All posts filed under: Miscellenia

In praise of reality

I’d like to take a little break from this blog’s usual program of fashion and textile history, New Zealandia, cats and pretty pictures to talk about something really important to me. I have a pet peeve.  I hate it when I hear the terms “real women” and “real bodies” used, when what they mean is “women with a larger width to height proportion.” Actually, it’s more than a peeve, and I don’t just hate it.  I find it mean, and hurtful, and incredibly rude and ignorant, especially since it is often used by people who are trying to celebrate women’s bodies.  I read that phrase recently in an interview with a New Zealand woman who is trying to improve women’s body image.  She said that she wanted to show “curvy women, women like me, real women” that they were beautiful.  I just sat down and cried my eyes out. Who are you to say that I’m not a real woman, with a real body, just because I am a true size 10 with a slightly …

Spring shoes

Spring has come to New Zealand. In fact, it’s almost summer.  My spring flowers are almost finished (and I managed to not inflict a single post with macro images of them on you this year), and I heard the first cicada of the year last week. To celebrate, here are a rainbow of pretty, pastel-y, spring-y shoes. There are pink ones: And purple ones: And green ones: And blue ones: And yellow ones: And some that have a whole garden of colours:  

Australia: or, How blogging helped me overcome my fears.

From tomorrow the blog will be on autopilot while Mr Dreamy and I take a well deserved holiday and spend a week on the beach in Australia. Don’t worry, there will be plenty of posts, and even a ‘Rate the Dress’, but it will all happen without me. This holiday is interesting, because  I’ve lived in New Zealand for six years (seven if you count the non-continuous times) and I’ve never once been to Oz.  I’ve even refused to stopover in Oz on my way to Hawaii and the US. For someone living in New Zealand who travels a lot, this is very unusual.  Oz is where Kiwi’s go on holiday, and for a bit of big-city, big-world right on their doorstep.  There is a stunning Baha’i temple in Sydney that I would love to visit.  People rave about Melbourne as a vibrant, artistic ‘Australian Wellington.’ There have been amazing costume exhibitions in Oz while I’ve lived here; great stage shows; once -in-a-lifetime concerts; but I haven’t gone. Why? I’m afraid of Australia.  Really, really, …