Hooray for The Knife (and the needle, and the syringe, and the giant sucking machine of my imagination) [columny type piece attempt]

Plastic surgery - it's a tricky issue. Some people think it's wrong, some people are addicted to it, and some people (like moi) are on the fence.
One part of me thinks it's a dangerous road to be going down for a world already far too obsessed with beauty and perfection. It used to be a nose job here, a breast enahancement there - no big deal. But one only has to go to Hollywood (or so I'm told) to see the rise of the real Silicon Valley. In a city where your livelihood depends on your looks, and every female denizen is sporting a boob job (the average breast size in Hollywood is 36C), how do you distinguish yourself from the madding crowd? You go bigger of course. And when everyone else catches up, you go bigger again. It's a creepy cycle, and one should remember that you can only blow up a balloon so far before it pops.
But sure, that's Hollywood. Nothing's real there. Unfortunately, it seems only a matter of time before good old LA is no longer the exception but the rule. Cosmetic surgery is becoming more and more common in the 'real' world too. Quick, easy treatments like Botox are already considered the norm, and pretox - botox shots that twenty-somethings are jabbing into their foreheads in an attempt to prevent lines from forming in the first place - is on the rise. Nose jobs, face lifts, breast enhancements and liposuction are all pretty standard, and even the more bizarre surgeries (labiaplasty anyone?) are being performed more often. In some parts of the world, companies are even offering their employees leave specifically allotted to surgery recovery.
The other part of me is not entirely against the idea of surgery. A nose job has always been strangely appealing, since at the tender age of twelve my mother told me that when I was old enough we'd go and get both of ours 'fixed' at the same time (how's that for mother-daughter bonding?). And liposuction doesn't sound too awful either, a kind of fresh start if you will (I like to think that if I had the perfect body, I wouldn't fuck it up). Provided, of course, I'm knocked out at the time and don't have to think about it too much. I have this horrifying vision, you see, of a giant sucking machine, vacuum cleaner-esque, chugging away at my tummy and thighs...

The scariest place on earth is...

...the women's changing room at Virgin Active.
I have a healthy respect for the female physique, and all our bits and bobs. A woman's body can be a beautiful, beautiful thing. It can also be incredibly ugly. I'm no goddess myself, but as the female form ages, well...we've all (most unfortunately) seen Donatella Versace in a swimsuit. And there's absolutely nothing really wrong with it - flab, cellulite and, shall we say, gravity are all a part of (natural) life. However...must you flaunt them? It's a scary naked free-for-all in the Virgin Active Ladies', and it's starting to hurt my eyes. I'm not suggesting everyone do the Junior School Towel Wriggle - where you manage to put on your entire outfit while remaining wrapped in your towel, a trick that ensured minimum exposure in the girls' changing room after PE - merely that you perhaps put your undies on before moisturising your entire body, applying full makeup and blow-drying your hair.
Please.

Pondering the pecuniary...

Being an intern has it's perks, but also one major downside. Working a nine to five without getting paid leaves little time to work casually on the side, putting a serious dent in my cash flow. You'd think being confronted with a bank balance on the wrong side of a grand would turn me into a scrupulous spendthrift. Instead, it makes me think of all the things I need to buy. Like, right now.
And that got me thinking about the myriad things a girl has to budget for every month that the less-fair sex does not, including...
Makeup: when you're shelling out at least a hundred bucks for a mascara, can you imagine how much it costs a year to replenish our makeup bags? And yes, makeup is a necessity. Say what you like about 'natural look', if every women stopped wearing makeup tomorrow, the world would be a scary, scary place.
Shoes: because we need at least three times as many as you do.
Clothes: see above.
Grooming: all those manis, pedis and waxes cost you know. The most painful part of a Brazillian is not the hot-wax-on-our-delicate-bits bit, it's handing over our plastic for the agony we just went through.
Hair Maintenance: there's no 'just a bit off the top and sides' for us, and don't even get me started on the extortion that is having your hair coloured.
Drinks: because a cosmopolitan costs more than a beer. period.

The Nicole Richie Effect...

Thin is in, and anybody who disputes it is just fooling themselves.
I will refrain from flogging the dead horse that is the size-zero phenomenon. We all know the skeletal stats of Hollywood’s young celebutantes, and how the media loves to hang the albatross of every young girl’s eating disorder around their skinny necks.
No, what I want to talk about is what I like to call the Nicole Richie Effect.
Little Miss Richie didn’t only get ridiculously thin. Just about halving her body weight seemed to be the catalyst for a Birkin bagful of other transformations.
I’ll be blunt: Nicole Richie used to look like an unscrubbed, McDonald’s regular dressed by a blind pole dancer. She was stuck in BFF Paris Hilton’s shadow (does Paris actually cast a shadow?) and it’s safe to assume she was unattractive to pretty much the entire male population.
Then she got skinny.
Almost over night she became a fashion icon, rocking her skinny jeans, Chanel half-tints, and head scarves so well that designers fell over themselves to dress her. Nicole was suddenly as elegant and stylish as she’d been frumpy and unkempt before. Her look softened and there was suddenly something glamorously old-Hollywood about her.
She hogged headlines. She got her life together and ditched her dirty party-girl ways, snagged herself some high-end man candy, got married and hopped on the baby train with the rest of the A-list.
My point is that as soon as Nicole got skinny, everything started going right for her. And she’s not the only one. Anne Hathaway – who was never really big to begin with – dropped a few pounds and is suddenly starring in movies left right and centre – when she’s not lending her delightful face to perfume ads or showing off designer gowns on the red carpet
Even Kelly Osborne - although she'll probably never look what anyone would call good - ditched her white trash look for some lovely dresses after losing nearly thirteen kilos.
So…what? If you’re on the chubby side, you resign yourself to looking like Miss Trailer Park 2002? Sigh...pass the celery.

