In which La Roux is speared and BG thanked.

Well, I am back from my 5 days of holiday in the North of England. I spent FIVE DAYS in the constant company of another human being, even sometimes not getting enough sleep as a direct result of said human being's presence. Yet I did not swear at him, or cry. He got up waaay too early one morning, to unblock his nose, at which I apparently told him, semi-consciously, to take an antihistamine. I have vague memories of awaking to find him awake, hugging and kissing him, telling him I loved him, and then falling asleep again. I even deliberately forced myself awake twice, once to rub some cream into his chest, once to rub a cramp out of his leg. I think I'm getting the hang of this 'love' business.

It [ze holiday] put a not-unremarkable amount of life back into me, which was swiftly diminished by a) coming back home and b) the number of idiots who continue to (sadly) blare on the Internet about how Islams are all evil and call themselves 'climate science rejecters' - YES, REALLY.

What is needed sorely, very very sorely indeed, is a lengthy rant. I have been in danger of seriously losing my sense of humour as I attempt to break into the dubious world of adulthood. Doing this post is a concerted effort on the part of something survivorist in me. I cannot continue to let the atmosphere of the family home (and family) subdue me.

Firstly, I must give props to Dr. Ben Goldacre for this Bad Science column about PR and prejudice, centring on the misreporting of a study about rape. As one of the most well-known and influential scientists out there in the British media at the moment, it is good to see him giving victim-blaming his characteristically dismissive short shrift. Theoretically, feminists should not give male supporters too much credit (or 'cookies') for thinking women are people. Practically, however, there are many many men out there who can't even seem to check their racial privilege, let alone their 'superior male' status. That includes 'liberal dudes' just as much as it does right-wingers. Sooo... thanks, Dr. Ben!

Secondly, I must move onto the all-important business of slagging off La Roux. I will just declare my interest here: I was vaguely intrigued when I saw the woman who fronts it, Elly Jackson, and I like their song Bulletproof. I may also like the song Quicksand, but this is looking less and less likely with each play of it.

I know 'tis deeply unfeminist to say it, but by God, I don't half want to slap that girl one. I was pretty unimpressed when I checked out La Roux a little more. Then the F-Word posted this article, where Elly Jackson reveals herself to have some pretty unpleasant views. What disgusts me about this woman is her graspingness. It comes across not a little in the article, and in other interviews with her I've read, such as one in the July issue of Asos magazine. With the finesse of a seasoned publicity piranha, she has eagerly latched onto the coverage from various quarters which proclaims her as something 'new.'

New? New? OK, let's run through the checklist here. M/F pair in which the man does the 'real work'/wields the power - check. They claim to be a duo who share things '50/50' but let's not kid ourselves here - as the producer, he's the one who provides the necessary foundation for her ludicrous posturing. So, y'know... an 'equal partnership' in which the male's role is more important? Yeah, that's NEW.

Trying, really blatantly, to be a mishmash of people from the '80s, while being barely old enough to remember said people? I'm sure she LOVES their music or whatever, but n***a, please. You're MY AGE. Blatantly ripping off/'paying homage' to a past decade whilst pretending to be new... God, that just HASN'T BEEN DONE BEFORE.

Let us not forget that this is a white, middle-class, slim, Beauty2k-compliant (as Twisty would say) young woman. Let us also not forget that La Roux did not get where they are through the sweat of their brows; they did so through Jackson's parents giving her a 'small allowance' to pursue her music career and through her father passing their CD to a well-connected music industry friend. Wow, nepotism. SO NEW.

In fact, let us not forget that were it not for pure LUCK, La Roux probably wouldn't be where they are today. 'But they're in the top 10,' you cry. Well, yes. That's because EJ isn't totally stupid. Talented, she isn't particularly (her wailing style of singing grated subtly upon my nerves, until I realised I could only stand the songs where she was barely audible). Ambitious, she is - and an opportunist.

Y'see, there's a recession on, and what fashion needs is 'something new.' When repeated sales and portraying overpriced luxury goods as an 'investment' doesn't work, you need SOMETHING ELSE. Elly Jackson is a fucking GODSEND in this instance. As the Asos interview did, fashion and style mags and newspapers can fawn over her, and turn her into an icon to sell clothes. She gets clothes, they get free advertising. Whilst pretending to be feminist, because, look! She has red, short hair! She's pale! And she doesn't wear dresses! Yeaaah.... not new - just different.

The Quietus interview with her is equally embarrassing (and misogynistic). It plays up the stereotypical tactic of pitting superficially similar female artists, emerging around the same time, against each other. 'Girl on girl,' if you will. Luke Turner also refers to Lady GaGa as a 'fashbitch.' Luke, you are a gigantic wanker. Sadly, EJ capitulates totally to this because - wait for it - SHE'S NOTHING NEW. She's just another entitled, spoilt, attention-seeking wannabe celebrity-spawn brat.

