Not just for losers

I understand that many bloggers like to keep their blogs as their 'happy place'. They feel that the good memories are the ones worth recording and their blogs reflect that. I get it, sort of.

But in a lot of ways, I can get a big slap of 'happy place' from women's magazines, where newborns are all 'angels' and celebpretties wax lyrical about their tiny thighs and enormous meals. The same women's magazines that made me feel like a fat loser all through teenagedom and an even fatter loser after that.

A loser because I didn't have a boyfriend. A loser because I didn't have straight hair. A loser because I couldn't afford designer clothes, a personal trainer, a salon wax, frosted tips or, during the early nineties, Hammer pants. A loser because... well, I was me.

Easy solution: I stopped buying those stupid mags in my late twenties and never really looked back. Oh, okay, I swapped my addiction to women's mags for my addiction to house porn, but you've gotta start somewhere right? See, now I'm just a loser because of my house. It's not really about me any more.

Intellectually I'm aware that those house porn mags 'fake it' (loving the connotations attached to that sentence!). Intellectually I know that they back the truck up full of the latest and greatest and practically shove the featured family out of the way to create their 'styled casual' home for them. But emotionally, I'm attached to that idea of 'the perfect family home' that looks like that all the time. Emotionally I believe that there are families out there that live with all-white furnishings that stay white; that their children's toys are only made of wooden and recycled tyres. Families that exist in colour-coordinated clothes that don't clash with their smearless red Smeg fridge and matching crumbless toaster.

So, intellectually, we get it; emotionally we just plain want it. Marketing geeks (of which I am one) call it 'aspirational marketing' and, I'm telling you, they go out of their way to make you feel like what you've got right now isn't good enough. There's great stuff in the world and you're not it.

Fortunately my new 'happy place' is the land of the smoodgy, smudgy, smidgy world of beautiful blogs that are real and honest and true. The happy and the WTFHT*? As much as I love a styled 'occasion', I love even more the flaws, the mishaps, the madness and the muddy mess of life. I often wonder why I visit the over-styled blogs when I've got my house porn to keep me feeling sufficiently loserish (there is a book out there called 'The Perfectly Imperfect Home' - I kid you not! Get a life!). I just don't need the blog world to turn on me as well. So, keep letting it all hang out there, bloggers of the world. I embrace you and the wind you threw your caution to.

Do you let it all hang out? Or do you hang back a little? 

Is your blog your happy place?

* What The Fuck Happened There?


[Image by schorlemädchen]

When did we all get to be so rich?

The other day on the train there was a guy wearing KT26 runners. Oh, the memories! Once when we were kids our grandfather treated us to a new pair of 'branded' sneakers for our birthdays. We could choose any sneakers wanted and we were so excited! My sister chose KT26's and I spurred on by my new favourite movie BMX Bandits, I chose some sort of shoes that had a BMX bike embroidered on them that I can't find a link to (oddly enough). Oh my god, we were in heaven in our expensive, trendy shoes.

So, this was in 1983 and Nike et al were unheard of in Australia. I think Reebok made an entrance into the tennis world the year after (I think - I'm not going to fact check that, I'm not a newspaper sub). All those expensive $100+/ $200+/ forgodsake$300+ shoes hadn't been invented yet and who knows who could have afforded them anyway? KT26s and BMX shoes - it makes me smile. Our idea of what constitued an expensive pair of shoes are now so far down on the luxury ladder it makes those longed for 'brands' seem like a sweet joke. Our family wasn't poorly off by any stretch of the imagination, but 'big brands' just weren't the kinds of things purchased by average Australians back in the eighties.

What happened to that?

Rampant marketing happened, that's what. It started with the sneakers and then... kapow! The rise and rise of The Brand. You had to buy... stuff in order to be... something. Branded clothing, leather couches, pools, two bathroom houses and carat diamonds - these were all things that were only for the very rich when I was growing up. At least, that was my perception as a child. And instead of all of us lacing up our Dunlop sneakers and running as fast as we possibly could away from the snarling dog of consumerism we embraced it like a longed-for puppy.

These days, what were once considered luxury items are pretty much considered 'needs' by everyone and charged to an awful lot of credit cards. I'm not talking personally (some of these things I have, some I don't) and I realise that not everyone gets caught up in this untethered consumerism or has the money to even consider it. But so many of us do. It is my perception that as a society we are definitely flashing a lot more cash around than we have previously ever been able to do.

Add to that all the things we've invented in the past twenty years or so that cost A LOT of money - the smartphones, broadband internet, flatscreen televisions, gaming devices, apps galore - and I just don't get how we're all affording everything.

How are we affording everything?

There are so many stores selling so much stuff. Fashion changes every other week rather than every other season. We even have special clothes that are 'must haves' for Autumn and Spring. I don't remember that as a child. You put a Winter cardi over your Summer dress in Autumn and you stopped wearing your singlet under your Winter outfit in Spring. How are people managing to 'stay on trend' four times a year?

And don't get me started on the new Australian Dream of a quarter acre house on a quarter acre block. Oh, go on then, do. So many of the features that are 'must-haves' today were considered inaccessible luxuries just twenty years ago. Two or more bathrooms, media rooms, walk-in wardrobes, spare bedrooms, studies, family rooms, outdoor rooms... dear god, who can afford all this stuff?

Did incomes increase at some stage? Did everyone get promoted? Did we all win the lottery?

I'm naive in all areas of finance, but something definitely doesn't add up to me (even with my calculator).

When did our society get to be so rich? And how do we avoid buying all this stuff?

[Image found here]