Uggs is for Muggs

Everyone has an opinion on the ubiquitous Uggs (so named because that’s the noise they make you do when you see an otherwise perfectly good outfit ruined by them) and I am no different. But, being a fickle sort of person, mine changes every few weeks.

They are truly minging, are they not? They make the wearer look like an am-dram lunatic who has forgotten to take their pantomime horse feet off after a show.

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And yet we, and I include myself here, still wear them all the time.

I haven’t got real Uggs though, because they really are for Muggs. They are ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY POUNDS. Yes, yes, they’re real sheepskin, but the fake ones are just as warm and in my £6 Primarni pair I achieve the same uggly-as-arse effect at a fraction (that’s 3/70, maths fans) of the cost.

I came to own (fake) Uggs very late in the game, having sworn for a long time that I would never pay that much money for anything so hideous. In the end my mum got me some for Xmas, and my feet have never been so cosy and comfortable. And what do I care what I look like anyway? I’ve ensnared a chap (Hi Tom) and that is the point of being attractive (science innit).

However my new found Ugg-thusiasm took a bit of a beating the other day, when walking home from the shops in the dratted things I tripped over them and fell arse over tit. I now have a well bad bruise on my hand and grazed jeans.

Keffi-what? Fashion vs. politics

I may well be the only person who didn’t already know this, but uber-cool indie-schmindie scarves of the variety pictured below are called keffiyehs and are a symbol of Palestinian solidarity.

Most of the people who wear them surely don’t know they’re making a pro-Palestine statement, and pissing off Israel’s supporters just by doing so. I doubt the average hipster wanders around thinking that the Jews have been right nasty and should give the land back at once.

What’s baffling is how keffiyehs became such a universal trend. The scarves are traditionally worn by Arabs but for Westerners they had become an emblem of Palestinian support in the conflict with Israel. Now we see them on the back of every Tarquin, Sienna and Nathan Barley. A little bit of internet-based research shows that there are plenty of people up-in-arms about fashionistas’ casual adoption of such a political piece of symbolism.

Last year Urban Outfitters removed the scarves from their shelves saying: “Due to the sensitive nature of this item, we will no longer offer it for sale.”

And either in striking ignorance of what they symbolise, or in laudable defiance of her family’s pro-Israel stance, George dubya’s niece Lauren Bush sported a keffiyeh at a party last October. Nice.

Curse the pallor

I did something quite uncharacteristic over the weekend. I preened.

 

It was my twenty-three-teenth birthday on Sunday, I had a joint party with fellow Maglabber Rachel in the trendy Cardiff bar, Buffalo, on Saturday night. Since it was a special occasion I ignored my teeny £35-a-week budget and bought a rather lovely gold silk dress from Kate Moss’s Topshop range.

Gold goes really nicely with red hair. It does not, however, go particularly well with the whiter-than-white Celtic skin that comes part-in-parcel with the ginger gene. In fact it made me look like either a ghost or someone with acute liver failure depending on the light. Thus, I decided to try fake tanning. After ignoring very sensible advice, “go to a salon and get a spray tan,” from a fellow redhead, I took to the shower for some serious exfoliation.

Not being one to make this much effort usually, I don’t have any of the equipment. My sister, a veteran fake-tanner, said I needed ‘exfoliating gloves’. I don’t know what these are. Instead I decided a nail brush would do just as well… they are after all a bit scratchy. Doing my legs was easy enough, as were my chest, arms and shoulders. Trying to ‘exfoliate’ (scratch the skin off) your back with a tiny 99p nailbrush is no easy task, and in the end I gave up.

Next I had to spray ridiculously expensive liquid evenly over myself, which I thought I did rather well. Again the back proved to be a bit of an issue, not really being sure of the standard procedure I held the spray can over my shoulder and waved it about a bit. That’d do.

Then came the waiting game. My Facebook status is testament to the length of time it took: “Lynn is wondering why she hasn’t changed colour yet,” came 3 hours after application. Things started happening about 3 hours after that at 6pm. There was a minor splodging incident in my armpit, but I saw to that with some more nail-brush scratching, and by the time I was ready to leave at 7.30 I was feeling rather smug about what a nice colour I was.

Off I went, to the trendy bar with all the trendy people. I started my kindly-friends-funded cocktail consumption with a Vicious Bitch and ended it with a Strawberry Iced Tea with a good few more in between. I ended up raving in the rain into the wee small hours before stumbling homeward via the chippy.

My surprise came the next morning. Having woken up at a ridiculously early 8am a bleary-eyed glance in the bathroom mirror told me that my ‘tan’ had continued to develop through the evening and into the night. I looked a bit weird, and worst of all had a bruise-like smudge on my neck which I sincerely hope had been covered by my hair the night before. More nail-brush scratching later, I am just about back to where I started and determined to embrace being pale and interesting.

—- Incidentally, this relentless ageing was already a cause for concern before I read India Knight’s most recent Times column in which she says: “the time when you are most likely to conceive with no complications and have a healthy baby, is when you are young, which means late teens or early twenties.” A recent discussion among the Maglab girls concluded that 27, 28 and 29 is late twenties; 24, 25, 26 is mid; which means, according to India, I only have 364 days left to give birth. Oh God. —-