Must we watch women put on their faces in public places?

SHERMAINE WILLIAMS

If there is only one thing you need to know about me, it is that I’m not a morning person. Having to get up in the morning is one of the banes of my life, and every day that I don’t have to do it is a good day.

Nevertheless, as much as I hate it, I still do it when it is necessary.

Were it possible for me to be fine and fragrant the moment I rolled out of bed then I’d be laughing but, alas, that is not the case. I make time to get ready, because I have enough respect for my fellow Londoners not to leave my house looking like the love child of a troll doll and a gremlin.

It takes a lot of time and effort to get me looking decent enough to leave the house, but I get out of my bed so that I have enough time to do it. To me, it is a common courtesy but, apparently, this isn’t a belief shared by all.

There’s a reason why I keep my grooming rituals confined to my home and it isn’t just because it ain’t pretty. It’s also because there are just come things that need to be kept private. Whether it is applying make up or shaving your legs, there a some things that a woman needs to keep to herself, not undertake on a tube carriage or a train platform. Yep, I said women, because women appear to be the worst culprits. I know we have more maintenance to undertake but that should be no excuse for letting everyone see it.

Don’t get me wrong; I’ve seen men acting in a disgusting manner as if they believe themselves to be invisible. Most notably was a man who felt it necessary to pick his teeth by shoving his finger into his mouth as though searching for gold. And they do love rearranging their junk (or maybe checking that it’s still there). I don’t want to see the things that people should keep to themselves, whether they be male or female. This is an equal opportunity rant.

I do not want to see other women dragging at their faces in the process of applying make up as though they’re in the privacy of their own bathrooms. Call me picky, but I don’t want to be covered in foundation powder and I hate the smell of nail varnish. I shouldn’t have to be assaulted in this manner.

I’m well aware that the media have a lot to do with it, making women think that we can only look good by using all the lotions and potions we can find. Don’t believe the hype, people! It’s all airbrushing – don’t be swayed by it. In any case, many women I’ve seen look a lot better without all the slap that they insist on wearing. This helps when it comes to the common argument of needing to use public areas because “I don’t have enough time in the morning”. Do without, and save both time and money.

We shouldn’t all have to be subjected to it. Get out of bed earlier so that you have enough time for your morning ablutions, change out of the pyjamas, shave everything that needs it, spray on the smellies and slap on the war paint. Alternatively, go to war without it. Whatever you do – keep it to yourself. Not least because being choked by a cloud of perfume isn’t fun for anyone. Read more by Shermaine.

Image: Graeme Weatherston / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Britain, please stop licking the lid of life, ok?

ALICE LINLEY-MUNRO

I used to be one of those people who would lick the top of the yoghurt pot with relish, carefully wriggling my tongue across the foil to make sure I got every last drop. After all, I’d paid for it, right? That was until I moved in with my current housemate, the Physics Geek. We rubbed along together nicely for just short of five years before his actions one sunny afternoon altered the course of my dairy appreciation forever.

Picture the scene: PG sat in our living room noshing his way through a sandwich, with an apple and a yoghurt on the table in front of him. All fairly innocuous items, nothing that caused particular concern ...

Until he opened the yoghurt.

Something about the way he fondled and caressed the foil caught my attention. The way his tongue deftly and expertly licked all the creamy goodness and, oh my, was he groaning? I felt repulsed watching him lick that foil as if he was licking the lady parts of a very hot woman. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as his eyes closed slightly, caught up in the pleasure of the moment.

I had hoped that it was a momentary lapse in PG’s usually reserved nature, that perhaps he was having a flashback to some summer afternoon lovers’ tryst and got carried away. Sadly that hope was dashed over the coming weeks when he kept exhibiting the same oral pleasure over his Muller lights. I considered feigning a massive fatal allergy to yoghurt preventing it from crossing our threshold but he would have seen straight through that and so every time I am in the vicinity when the yoghurt comes out I scrunch up my eyes, put my fingers in my ears and sing “lalalalala” until it’s all over.

