The Uneven Distribution of Beauty in the Community. My annoyance at this.

You can tell this isn't me, by the
flawless bone structure, and necklace. 
This is a Fishwife.

This isn't me either. I wish I did look like this.
Shrew.

Look at these beautiful women! (L, and R) I don't know who they are, but I strongly resent them, and the whole population of pretty girls. This is because I am hideous - too tall, with big feet, a hefty nose, dull hair, horrible unblue eyes, and nasty thin lips, which attributes I team with gauche demeanour and inelegant posture. I have always been hideous since time began. It is very unfair.
I have no idea how to apply make-up to remedy matters and when I try to have dress sense it just makes me look even worse. I can't be bothered to take exercise and there is no self-control or willpower available so I can't go on diets. I have only to LOOK at a crisp to eat it, and then all its friends.

What I object to is the fact that everyone (every man, at least) seems to think pretty girls are terribly clever for being pretty, when really the little minxes should be forever praising God and thanking him for blessing them in this way. It is just LUCK, dears, and you are fortunate. You are not clever*. You should be grateful, not smug. You bags. I suppose it was clever of them to have learnt dress sense, make-up artistry and self control. But mostly they are just lucky.

*although such girls are always also Captain of Lax, Leader of the School Orchestra, in the top set for maths and winners of the Mrs Joyful Prize for Raffia Work.

 

If you look at pictures of these girls when they were babies you can see that they were always good-looking right from the start. When people like me are born the midwife has to warn the father to "Brace yourself, Sir. It's the ugliest baby I've ever seen," and things continue from there without improvement.

 

This brute is Cross Baby from Private Eye Magazine,
with whom I have a lot in common,
though I think I was more scrofulous than he is.

Here is a little ANGEL
which is obviously going to grow up to be A Beauty.
Strumpet.

A typical pretty girl is one of my predecessors as my husband's consort. He often calls me by her name and I have schooled myself to take this as a compliment. She (as I am constantly reminded by him and his various friends) is petite and ravishing, her feet are tiny, her nose is retroussé and she is able to get away with wearing a mini-kilt, which item of clothing could not feature in even the most deluded of my wardrobe fantasies. When I saw her in that mini-kilt it was the last straw. 
'Alas!' I said, and knew myself to be forever excluded from the rare aesthetic air inhabited by her and her kind.


Some pretty girls are ok - the ones who are funny and do not consider themselves superior on account of having their blonde hair blue eyes etc. I was at Nursing School with one like that, and despite being stunning she did not just sit around expecting to be admired and made much of, but larked about merrily in a most entertaining way along with us less attractive folk. Her cheerful disposition endeared her to everyone; and her glamorousness meant that although she didn't mean to, whenever she came to stay she used to upset all the relationship dynamics among the youth of the village, and one Saturday night there was an actual riot in the neighbouring town because of her. My father to his dying day treasured the memory of an occasion when she had lost a contact lens on the bathroom floor and he was allowed to help her look for it. She had a tiny towel wrapped round her at the time. A really excellent girl who remains a byword in our family as the feminine ideal.

The trouble is that the world benefits, overall, by having these pretty girls - the men LOVE them - so I suppose I will have to put up with them. I just wanted to put it on record that I don't like it, though.


 

Photography Tutorial 2

"Art Galleries refuse to show my photographs as art," said poor old Martin Parr in yesterday's Times.  Look at this picture, and see if you can tell why.



Taken by Martin Parr at New Brighton, Merseyside in the 1980s

Now why would an art gallery not put that up on its wall? The reason is this : it's horrible! People want to look at pleasant things of beauty at the art gallery. They can see scenes like this - not that they enjoy the sight - in their own homes any morning when the housework needs doing and the rubbish taking out. This picture is a total failure. Again he has missed most of one of the subjects (the baby's mother at the left hand side); he didn't bother to clear up any of that litter; there's a frightful pillar with a dust bin on it, cutting the picture nearly in two; people should NOT be photographed when they're eating; and the woman on the right seems to have a lamppost or something dangling from her wrist. I CAN NOT understand how anyone could deem this art. It's just a horrid picture of an unpleasant tableau. Mr Parr said disapprovingly in the Times' article, that people fill their photo albums with pictures of people looking smiley in nice locations. Well well! That's because we prefer to see NICE THINGS! Think on this, Parr-y baby.

 

To show that I am not unreasonable I am putting in this picture, 'Hebden Bridge (1976)'. Surprisingly, Martin Parr  took this one as well, and I think it's jolly good. It's of an intriguing incident, and he managed to get the main subject in the centre for once (although I would have moved the doorway slightly down and to the left, for perfection). There's no complicated background, the wall and doorframe enhance rather than distract, and the pavement and road surface are lovely. It shows that even M Parr can take a decent photo sometimes. He simply needs to use more discernment in choosing which ones to discard - that Merseyside one above for instance. Do a bit (a lot actually) of judicious editing Mr Parr, and then see whether the art galleries are more interested.

