Tag Archives: fashion

Does the fashion wheel turn again?

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I don’t like tattoos myself (you know this if you’ve read SLN for any length of time) but accept it is the right of people to do as they wish with their own bodies.

Today’s Daily Mail (UK) newspaper is reporting that Victoria Beckham seems to be having laser treatment to remove tattoos she has on her wrists, because they are affecting her image as a business woman.

The fashion wheel is always turning. It makes me wonder if a style icon such as Victoria Beckham has decided they’re no longer suitable, how long it might be before many, many others follow suit? After all, it’s often celebrities who lead in the fashion stakes, and people will take their cue from them as to what’s ‘in’ and what’s ‘out’. If Posh Spice has decided that they’re ‘out’ (even though she may, at 41 years of age, be slightly irrelevant to teenagers taking their cue from younger singers and actresses) might it be that others will follow suit? How long until something like this -tattoo removal- becomes a full blown fashion trend?

A little research shows that some celebrities are already having them removed, usually because their inked-on devotion to a partner lasted longer than the partnership itself. Rapper 50-Cent, recasting himself in movies, appears to have had tattoos removed because he was fed up with the length of time it took make-up artists to hide them in films, and because he felt (probably correctly) that their presence saw him being typecast for certain movie roles. Singer Pharrell decided that tattoos were ‘dumb’ when his son was born, and had his tatts removed.

There will be those who will never lose their ink. Those who determine that each one is a reminder of the steps they’ve taken in the journey of life.

And there are those who were young and foolish enough to get them done ‘because everyone else was doing it’.

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Despite what disciples of tattoos say, attitudes change. When I was 20, everyone I knew -including me- smoked because it was the cool thing to do. Thankfully, I didn’t do it for long, and quit a couple of years after starting. Now, many of the teenagers and people in their early 20s I know have never smoked. Because smoking isn’t cool. Tattoos are on a similar level, I think, and many will regret their ink in years to come. Many people will never get ink, in the future, because it isn’t ‘cool’.

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Victoria Beckham’s wrist shows evidence of a faded tattoo

How people wish to proceed with the maintenance or removal of tattoos is a matter for them. I hope that, if removal becomes the next trend, that the taxes I pay to fund the UK’s ‘free at source’ National Health Service does not start spending part of its budget on tattoo removal. If people were grown up enough to get inked from their own pockets, they should be grown up enough to pay for removal from their own pockets.

Ella

 

 

Bush is back

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No George W puns here.

Recent surveys have discovered that 51% of women are going ‘natural’ down there and 62% of men prefer it that way. It rather looks as though the trimming, waxing, shaving fad is turning on the fashion wheel.

Further reporting on this survey can be found here.

Well for some of us, bush never went away! 😉 And I don’t really have a strong opinion on its presence, or lack of presence, other than it’s not for me.

In RL naturism it seems that it’s almost gone the way of the dodo, and I’m in a strong minority in that respect when I visit the beach. Spanish and Croatian naturists seem to be a little less obsessed with their razors (or waxes), it must be said. If I spot another bush on the beach it will almost invariably be attached to a señorita.

So it will be interesting to see how the current state of play is when I get on my next naturist holiday.

Of course, this pro-Bush propaganda, as it might be coined, has got some of the anti- brigade hot under the knicker elastic! Sian Boyle, writing in the Independent, defends lasering ‘down there’. I don’t buy into her theory though, that she’s not been brain-washed into doing so, but because she wants to. No matter how strongly she may feel now, her opinions -particularly when drip-fed opinion by fashion- may change. Sure, full depilation is in vogue now. That may not always be the case. Which is why I would never opt for laser treatment in that department, myself. I don’t like the idea of permanence, a reason why I would never have a tattoo either. Tatts are also currently fashionable, but opinions may well change on that too. And while the super-rich ‘celebrities’ may be able to successfully erase, blemish-free, their collection of outdated tatts, the message will be markedly different for ordinary men and women who may come to regard them as a fashion faux-pas they wish they never had bought into.

I would also add that my own views on pubic hair is that it disappeared as a result of the porn industry’s need for ‘greater detail’, and full depilation, on both its male and female ‘stars’ allowed for more graphic movies (I assume, I’ve never actually seen a porn film. Or a horror movie for that matter. Neither genre is, personally, particularly attractive).

American Apparel’s New York store also raised a bit of a storm (although if you’re storming against, perhaps you need a hobby) by placing hirsute mannequins in their window. They even had…you know….nipples and everything! Maybe some of the skin stores in SL also need to look at their ‘pasty policy’ in the wake of this. They’re nipples. We all know what they look like, and the continuing capacity to censor nipples while the full remainder of a full boob remains displayed is, well, silly!American-Apparel

(American Apparel also used 62-year old model Jacky O’Shaugnessy as a recent lingerie model…and doesn’t she look great!)

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Six years ago, when I started in SL, I began to model my avatar on myself almost immediately. I probably looked laughably ‘cartoonish’ compared to how I look now. If SL continues to develop at the same rate my current avi may well look ‘cartoonish’ with how it will look six years hence. I suspect mesh body will eventually give me the opportunity to pretty much add in the small scar I have on my arm from where I fell off my bike 25 years ago if I wish. It may well get that real.

Modelling my avatar on RL meant, yes indeed, bush. And I’d go to certain SL locations to hang out and inevitably get comments like ‘wow, I love your bush’, usually from male avatars who were of a certain age and had grown up with what it known in some circles as a ‘7os rug’. And, just as I was in RL…something of a singular oddity…so I was in SL. Few, if any, other lady avatars were sporting public hair back then. Now, it’s different. More and more women appear to be wearing pubic hair. It’s hard to tell if this is as a result of RL experience, RL exposure to the vicissitudes of fashion or just a deire to be ‘a bit different’.

Either way, it’s a case of being yourself, hairy or bald down there, in RL & in SL. Just keep on enjoying the SL experience.

Ella.