It’s not just damaged my relations with PG. I am unable to be around other yoghurt eaters without wanting to spit and curse at them, snarling like some she-beast as soon as their tongue starts venturing towards the lid. I dream of creating an advertising campaign to draw others to the cause of non yoghurty lid tongue action however I suspect, as with my unsuccessful campaign to outlaw pencils, I’ll be the only member and will end up sat at home alone forlornly scraping the yoghurt off the lid ... with a spoon. Read more by Alice.

Let's rescue the king of beverages

MADDIE YORK

Oh, tea. It really is quite a drink, isn’t it? It has such a marvellously comforting quality, particularly when it’s just right. For me that means real leaf tea heaped in a chunky teapot filled up with water just at the moment it boils in the kettle, stirred, left for a few minutes to brew with a tea cosy on, on a tea tray with gorgeous cups, a tea strainer, milk, sugar for those partial, and a spoon. Then, it’s poured into the cups through the strainer, milk is added, stirred gently, and it’s ready to drink, all steaming, strong and powerful.

Yes, there’s quite a lot to making the perfect cup of tea in my world. I’m OK with teabags, just about, and there are certainly ways to make the most of a teabag brew so that it creates almost the same effect as the real stuff. Putting the teabags in a pot and leaving them in there to brew helps, for starters, instead of allocating one bag per mug and doing that vaguely depressing thing of prodding the teabag about in the water, scooping it out and plopping it in the bin or, worse, on the sideboard so that it sits there sweating its sad little cold life away.

The way you involve the milk is crucial, too. With a teabag brew, the only acceptable way to do it is to get the tea to the full strength – whether that’s through said prodding/plopping action, or through brewing it in a pot and then pouring it out – and then, only then, adding the milk. Sorry, but that thing people do where they add cold milk to the teabag before pouring the boiling water in? I don’t know what to say, actually. It renders me aghast.

Tea is ritual, first and foremost. It’s not actually a functional drink. Fine, it’s hydrating, but its purpose is so much more than that. If you’re thirsty, drink some water. The whole point of having tea is that it’s more fun. It’s about mood. And it’s about sharing, getting together and having a chat while it brews, pouring it out from the communal pot, and then going back for a second cup just because you can, and it’s nice.

So, office tea rounds really are one of the most depressing things I’ve ever encountered. And, actually, they are one of the principle reasons I don’t slot easily into the office environment. There’s just no place in the corporate world for a girl who wants tea time to involve pots, strainers and cosies, is there? Unless you make the bold decision early on to be the office nutter, winning yourself an irritating tea-based nickname like Loopy Leafy and being sent incessant internal emails and YouTube videos that have any slight ‘hilarious’ reference to Mad Hatter’s Tea Parties for however long you stay with the company which, because of the tedious tea nutter role you’ve assumed, will feel like approximately forever.

The worst thing about office tea rounds, for someone like me who is massively controlling and prescriptive about how tea should be made, is having to relinquish control to the person doing the round. I can’t say “Oh, that’s fine, you make everyone else’s; I’ll do my own” because that’s just rude, selfish and sounds nutty, and you certainly can’t follow your colleague into the kitchen and hover over them giving pointers and complaining when they’re doing it wrong. And you can’t always be the one to make the tea because you end up looking like the company skivvy. So, you either have to opt out of tea rounds completely, or allow the tea to be made for you in full knowledge of the atrocities happening behind the office kitchen door.

And eventually your tea arrives on your desk, and you just know from its appearance that it’s had almost no attention paid to it. It’s quite clearly a drink that’s been bunged together: bag, plonk, milk, slosh, done. It’s got a slight film of unstirred milk floating on its surface. It’s pale and not steaming: you suspect the milk’s gone in before the water. Horrifying. Instead of flavour – you’ve taken a sip to give it a chance – it has the sad non-taste of a drink prepared almost with disdain, as though the person resented the time it took even to brew it for 10 seconds. And you drink half of it, out of politeness, and if the tea maker passes by your desk you make a big “Oh, what am I like?” pretence of having innocently forgotten it and let it go cold.

