you uncomfortable and you don’t like looking at them. If you must be a bigot, be an honest one.
Adshel, the company that owns the bus shelters, took the ad down. A shit storm ensued, and now Adshel has put the ad back up.
To recap, we’re cool with seeing this on billboards:
But not this:
And incredibly creepy images like this on the website of a company whose target market is aged 14-25 is cool too:
But not this:
They’re hugging, not leaping around in gimp masks with their boy parts out throwing pies in each other’s faces. Chill out people.
And kids, let’s not forget the very important, and probably long forgotten message of this ad: whether you’re gay, straight or somewhere in between, use a condom or you could get some nasty cooties.
Let me begin the new year with a humble piece of advice to all the ladies hitting the clubs like it’s 1989: it’s not 1989, and you’re not Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, so please, please, please stop wearing skin tight mini dresses and skirts that barely cover your poor, probably embarassed bottoms.
I don’t know what it’s like in other cities, but in Sydney, there’s a scourge of tight mini dresses afflicting the fashionable sensibilities of women under 35. Women walk down the street, lower halves stuffed into tiny skirts that are like sausage casings, yanking them down after every step so they don’t spring up and reveal the parts unknown. It gets worse when there’s drinking involved. Poor strangers like me, minding our own business, maybe getting some gelato, have our eyeballs assaulted with underpants in every colour of the rainbow. And then we lose our appetites. And then the gelato vendors lose money. This trend doesn’t just damage eyeballs; it damages the economy.
I hate to say it because usually I really like American Apparel, but I think their photos featuring their improbably sexy factory workers in sausage mini dresses are partially to blame. The pictures are airbrushed, covering bruises, shaving wounds, celullite — all kinds of reality. Your legs in that tiny dress are not airbrushed, so unless your skin is totally unblemished and you have the svelte physique of a model or maybe a sprinter, cover up a bit.
The beauty of clothing is that we can use it to enhance the good bits and hide the bad. Like Dan Savage of Savage Love fame always says of relationships, fashion isn’t a deposition. It’s not about full disclosure or even a lick of honesty. Fashion makes it ok to lie about what’s really under your clothes, so let the dishonesty drip from your closet in swathes of lovely, figure-flattering, skin-tone-complimenting fabric. Cover up. It’s ok to tell a little fib.
The other day I walked by a lottery outlet and for some reason I felt lucky, so I bought a ticket. I limited myself to $5 and picked a draw that had a poster with the word “millions” in the prize money description. I tucked the ticket away in my wallet and started to dream about what I’d do with my winnings.
Fancy overpriced Lamborghini type car for my sister that I think is a total waste of money but that I’d give her anyway because I’m nice and I know she loves dreaming about overpriced cars
3.
Bigger house with a yard to accommodate all the puppies I would get. Like about 50 puppies
The morning of the draw, I was sure I was going to win. I even tweeted about it, and we all know that tweeting things makes them true. When I checked my ticket later on, I found that I had indeed won.
Unfortunately I’m not the squazillionaire I thought I would be. I won $11.85, which after my $5 investment, was a net return of $6.85. Not quite enough for me to retire to Paris tomorrow and shop every day at Colette, but it’s not a bad start. You know, glass half full and all that stuff.
I’m back from my adventures! Are you happy to see me? I got married, I flew to Europe, I climbed the Eiffel Tower, I saw hundreds of paintings in hundreds of museums, I drove through the Alps in a thunderstorm, I got lost many times in five major European cities, I shopped at Zara in all five of said cities, I swam in the Mediterranean, I avoided sunburn and pickpocketing and I ate at least one croissant every single day. And now I’m back in Sydney, six suitcases full of stuff and one husband richer.
It’s been a challenge going from adventure mode to sitting-in-a-chair-working-12-hour-days mode and I must admit, I’ve been a grumpy camper. I’ve been the sort of camper whose camping trip has been rained out. The sort of camper who is stuck inside a leaky one-person tent that she can’t stand up in and all her socks are wet and she can’t start a fire so all she’s been eating are cold cans of spaghetti and all she’s been doing is sulking and wondering if she’ll be eaten by a bear soon. Going back to work after holidaying in Europe is like eating cold cans of spaghetti in the rain and then getting eaten by a bear.