Note how she goes on about what a 'real woman' is (how the fuck do you know? You're only fucking 21!):

If you're a real woman you can turn someone on in a plastic bag just by looking at them. That's what a real woman is, when you've got the sex eyes.

Um... so does that make you a real woman, then? Because you don't have 'sex eyes' as far as I'm concerned. You just look like a moody, self-important git.

Perhaps I am being harsh - EJ was apparently a victim of bullying - but it is a bit hard to feel sorry for somebody who eagerly trots that out in interviews whilst claiming that she ''feel[s] sick just talking about it". Also hard to feel sorry for someone who thinks that she is 'someone out there for girls to look up to who doesn't have boobs and a tan and high heels.'

Because, you know, the most important thing about women is HOW THEY LOOK. Screw unimportant little things like talent and hard work! Sod those fake-tan, abusive-man-attracting breasty bitches! What really matters is SEX EYES. Yeah, that whole thing about her offering 'something new' for women? Like, you know, judging them on their looks, just like our misogyny-steeped society does every day? BULLSHIT. Goodfuckin'lordalmighty.

We musn't forget, however, that being judged on her looks is what got lil' Elly where she is today. EJ is a symptom of the celebrity-obsessed culture that we live in. Young people nowadays, even when they claim to have some sort of purpose to their attention-seeking (as she has just claimed there), feel entitled. In EJ's case, that is, entitled to fame and success. She's getting it - but not because she's talented and fresh, but because she's opportunistic and connected. Ah, that sweet, fresh collaborator attitude, new since the dawn of time!

Check out this rant of hers against R&B, for example. She slams girls for selling records 'half naked' - but if she didn't attempt to rebel against that very aesthetic, would anyone give a shit? Hmmm. It's debatable. I certainly don't think the music on its own would hold up.

Typical white girl fucking ignorance, she says that:

"Lyrically it's just like really really bad - I think a lot of it just doesn't mean anything.

"I think a lot of it is, 'Baby I love you, I want to kiss you'. It's just like what are you on about? Shut up."

Wait - isn't that what you sing about? Yet in more pretentious terms? Have you ever heard of Jill Scott, Raphael Saadiq, Lucy Pearl or D'Angelo? No. No, you fucking haven't. Because you're NOT some wizened authority, you're a puffed-up little 21-year-old middle-class English whitey. Clever girl though, she's perceived that people have become saturated with too much of the same. RECENT R&B has been like that - and who better to fill the gap, but another white, pretty, young woman who sings about her love life and pouts? Talent and smarts are secondary. I mean, she managed to fail at getting the bloody band name right - it should be LE ROUX or LA ROUSSE, not 'La Roux.' I can imagine French friends being sardonically amused by this latest example of Anglo-Saxon self-important blindness. She also came up with this genius line, which I had to look up to make sure that I'd heard right:

'And what are feelings without emotions?'

Like I said, not new - just different. For now.

When you look in the mirror.

I have thought for a while about writing this post, but for some reason I didn't. Then, I got a surprisingly good response to my 'Easter Monday' post which I really enjoyed writing, and decided to go ahead.

Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror and criticised? Everyone does it. It's what happens afterwards that counts. If your self-criticism develops - say, for example, you look at your hair and then you move onto your nose, or ears, or whatever - then you may be interested in reading on. If, however, you are of that rare breed of person who is efficiently practical in how they go about it - 'Ah, my nose is a little out of joint,' then you might not wish to. Yet - hang on, I can't actually think of anyone who thinks about themselves in the latter way, apart from when we look at something which we have the immediate power to change. Say, for example, I may look at my eyebrows and think 'Ooh, they could do with being neater,' but that's rather different from when I look at my breasts and think 'Why must you be so disproportionately big?!'

So many of us look in the mirror - or at our bodies - and we have that little snowball moment when the self-criticism just keeps growing and growing, and quite probably births a shadowy, snapping Pac-man of insecurity that closes its jaws over us. Suddenly, our mood is ruined and the happiness of the day is never quite completely recovered.

In my class Crises of Consciousness: American Writing, 1880-1915, we've been reading scraps of psychological/medical texts alongside the usual literature. Unsurprisingly, it's made for a very interesting reading experience. The sociologist Charles Horton Cooley wrote a bit about 'the self' which we looked at, developing on the ideas of that pioneer of early American psychology, William James, brother of the novelist Henry James. Don't run away now, I shan't load you down with biography any further!