Dear, oh dear. It really is unbearable. I just can’t see the point of drinking tea unless it’s made properly. I seriously think the office workers of this nation may as well just do water rounds and have done with it. At least there’s less room to make mistakes in preparation. I wonder: would everyone start jealously guarding their own particular water glass: one person with a tumbler, one a pint glass and another a hi-ball? I’m sure office politics would ensure that even water rounds would become a ridiculous song and dance, possibly leading to memos from HR about how best to transition an effective water preparation strategy going forward to ensure hydration buy-in from all team members.

But, it would still be preferable. Frankly, anything to protect tea, the king of beverages, from this ongoing, needless abuse. Read more by Maddie.

Image (teapot): Suat Eman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image (mug): www.freeimages.co.uk

Seriously, who would sell their home because a fake letter told them to?

SHERMAINE WILLIAMS

It takes a person with a special talent to be able to annoy others despite not having any direct contact with them. In my world that unique honour goes to estate agents. Why is it that anything to do with property brings out the worst in people?

Sadly, estate agents are a necessary evil. Even with the proliferation of do-it-yourself house sales and purchases, I can accept that some people still want to go to an agent to make use of their services. ‘Go to’ being the operative phrase. But an estate agent touting for business where there is none really takes the chocolate HobNob.

In my area, they market themselves in the same way as takeaway restaurants, with endless leaflets cluttering up the letterbox. The only difference is that they do make the effort of putting their mailshots in an envelope to give the impression that it is actually a real letter. Sometimes, rarely, they do the research to find out the name of the addressee. Most times they can’t be bothered and simply address it to ‘The Occupier’.

And no matter which company they come from, these missives are all along the same lines: “We have qualified applicants looking for a property just like yours.” Really? Have they actually seen my flat? Was that them I caught looking in my windows? I’m sure that if they saw the newspaper and book-strewn rooms and weird layout I call home, they’d change their minds.

I’m beginning to suspect they all coordinate their efforts specifically to piss me off. There is often a brief, deceptive quiet spell before you get deluged with attempts to convince you to sell or rent out your home. I wonder whether they genuinely believe that people will make such a major decision in the same way that they peruse menus for their dinner.

Botheration by correspondence is one thing; it is quite another when they get in my face. One of the perils of living in a flat is coming into contact with one of them when they are showing another unit. Finding one of their damned minis parked in the space that belongs to me, despite the space belonging to the flat they are showing being empty, causes me to have a reaction similar to that achieved by dunking a Gremlin in a bucket of water. It ain’t pretty.

It gets even worse when the agent doesn’t bother to lock the communal door – the same door that morons have previously attempted to force. Not a good idea with a territorial and belligerent woman in the building. I caught up with him and politely requested that he make sure the door was locked and that he stayed out of my space. He responded with excuses. I responded by loudly mentioning the attempted break-ins within hearing distance of a pair of potential renters. War!

When they’re not killing trees for their publicity or giving people the opportunity to burgle me, they still make their omnipotent presence felt with endless advertising boards. Flimsily constructed, they are the ideal plaything for many a drunkard to find and brandish as a trophy on the stagger home.

And the quality doesn’t stop there. These are highly trained professionals, aren’t they? I’d like to know exactly how much training you need for the skilled job of unlocking a front door. Not that much. The last time I made use of the services of an estate agent, I learnt that one was a bricklayer the week before and another was doing the job part time whilst studying. The high level of staff turnover that most estate agents experience is very telling. The majority of them are completely unqualified to do the job and it shows. Nice to know your biggest purchase or large piece of monthly expenditure is entrusted to such an honourable bunch then.

