Kiss Me Deadly

How striking is this? I’m really enjoying the neon brights aginst the dusk of the evening, the oil slick shimmer of the bag, and of course, the Van Mimi eyelash lace peeking out.

Anyway, meet Gala Darling. She’s a really cool blogger from Australia, who I originally found because she intersperses  her fashion and fun with the odd bit of feminist inspired thinking on sex, domestic violence, and well, all sorts of things really. Try it, you might like it.

Gala Darling

As we’re an independent (read; no big corporation with funds behind us) brand, we have the worlds  most minimal press budget; which means I’m generally on the look out for ways to get press that don’t involve the big brand method of throwing gifts and advertising at  the press.   So, as part of that, I keep an eye on requests from journalist and writers for input.

Problem is, some of the ones I’m fairly well placed to answer I’m very dubious about. For example, I had a request before Christmas to help formulate something about cleavage. They were particularly looking for someone with a science background. I have a Post-Masters (a strange beastie in between a masters and a doctorate) in Psychology; not many people realise this but most psychologists are surprisingly numerate, as its fairly essential for many of the research methods. As it happens, I also  spent a large chunk of my career in psychology working in body related  matters, especially with women, so in theory I could  get some decent press for the brand out of this sort of thing.

Anyway, looking at the request I had a bit of a sinking feeling, and decided to ignore it. It didn’t seem like it was a genuine inquiry, more just a way to pretend that talking about Britney Spears is an academic pursuit. Which turned out to be a good idea, because what started out as a debate about low cut tops turned into this:

“How to tell if the boobline is too low… use this equation 0=NP(20C+B)/75″

Now, not only is this mathematical rubbish, its also something there’s just no evidence for whatsoever.  You just can’t make equations for things that are subjective judgements in which both cultural and personal standards play a huge part. The awesome Bad Science column  explains in exact detail why this is total tosh.

Then there was this request:

“Hi, I am working on a story for [redacted] about how bra sizes are increasing. I specifically need a *psychologist* to weigh in on how finding out you’re not a C, as you thought you were your whole life, but a DD, affects a woman’s self-esteem, and how it might change how you perceive yourself/how men see you.”

Aaargh. It’s bra’s, its psychologists, it’d be a great opportunity to get into a big women’s mag. But the way its worded, it seems like they want a simple answer, and the reality is that there isn’t one – the effects on  your self-esteem depend entirely on how seriously you take the sizing system,  the value you place on cup size as part of yoru body image, the extent to which you rely on body image as part of your self-esteem, plus probably whether it’s all outweighed by the fact that you’ve just realised you’re going to spend the rest of your life being deeply annoyed that most brands don’t do your size!  That’s just off the top of my head -  I can’t imagine how to encapsulate all the issues involved into nice women’s mag friendly quotes. So I avoided that one on the basis that anything said would get simplified to the point where other psychologists would point and laugh!  Plus, if you’re part of the professional organisation for psychologists, you have an obligation to present the profession well and not make misleading statements, which is very tricky when  this is the sort of press request you get.

Tonight I’m sat here looking at a request from another womens magazine for a psychologist to comment on

“What do you say to people who put themselves down?” with a particular reference to women who make negative statements about their appearance and body.

They have a long list of  actually quite interesting questions . . . this time I’m tempted to risk answering!  I think it requires some serious thought about how to avoid having my answers cut down severely though.

We went to the closing gala of this at the start of April, which was great – I’m all in favour of venues where you can sit down and eat too much dessert with your burlesque!

We also played spot the Alouette bra . . . evidently they work quite well for performers.

Venus Noir came first with her jungle dance – in the alouette in emerald with modificatons. She was fab – and looked great in the thong, too.

Then came the inimicable Kitten Club, who did give me pause to consider  the fire retardent properties of lingerie . . . they are performing at the Volupte Lounge this Friday  if you want to see more. Backstage, they looked like this:

Then I finally got to see Chrys Columbines concert pianist skills – I knew this was what she used an emerald Alouette set for (modified to open at the front) but I’ve never actually managed to see it before.  Mostly this picture shows off her fabulous face though.

So now we’re waiting for next years festival to play spot the Kiss Me Deadly items all over again!

A friend pointed a picture of our Alouette suspender belt being worn  recently – by a cyber punk designer/stylist in Australia.

Its a very far cry from the way we’d style the belt, and she’s wearing it with red stockings with a black seam  made by Cervin (they have black ones with a red seam available all year round), and I really like it. I’ve been quite tempted by eyepatches recently, but as I can’t wear contact lenses they could be a bit tricky!

You can see her blog entry about it here and her amazing  range of make-up here.

So probably you weren’t expecting a blog about disability on a lingerie journal.  Thing is, though, that I’m disabled, and it massively affects our little company.

When you say “disabled” quite often people assume that if they saw you, there’d be something to identify your disability with. Equally, when people see me,  they assume I’m fully able bodied, because I “don’t look sick”, or indeed yesterdays classic “but you’re always so smiley”.

The reality is that a significant percentage of the population is disabled by things you can’t see. Diabetes, learning difficulties like dyslexia, mental health problems,  chronic pain conditions, fibromyalgia . . . all sorts of conditions can’t be seen but can make a huge difference to what is possible to do and to what you experience.

I have too many chronic health problems to go into, but top of the list is M.E., followed by various chronic pain conditions.  The main impact on the business? Money.  I can’t manage  three long days at a trade show, especially the bits that involve carting heavy objects around; so even when we were very small indeed, I had to pay for an assistant. I have extra transport costs alsmost every day, because I can’t go at the same pace as other people. I work from home because its better for my physical health, but of course its not ideal for your state of mind!  Having M.E means minimising  your activity levels, so often life is a choice of what will cost you financially and what will cost you in  energy, plus working out whether physical health trumps psychological wellbeing on each occasion.

On the bonus side, this means we generally have to be more organised. When you can’t do things in a last minute panic because your body would fall apart, it does rather engender a more planned approach to events. We also have the most high tech set-up of, I think, any of the boutique brands, and that is because to a large extent we use it to compensate for what I can’t do physically. I can see everything I need to see, do everything I need to do, from anywhere, courtesy of having needed it set up like that so I could work from bed!  If you’re remotely tech literate, it makes us a better supplier, and for the most part we’re more on top of things like stock control and order wrangling than companies of a similar size and age.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that we all take shortcuts when we see people, but in the case of working out what people are capable of based on how they look, those shortcuts can go horribly wrong.  My pet peeve? People at shows and the like who say “oh, you just need to go  back the way you came and then its only a five minute walk” . I‘ve even had this happen in hospital, in the rheumatology department, that I was at because I couldn’t walk much!

There are no “just”s and “only”s with disabilities. They make things most take for granted difficult, although, just to be confusing, not the same things each time for each of us.  And me? Well, I’m counting every step I take, working out how much pain I’ll be in later, even if  I choose to do it smiling.