William James is revolutionary (to me at least) in that he proposes that we all have at least two selves: our 'inner' (or 'real', if you will) self and our 'social' self. However, it gets more confusing than that. Apparently, a man effectively has as many social selves as there are people who know him.

Stop and think about this, and it makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Of course all your friends and family and whoever else will all have a particular image of you in their head. The image may vary little across certain groups or pairs of people, but vary it will because people are individuals. Cooley's twist on this is that not only do we have a minimum of two selves, but that our 'inner' self is in itself actually two people. 'The impulse to communicate is not so much a result of thought as it is an inseparable part of it,' he says in Human Nature and the Social Order, chapter Sociability and Personal Ideas.

So... we do not communicate because we have thought; rather, we think, therefore we communicate. He describes the tendency of children to have an imaginary friend and how this is carried over into adulthood in our tendency to have conversations with ourselves, and also in our tendency (though not everyone necessarily does this literally), to treat our daily process of living as a sort of ongoing narrative. Essentially, what he is saying is that our thought manifests itself as a sort of inner dialogue.

Again, stop and consider this. We as human beings have an ongoing 'stream of consciousness' where our brains are processing information and reacting to stimuli non-stop. Alongside this is a steady conversion of rudimentary impulses into mental expression: thought. This often means that thought is being converted into language and vice-versa (especially if you're in contact with other people). for example, you may hear your thoughts as your own voice, or see them as words... or both... or even images... or all three... We are not simple creatures at all, are we?

So, whether you like it or not, you are effectively two people. You are 'other' to yourself at all times. People often view this negatively - and no surprise, because it's rather a scary thought. It also sounds slightly fantastical. Yet, there it is: you are two people. One of you is noting everything down - the observer - and the other is reacting to what the first notes down, if you want to think of it that way. While you do this, you (I mean both of you :-D) are in the presence of other people, and you may be looking for the disparity in them too, but without realising; say, in the way that you look at both a person's body language as well as their verbal communication when you 'socialise.'

So, look at yourself in the mirror again, and this time, STOP the critical impulse. Pretend you are a baby or a child. Do babies look at themselves in the mirror and criticise their teeth? No - because they're not developed enough to convert and shape thought. Thought is purely reactive for them because the critical parts of their brain aren't finished growing. Hence they look around and see things in a truly 'naked' sense.

I did this with myself. I stared at myself, and then I tried a little experiment. I looked at the face in the mirror and thought Hello. I switched on the light and refused to be cowed. Hello, I thought, you are me, and I am you. That means nothing, because I don't see you all the time, do I? You're not projected out beside me, like a full-colour, 3D hologram-shadow, when I walk to lessons, are you?

I thought about this. It was true. I didn't even have a full-length mirror, so every day, I looked at the neck-up part only. Every day, as I set off for lessons, my judgement of how 'good' or bad' I looked was based on my neck, face and perhaps a few snatched glimpses of me gained by jumping up and down in front of the mirror. So where did this picture of me in my head come from? It came from previous reflections caught in the mirror. From pictures. From the words of others.

I looked at myself again, coming back out of that temporary smokescreen of thought to the face in the mirror. So, I thought, there I am. Or should I say, there 'you' are. Naturally, there was no response, but I could sense agreement in the impassivity of the face. If you think about it - and of course you are, because you are me - I didn't exactly make you, did I? Mute agreement. You were sort of formed, and conferred on me like a judgement. Yes. I don't think you look like me. No. But that's because I already have an image of me that's internal, that lives in the words of my thoughts. It's built on things like 'sarcastic,' 'foodie,' and 'loving'... Well, quite.

So, if you - I mean me - I mean we - think about it, the 'real' or 'usual' or 'inner' me doesn't even have a face. No. Strange, isn't it? Very. Well, if I own you, but didn't make you, I shouldn't have to take full responsibility for what other people think of you. Damn straight. That means I don't have to own criticism of you. You're effectively an autonomous being. I came into the world, and so did you, but there's not much I can do to control how you're seen. No. Because, you see, that goes back to things like genetics and biology... and then on a level I suppose it does affect me, because if I am nice to people, they will find a way to like you. They might call you 'serene' or 'beautiful', as they did with Princess Diana.