No one can possibly have any faith in a profession that has been the subject of repeated documentaries that blatantly exposed their fraudulent ways. I certainly can’t. But I will take the Thai takeaway menu, though. Read more by Shermaine.

Image (money house): Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image (door): Michelle Meiklejohn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Please: let's pull our socks up when it comes to getting dressed

ROSIE MCGEE

I looked at myself in the mirror this morning and decided that, unless partaking in physical exercise, I’m too old to wear trainers. Aside from actual sport, I’m taking exercise to include long walks, prolonged periods of standing, DIY and gardening. With persuasion I might even let long haul air travel onto the list, too. But that’s it. The rest of the time my feet will be in footwear appropriate to the activity I’m doing. Seems logical enough, yet I know I’m in the minority with this view.

I understand that people compulsively wear trainers at the expense of anything else because they’re comfy. Shoes, especially cheap ones, can rub and chafe, causing a great deal of pain. You have my sympathy; I’ve got odd-shaped feet meaning that every new pair of shoes I buy will draw blood before the leather gives in and we eventually get to a point where we can exist together in harmony. However, I persevere as I realise that looking respectable requires a little discomfort.

But the triumph of the trainer over the sensible shoe is just the tip of the iceberg. Tracksuits are next on my clothing hate list. It seems so few people can get it right. The clue’s in the name, folks. Loose trousers and tops in fleecy or jersey material are designed to be worn by athletes to keep them warm in preparation for or after physical exertions such as running around a track at speed or jumping over a high bar. Apparently that now includes the not-yet-Olympic sport of slowly pushing a supermarket trolley.

“As soon as someone wanders out into the open wearing a fabric malapropos, then I have the right to complain about it.”

Of course I’ll acknowledge that many people own some form of what the Americans would call ‘sweats’, donned on lazy TV days, during periods of illness and other activities in which the wearer is restricted solely to their own home. What people want to do behind closed doors is up to them and certainly not my place to comment on.

But as soon as they wander out into the open wearing a fabric malapropos, then I have the right to complain about it. Shopping centres, cinemas and pubs are routinely filled with people giving the impression that they might break into a jog at any minute. The irony is that it’s so often larger individuals who are clad head to toe in athletic apparel, when in all probability their last bit of aerobic exercise was answering the door to the pizza delivery man.

Not only is it inappropriate, it’s unattractive and makes the wearer look plain ridiculous. Can you imagine slipping into some ski wear – salopettes and jacket, or maybe even an 80s one-piece – for a quiet drink with friends? How about some shooting wear for shopping? Cape and deerstalker for a wander down the high street?

Not keen? Why ever not? Well, I’d assume most people would feel a bit silly dressed in specialist clothing for an activity they’re clearly not doing. So why is the tracksuit any different? Only because it’s seductively easy to wear.

“Next time I spot someone in denim at a ceremonial occasion I won’t hesitate to suggest they get on with changing a light bulb or weeding a nearby border.”

It astounds me that the desire for personal comfort is so great that it justifies being seen out and about in something resembling an adult romper suit. Clothing has developed to become a lot more comfortable and a lot less restrictive in line with what people want for their everyday lives; starched shirts and corsets are now resigned to vintage clothing fans. With so much body-friendly apparel out there, I can’t fathom why people choose to dress as if suffering from all-over bedsores.

Then there’s the abandonment of formal attire. A little bit of me dies every time I go to a black tie event only to spot some idiot in a pair of jeans. Christmas parties at fancy locations, weddings and other formal parties are not the place to show off a total lack of understanding of clothing etiquette. Jeans, originally designed as heavy duty work clothes to be worn during manual labour, have no place at such occasions. Next time I spot someone in denim at a ceremonial occasion I won’t hesitate to suggest they get on with changing a light bulb or weeding a nearby border.