There’s one consolation that makes going back to work a little bit better: getting to be creative with my work wardrobe. Of course that creativity has to exist within the confines of a corporate environment where the boring, sometimes ill-fitting pin striped suit is king, but I try to live by the sage advice given to me by a very successful businesswoman: you’re not a man, so there’s no need to dress like one.
Carefully following that advice, I’ve put together a wardrobe full of bright, feminine dresses and silk blouses, skirts in different styles and shapes and colourful bags, belts and shoes that will set me apart from all the other worker bees. I was just starting to run out of creative ways to avoid wearing a suit when this editorial in the Australian Financial Review Magazine came along. It made me hop around the office in excitement because I had found my new inspiration.
Of course he’s checking her out. She’s wearing Prada.
We’ve just moved house and I feel like I’ve been cut loose in a vast and lonely ocean, without internet at home for up to eight business days. Eight.
I asked the call centre guy from our internet provider if it was still the stone age, and if his favourite lunch hour pastime was to go hunting with wooden clubs for sabre-toothed tigers. I asked him if he and his colleagues wear fur loincloths, brush their teeth with twigs and worry about pterodactyls stealing their babies. Danger of pterodactyl-related kidnappings. Now that’s a good reason for an eight day delay to hook up internet service. He didn’t laugh. I guess in the stone age they’re not used to people as hilarious as I am.
Anyway, since I can’t upload photos from a phone, here are some cool links, fashion and otherwise, to keep you going until my technological travails are over.
1.
Alber Elbaz. I heart him. His English is impeccable, but I love the poetic, accidental beauty that happens when someone is speaking English as their second language.
2.
Die Antwoord, all up in the interwebs. The characters from Gummo grow up and become freakish South African electronica rappers. Be disturbed. Be amazed. I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that I think there’s something catchy about these guys’ music.
3.
Why does everyone (like Jane and Rumi) have Miu Miu satin platforms except me? I think Mrs. Prada should send a pair to me. I like the naked people pattern best, although I’m not sure if it exists in shoe form. I’d definitely say nice things about the shoes, and it wouldn’t even be because I got them for free.
4.
Here’s a lovely little article about Mrs. Prada written by Tim Blanks whom I saw in the flesh at the Anna & Boy fashion show at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week. People, I almost died from the excitement. What amazes me about Mrs. Prada is that in her unrelenting quest to find something new, she always turns out collections that are uniquely and recogniseably Prada.
This morning I woke up to a laptop being plonked on my stomach. As I groggily opened my eyes, I heard the romantic words, “if you love me, you’ll buy me this.”
People, let me share with you what was on the screen:
As I’m sure a lot of you know, Alexander McQueen passed away on Thursday. It’s hard to think of anything to say that would come close to capturing even a part of his greatness. But maybe that’s the thing: people as talented as Alexander McQueen can’t be captured. Not by words, and unfortunately for us, not even by life.
Bear with me for a moment while I tell a story that’s not exactly fashion-related, but that I’m sure I can trickily spin to have a fashion angle.
A powerful higher-up type, sitting in his office on the 33rd floor of a very high, very sparkly glass building, looked out his window one morning to see the usual view of the Sydney Harbour and the hotels and parks that line its shores. Boats dotted the gold dusted water and the sky was the kind of blue that makes your eyes thirsty. Moored in front of the Park Hyatt Hotel, he saw a massive white yacht that clearly belonged to someone who was quite a lot more comfortable in this life than the rest of us. He knew that people who are that comfortable make good clients, and so he decided to try to make contact with this person. Kind of like when aliens visit earth, but not scary.
Being a powerful higher-up type, he had at his fingertips a resource of eager minions waiting, wide-eyed and excited to boot lick, compliment his tie and do his bidding. He enlisted their help to find out the name of this comfortable person, and to buy the person a fancy bottle of wine. The minions did their work well and the wine was sent to the boat with this accompanying note:
Welcome to Sydney, Mr. Comfortable Person.