 

Dispute with Film Critic

BAMBI 

'Bambi' is one of the world's most emetic films and a typical Walt Disney production.

The protagonist, Bambi, is a cervine version of Fotherington-Thomas i.e. utterly wet and a weed. The word "Bambi" itself is ridiculous and pronounced 'Bay-um-bee' and what hope was there for him saddled with a name like that? It makes him sound like a call-girl or trapeze artiste and is not appropriate for someone who aspires to be Monarch o' the Glen.

The film is peppered with phrases like "Man was in the forest" (pronounced 'May-un was in the far-rest' - explanation for a forest fire, or some such catastrophe) from which we are supposed to infer that Walt Disney was a lovely, kind, politically-correct person of great compassion who unlike the horrid men in the film would never have started a far-rest fire, dear me no. He was too busy making stomach-turning films and propping up the price of shares in the Maxolon factory.

Here is what Barry Norman, a deluded film critic, had to say about 'The Darkness of Disney's re-released Classic'. I have put in a few pointers for him for next time, in red writing.
 



Bambi - an insult to proper deers everywhere.

The most tragic sequence in cinema is, without doubt, the death of Bambi's mother. This is A LIE. Even the scene when Withnail has run out of wine is tragicker than this feeble bit of 1-dimensional emotion-tweaking. Good riddance to Bambi's sickening mother. Remember the scene? The meadow; Bambi and Mother grazing on fresh spring grass; the hint of danger; her urgent call - "Run, Bayumbee, run!"; the shots ringing out; Bambi looking for his mother, only to be told by his father, the Great Prince of the Forest, "your mother cannot be with you any more." Once seen, never forgotten. I first saw the film when I was about 8, and never before or after have I wept so copiously in a cinema. Well then Mr Norman you are a total wimp. I hope your mother quickly sent you off to one of our rougher boarding schools to be made a man of. Having read the rest of this article, though, I fear she did not.

For me, and for generations of children since, it brought the first realisation - unwelcome, perhaps, but necessary - that tragedy as well as happiness can lurk around any corner. Until that moment it had been the charming, charming? superbly animated, superbly animated? story of a deer from his birth to his first gawky steps, his friendship with cute cute? woodland creatures such as the shy skunk Flower Anthropomorphism Overload. You should not condone this, Norman. and the toothy rabbit Thumper, and his attraction (ugh) to the young doe Faline. Oh spare us the maudlin sentiments... Admit it, man - the whole thing is NAUSEATING. Bambi is an absolute SISSY and so are all the other inhabitants of the forest.

And then this horror. Too much? I don't think so. Not enough, more like. One of the great strengths of many of Disney's animated features is an insistence on telling it like it is, "as it is" please, in not talking down to children. In Bambi this means showing the relentlessness of the human hunters, the perils of living in the wild - a horrifying forest fire - and Nature itself, red in tooth and claw.

At one point Bambi has to confront another young buck for Faline's favours and this, unambiguously, is shown as a fight to the death. There's no copping out, no humorous conclusion with the rival buck slinking off, tail between his legs. This is for real, Do not use the phrase "for real". Do not use it EVER. You mean "this is serious". Anyway it isn't real it's a cartoon. as is a later scene in which Bambi and Faline are pursued by terrifying, salivating hunting dogs, the hounds from hell, in fact you could hunt a milksop like Bambi with a pack of effeminate lapdogs. 'Ware STAG! Let us call in the Devon and Somerset Stag Chihuahuas! and he has to round on and confront them, again to the death.

This may not sound like an ideal film for kids "children". They are CHILDREN. Allow them some dignity. and yet that is what it is. The fear and the tears of grief Dear oh dear what sort of namby-pamby crowd do you run with? are soon replaced by tears of mirth as Disney works his comic magic. Oh yeah? Not on MY turf he doesn't. MY children have senses of humour. But, as I know from my experience, the youthful audience leaves the film contented, yes, but a little shaken and somehow wiser about the ways of the world. Only the pathetic ones. Any decent child would leave the film in paroxysms of disgust and outrage. And that is no bad thing.

Of course there's a happy ending. One would expect no less from a Disney feature. But there is still the memory of Bambi's mother and her death and that, as anyone will tell you, is always with us. Yes! Like the Death of Little Nell! Thank heavens! It brightens many a dark hour; it cheers the afflicted, strengthens the faint-hearted and supports the weak. Sorry B Norman but YOU ARE A FOOL.

 

Copyright B Norman (black bits) and G-AHLK (red bits)

 

A proper deer