How a person chooses to dress makes a big statement about them to the outside world. Thankfully the old adage that it is ill bred to be overdressed is no longer true. There is now no excuse for being too lazy to spend the time and effort on dressing properly. Taking pride in your appearance demonstrates a certain level of self-respect and suggests an understanding of how the world works.

I despair of people who bitterly complain about not being taken seriously when they insist on wearing lurid logo-covered items which look as if they were designed exclusively for Kevin the Teenager. If you choose to dress like a child, don’t be surprised to be treated as such. Read more by Rosie.

Image (trainers) : FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image (jeans) : Suat Eman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Why overpluck? Don't we need our eyebrows to form expressions?

MADDIE YORK

There is a serious issue that needs to be debated, chewed over, by society. It might be good if someone could arrange a slot on Question Time. Yes, Dimbleby’s input is definitely needed. Actually, let’s go the whole hog and throw this issue onto the agenda at PMQs. Politicos (and politicas) out there, I call for your help in bringing this issue to the jaded attention of Broken Britain.

It is, of course, the nationally important matter of women overplucking their eyebrows.

I’ve been bothered by this for many, many years, ever since girls at my school began sporting thinner and thinner eyebrows until, by sixth form, there was less actual brow than brow pencil to be seen. Occasionally this preoccupation of mine takes over completely and it’s all I can think about. I simply stop seeing the women behind the eyebrows – all I can focus on is their inexpressive curves of ex-hair idling ineffectually atop their brow bones.

Why, why, why do women overpluck? I scream to myself, as I observe yet another woman who has tweezed, threaded or waxed her way through these most necessary of facial features, giving herself that unmistakeably porny look of blank, doll-like, hairless non-womanhood.

I guess at some point in recent generational transitions – from our hairier, less bothered grandmothers to our younger sisters and daughters who are attempting, poor sods, to grow up in a society that markets depilation as a way to ‘reveal the goddess in you’ – many women have become convinced that hair and sexiness are mutually exclusive.

But, these are our eyebrows, girls! They’re not a sex feature! They’re a lovely bit of facial hair that actually adds something to your face! Do you see how mad it is to think of them in the same category as other hair on your body that you routinely remove?

We all like a tidy pit, a smooth leg and a moustache kept under control. But, please, develop a sense of perspective about this. Eyebrows are facial hair, yes, but they’re a crucial component of any expression. And keeping full, normal-shaped eyebrows does not make you ungroomed and unfeminine. I can’t believe I actually have to argue that as a point!

I have many problems with Keira Knightley, believe me, but her eyebrows are not one of them. They are fabulous. Keira is the poster girl for women’s eyebrows. They’re tidied up a bit, sure, but she’s kept their natural shape – lovely, dark, full (like the one pictured, but that’s not her) – and she looks intelligent, characterful and beautiful. Anyone think Keira looks unfeminine? No, I didn’t think so.

The fact is: the fuller your brows, the classier and more intelligent you look. I hate to make it a class thing, but almost every time I notice a woman with overplucked brows, she’s of a distinctly chavvy persuasion. Usually with her hair dyed a colour way too garish for her complexion, probably prompting her to thin out her eyebrows which now look far too dark and prominent against her fake hair colour.

So, what’s it going to take to stop women savaging their eyebrows? They’re everywhere, these women who’ve plucked so mercilessly for so long that they’ve killed the follicles and ended up having to draw them on completely! If even the fame, attractiveness and success of full-browed Hollywood actresses can’t convince women to take a more moderate approach to plucking, then I struggle to offer anything that might do the trick.

Perhaps all it would take is for eyebrows to be talked about a bit more in the women’s mags – and the teen mags, catching girls before they buy their first pair of slanted tweezers or get taken along with their mums for that first thorough threading.

It’s sad, is what it is (and with that, I frown). Maybe these girls agree that it’s sad, but you can bet their eyebrows would struggle to show it. Read more by Maddie.

Image: m_bartosch / FreeDigitalPhotos.net