Oscar Wilde said that fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Well.
This is usually the only one of the great man's epigrams that I disagree with, but of course I was thinking fashion in terms of Chanel, Marc Jacobs, D&G and all their fab friends.
However, when it comes to further down the fashionable food chain, I'm inclined to agree with Mr Wilde. And there's nothing worse than a trend that won't die.
I understand that not all fashion can be couture. And I understand that what we ubiquitously refer to these days as 'street style' is an important form of expression and creativity - one that couturiers frequently imitate rather than the other way around. But I'm going to be a traitor to my generation of Cape Town Cool Kids, and give the finger to weareawesome.com and Kloof Street style by saying:
Skinny jeans must die.
On guys that is. On girls, they're still hot. Even on girls who aren't skinny. But boys, please put them away. Or better yet, burn them. Yes, they were fun for a while; who didn't enjoy seeing their guy friends unable to bend over - or possibly ever procreate - because of the ridiculous toightness of their pants? But now they're over. I don't care if you're in a garage rock band (and I mean that in the sense that you practise in your mum's garage), stop wearing your girlfriend's jeans.
Now.

Two weeks ago I was standing with a group of strangers, sipping a Mojito, watching President Obama's inauguration speech and thinking, 'Yes. We. Can.' along with everybody else. Last week, I was desperately researching everything I didn't already know about the conflict in Gaza, resolutely not picking a side. This week I'm preoccupied with our politics at home, and who I'm going to vote for when the election rolls around. Last year I was anti-China, and wondering about volunteer work in Tibet. Two years ago I was pondering the plight of innocent Afghan refugees in Pakistan, four years ago the displaced Aborigines, and when I was little I remember sending my pocket money for the month to National Geographic, convinced it would help to save panda bears from extinction.
My point is that current affairs are just that - current. The stories that every news channel bombards us with one week, are eclipsed by something else the next. Consequently, our sympathies are constantly changing, even though the situations that tugged our heartstrings in the first place aren't. Tibet is still under China's thumb, Palestine and Israel will continue to launch rockets at one another in their ongoing and senseless destruction of one another, and though the panda extinction situation is very slightly less dire, I doubt it has anything to do with my ten bucks.
No real point to this post, apart from musing on the fickle nature of the human race and that slippery fish we call The Media.

This weekend I had the pleasure of going to the prettiest, most perfect, picnic wedding (and yes, thank you so much, I found some shoes in the end).
This would be the second friend of mine, both of whom are only a year older than I am, who is now married, til death, infidelity, divorce or insolvency do them part. But let's not be cynical, even if it is Monday morning. Instead, let's look at the facts:
I am not the only person to have noticed that there are more than a handful of girls around my young, tender age of twenty two who suddenly seem very eager to have and to hold, in sickness and in health. Little girls, it seems, have started dreaming about white gowns, bouquets and tiered cakes again.
And it's not just the ladies anymore, either. My first boyfriend - or rather, my first long-term, adult(ish) boyfriend - was planning our future together (including wedding and house in the suburbs) at a startlingly early point in a relationship that was never going to end in wedding bells. Then again, he also wanted matching tattoos. I should have seen it coming. The scary - scarier - part is that he's not a one-in-a-million male anymore...I hear more and more men talking about 'settling down', while their girlfriends look on in horror.
Not that I'm in any way against marriage (well not really) - I'm just a little confused about the sudden rush. What happened to the nineties' trend of nobody getting married til they were in their thirties - at least? And if the early noughties taught us anything, it's that we ladies can have it all - success, happiness, love, great sex - without a shiny rock weighing down our left hands (although who doesn't love a great piece of jewelery?). The way I see it (and I worry I'm a fast-dwindling minority) is figure out who you are, and what you want from your life (and career), then get married. And nobody can do all that in their early twenties.
So why are we suddenly jumping into white dresses as though Vera Wang might very suddenly die? In a world gone retro mad, is a conservative backlash the next trendy thing? Do we suddenly want to be 'settled' by twenty five like our parents, and their parents before them? And what happens when it goes out of style? A husband and a marriage are not as easy to get rid of - or forget about - as last season's harem pants.
Having said that, I've always had very Jane Austen-esque, romantic ideas about love, and the wedding on Saturday was so incredibly perfect that I found myself absent-mindedly planning my own white gown. So I guess that makes me a hypocrite.
Interestingly though, every girl there expertly dodged the bridal bouquet. Perhaps there's hope yet.