Where chaos stops and more chaos ensues. Where Filia plays the electric keyboard.
Where anything goes.
-//o_O\\7 *Home of the Awful, Mediocre and Pathetic* -//u_u\\7
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Where chaos stops and more chaos ensues. Where Filia plays the electric keyboard. Where anything goes. -//o_O\\7 *Home of the Awful, Mediocre and Pathetic* -//u_u\\7 |
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Saturday, February 26, 2005 For those of you still schooling ... how sad, considering the gradually worsening state of the local education system due to a certain bungling minister ... you'll be pleased to know that the school holidays are just around the corner, as March arrives. And that means soon, it will be Spring, the season of revival, renewal and growth! And in Spring, inevitably, a young girl's thoughts turn to ... Shopping! But then again, Charlotte, you aren't exactly a fine example of a typical young girl. Besides, isn't it ironic that St. Valentine's Day falls in winter, despite the usual myths surrounding love and procreation? Okay, seriously, it's just a small change in my typically dull and senseless life as I await the time for university applications roll around again. I've found a new hobby, a passion ... for shopping. Not just shopping, but shopping for clothes, something which I've (curiously enough, considering the talents of some of my contemporaries) never been particularly adept at. I guess it came out of my experiences during the period just before the Lunar New Year, when, for once, I was shopping for something new to break out in during the New Year. By opening my eyes and actually paying attention to the shops, I realised there was much in the way of attire out there that I would like to imagine myself in ... and that comes up to a lot, considering my everyday casual attire of school shirts and P.E. shorts, which, eerily enough, seem to have become agonisingly and nosebleed-incitingly shorter due to over a year of overuse. But of course, when I say that I was shopping for clothes, I was looking out for things that were neat and presentable and good to be seen in, not more casual attire for home use. For I'm unlikely to be afflicted by a nosebleed unless I look in a mirror, and, even so, just that little bit of human blood adds much flavour to whatever you happen to be eating or drinking at the time. So it has turned out that, now that the festive season has become a distant memory, the crowds which once thronged the shopping centres have fled together with it, and even popular places like Ngee Ann City and the Heeren are just their usual bustling selves come the weekend, rather than the jam-packed compression chambers that they were in that recent past. And thus I decided to catch up with my own shopping, despite the fact that the sales (another characteristic of the festive season) have similarly fled most stores. It's just as well, for the marginally higher normal prices discourage me from buying anything too impulsively. But I have bought much ... or at least, significantly more than I have ever shopped for out of my own initiative for the rest of the eighteen years preceeding this present one. I'm mainly looking out for tops - I've got a couple of shirts, blouses, and a nice cardigan since I started paying attention to the clothes in the shops, but not bottoms because I actually have a wide range to choose from ... if you count many pairs of pants with identical designs but different colours as a wide range. Note, too, that due to my relative inexposure to the world of, um, um, non-school-designed clothing, everything I buy tends to be plain and monochromatic, which does seem a little dull (when I open up my half-empty wardrobe just to look) but quite appropriate, seeing as to how I'm often so stubborn, stolid and straight-jacketed about the way I deal with things. And stuff with too many colours and patterns just frighten me. Brightness and cheer are things which ought to naturally radiate from people, fueled by an indomitable sense of self-confidence, not something worn over your body to hide your inadequacy and inferiority in all its nakedness. Incidentally, just a little quibble for your curiosity ... while shopping around at Orchard, I passed by some of the second-hand bookstores and peeked in to take a look ... and was surprised to find not just one, but a whole stack of issues of the Beano, dating all the way back from 1976. Or, more accurately, a whole stack of Beano issues from the year of 1976, meaning that whoever was reading them as a child has aged well into the thirties, maybe the forties by now. Looking at the names of some of the kids who wrote in to the Beano fan club at that time, it's quite hard to imagine them all as grown-up, professional corporate workers ... who used to read the Beano as a kid! Presumably, given that the Beano still exists today, perhaps some of them have pursued their passion all the way into adulthood, while for those who would rather forget their childish, foolish youth ... well, like it or not, your names are etched in the fan club page of the Beano forever! How's that for a spot of nostalgia? The year of 1976 also marked a turning point of sorts for the Beano comic ... I shan't elaborate, because I don't want to bore and confuse you non-readers more than you already are, so I'd find it rather odd that any avid reader of the Beano would want to simply hand over a half-complete (about 30 out of 52 weeks a year) stack to a second-hand bookstore to be passed on to someone else. Perhaps it was destined to land in my hands ... And given that the Beano used to cost a mere four pence back in 1976, this illustrates two things. Either firstly, the cost of producing, printing and distributing a comic has risen astronomically over the past near-thirty years (the Beano sells for 75p today), or inflation of the sterling pound has gone way out of control given the multiple oil and energy crises and economic crashes since the days of the Gold Standard. I'm banking (ha ha, very funny) on the latter explanation, especially considering how the Beano of earlier days had nary an advertisement within (except for other comics) while the present one has an ad over just about every other leaf. Curiously (and more alarmingly, the first time I set eyes upon it), is a rather interesting comic in the Beano which ended its run somewhere in the 1980s ... a humorous yet disturbing, amusing yet appalling comic starring two brothers and their little sister, aptly titled "Tom, Dick and Sally". It's about, according to a site archiving the progress of the comic scene (for the lack of a description on my part), "two brothers who enjoy pushing chores to their little sister". I mean, viewing the comic as pure entertainment ... well, it's funny how the brothers find various ways to torment their sister, and how she eventually gets her own back. But as an indicator reflecting social norms in Britain at the time, about the socially-assigned roles in gender relationships ... it's depressingly miserable. It's a reminder, constantly hounding me about how fortunate I, and my feminine friends, are to live in this present age, where we still may not have everything that we ought to have but denied by a society still dictated by male chauvinism, but where we don't live in the same kind of disgrace and squalor which generations before us have had to endure. We don't have to flay ourselves, chain ourselves to the fences of parliament buildings or go on hunger strikes just to vote ... at least in the more civilised countries. We don't have to shave our heads and don shirts and pants just to be taken seriously at the workplace ... by male bosses and colleagues who have any intention of remaining in their careers. It seems that so many of the stereotypes of femininity have been discarded, once one considers the miserable situation we faced ... even only thirty years ago, in 1976, abused, derided, and still confined to the lower eschelons in the societal hierarchy. But I think again, and I don't consider myself that much more fortunate living now, in an only slightly oppressed age, as opposed to a time when negative discrimination was not only rife but legitimate. And that is because things should never have been this way, in the past, or now. For as long as we continue to be disadvantaged, I'll continue to be an advocate, to fight against the stubbornly immovable oppression of male domination. And until mindsets change, until masculinity realises and chooses (or is forced by any other method), not to relax but to utterly discard the vise it holds over us (a situation highly unlikely), and until the weaker among us find the mental and physical strength and resolve to be fighters, not panderers to the self-propagating dominance of male chauvinism (a situation equally unlikely), our battle will continue to rage. So much angst that can be drawn out of merely glancing at an observing a dated comic, don't you think? Such can be the depths of one's passions. posted by Charlotte | 3:05 pm
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Disclaimer : The Slayers and Filia Ul Copt and all images thereof are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi. I don't own any of them, although if I had a choice I would want Filia ... ~//n_n\\7 |
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