I looked out my window this morning and saw your boat. I wanted to thank you for improving my view. If you need anything while you’re in Sydney, please feel free to give me a call.
Enclosed is some fancy wine to help you be more fancy on your fancy boat.
Mr. Comfortable Person called the powerful higher up type later that day to thank him for the fancy wine and to invite him for dinner. Mr. Comfortable Person lives overseas and already has his own powerful higher-up type so our protagonist didn’t get a client out of it, but he got a nice dinner, a new friend, a way into the world of more similarly comfortable people and a good story.
So what can we learn from this story of clever gift-giving?
Lesson 1
You need to give before you can expect to take. Post about Candace Ang jewellery on your blog and she may send you a feathery necklace. Or not. Probably not, because she doesn’t know who you are. But if you’re kind and you offer someone something you think they will like, good things will probably come to you.
Lesson 2
Be brave and take risks. Be brave in the clothes you put on in the morning, (there’s the fashion angle I promised. Flimsy, I know), be brave in saying what’s on your mind even when you know people will disagree and be brave in doing something that scares you every day. Pet a big hairy spider that you’re pretty sure isn’t poisonous, but that you’re pretty sure will bite you. Call up an editor at Vogue and tell them why they need to let you write for them. Say that you like Taylor Swift even though everyone who’s anyone seems to think she’s a vanilla, all-American bore-factory.
Lesson 3
Be creative. Lots of people in the world think they’re too important for the likes of you.
But if you do something different that catches their attention, they’ll probably give you a bit of their busy important time.
What do you have to lose anyway? The price of a bottle of wine? When you’re a powerful higher-up, or when you’re just you, the price of a bottle of wine is a mere drop in your ocean of fancy possibilities.
OK, so this is a little late, but I’m a procrastinator by nature, and I never make resolutions that go against my nature. For example, being short is against my nature, so I would never resolve to stop wearing heels. I actually wasn’t going to do a New Year’s resolutions post; I was going to let the date float by unnoticed, but I started to feel left out because all the blogs I read are doing New Year’s resolution posts, just like how in January of every year, all the magazines waste paper on giant horoscope articles, (which I can’t stand by the way. Don’t give me that voodoo about being lucky in love or money this year because the gravitational pull of Venus is giving me a bad hair day. I’ll make my own luck, thank you).
Without further ranting and ado, here are my resolutions:
Instead of yelling at the Boyfriend for things that aren’t his fault, go to yoga to cure grumpiness.
Stop biting nails. For real this time. This has proven to be much harder than giving up smoking was all those years ago.
Stop obsessing over to do lists so much that I add things I’ve already done to my lists just so I can have the satisfaction of crossing them out. It’s kind of weird. People are going to think I’m weird.
Try to get into the whole vintage / thrift store shopping thing, (mostly in an effort to save money because my wedding dress, although beautiful, will not be cheap). Other people can do it so well; surely I can learn to get over the stinkiness and rummage with the best of them.
Curl up in my comfy chair and read books more often.
Make a renewed effort not to look like a suit every day at work. That means more dresses, big necklaces and shoes that are hard to walk in.
Pet strange dogs, as long as they don’t look bitey.
Stop procrastinating.
Stop trying to change things about myself that are fundamental to my essence as a human. I’d be a withered, directionless soul without my precious procrastination.
Forget about #3. Who cares if anyone thinks I’m weird? I love crossing things off lists.
Happy New Year everyone! I know that life can be frequently lame, but I hope this year, the awesome outweighs the lame by, like, a ton. 2010 = a ton of awesome.
Since life is rudely interfering with my ability to do a proper post this week, I thought I’d share some SNL shorts that make my day as sparkly as vampire skin.
YouTube is determined to make me cry with the words “ebedding disabled by request.” I guess you’ll have to go to the video for my favourite Christmas song EVER the old fashioned way: Dick in a Box
And now for something that starts out pretty hilarious, and ends up pretty weird. Sorry about the different sizes. I’m not much of a technical genius.