Yeeees? ... But that's just ironic isn't it? Of course things like 'beautiful' exist in the head, in abstract form. Then, you shoot them out through your eyes and your mouth onto other things. Now you're getting it. I am. I see how it works now. We all apply our feelings to each other, all the time. Our sight is almost never 'naked'. I'm looking at you now, and I have made myself SHUT UP. I have made myself SEMI-BLIND. I see features. You are a pair of shoulders and eyes, a nose, a mouth, a face. A hairline. I made you carry a lot of weight for a long time. Sorry about that. Do you want to be friends? Why, sure. There's a condition, though. Which is...? In future, you're going to criticise me, because you're human, and particularly because you're female. I want you to remember this conversation. Remember it fully. We're not the same. We belong to the same 'person,' but I'm almost like another person. You see me in the mirror, like somebody else - the only difference that you take liberties in criticising me, that you wouldn't usually dare to take with somebody else. Again, I'm very sorry about that. Good. Now, run along and don't forget what I said. If ever it gets bad, keep looking at me, until the tears are in your eyes. The tears will blur your vision - but, I bet before you even reach that stage - you'll stop looking at me even as you continue to criticise. You'll retreat within a cloud of your own masochism. I mention the tears just to illustrate the lengths you unknowingly go in deforming me. It's not fair, and it's not right.

No.

With that final admission, I realised I had gone 'out of myself' - just as my impassive face had warned - and into the world of thought-filtered vision. I looked at the face again. I remembered the hypocrisy it had justly charged me with. I vowed to be honest with myself, as I always sought honesty elsewhere. There were spots. Eye-bags. The nose could have been perfectly straight, and anger burst through me. Was I a mannequin? - no! The faults lingered - and slowly, circling them as though it were a Heat magazine spread - I pushed them back. I called forth my whole face. Yes, the spots and so forth were a source of dismay. Yet the eyes were undoubtedly interesting. The mouth had a sensuous fullness to it. Like a jigsaw puzzle, I placed the eyes above the eye-bags, the mouth below the nose. The spots fell into place against a backdrop of otherwise obedient and even-toned skin. The extremes of my like and dislike cancelled themselves cleverly out. It had been difficult and a sense of fear lurked unexpectedly in me. Yet, I had done it. I had called my face up to me, whole.

I would be very interested to see if any of my readers try this with themselves, and see what happens. You don't have to do as I did - just stare in the mirror and have a brutally honest conversation with yourself. Put those masochistic tendencies to novel use, and I for one would be intrigued to see how it makes you feel.

The Politics of Dress Sense?

I think something is wrong with me. There's a type of (usually) white person that drives me insane. I don't altogether know why. This 'type' is perhaps best summarised as the sort of people who tend to be Drama students my age. I say 'white person,' but that is purely by-the-by. The fact of their being white may simply arise from the fact that my university is a Muslim hub - and hence virtually everyone studying an Arts subject seems to be white.

When I say my university is a Muslim hub, I mean it. Let the words be taken at face value, with no extra layers of prejudice or analysis. It is filled with girls wearing hijabs - a garment so expressive of a certain attitude (particularly towards faith) that even having a sports commentator strapped to one's skull could not compete. There are also a few guys with the little prayer-caps (sorry, I don't know what they're called) and the large beards. Need I characterise the mindset that accompanies such an overt expression of faith? - I think not. Suffice it to say that girls draped chin-to-ankle in carefully concealing fabric are REALLY unlikely to be doing Drama - a subject that requires costume changes, flexibility of appearance and even nudity.

No, (not unlike many South Asians...) most of these girls and boys will be studying things like Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences. Chances are that if they're in Languages, they plan on teaching afterwards. In a lot of cases, it's not really their fault - they'd have to fight big-time in order to diverge. Much as I did. So when I see the sort of university sweatshirt and Ugg-boot-wearing blonde-haired guffawing girls (or their tight-jean and striped-cardigan-sporting male equivalent), a powerful and irrational dislike fills my heart.

I think it is their uniformity that annoys me. That universal uniform of the undeservedly comfortable. Ugg boots don't come cheap, and neither does make-up, good-quality or no (I don't even want to think about how much MAC, beloved of two of my mates and probably more people, costs on a regular basis). It is a uniform of aspiration, based on aping people like fucking Alexa Chung and Sloane Ranger-type girls. It is a uniform that says: 'I don't have to worry about getting a real job, because I am white and middle-class, and ultimately I rule this country.' A sense of entitlement radiates from the whole bloody thing.

I hate tribalism, and seeing it signalled in a common 'uniform' makes me uneasy. I feel similarly oppressed around 'typical Asians' - girls with their love of black, tiny-skinny bodies and coloured contact lenses, guys with their oh-so-enterprising minor designer/sportswear brand-blending and gelled-porcupine heads. The way you dress is a statement, I suppose. Some people balk at 'chavvy' sportswear, gold hoop earrings and Burberry sportswear - well, I balk at the cut-off denim minis with black footless tights! I balk at the 'ethnic' scarves and the proliferation of black, brown, denim and if you're lucky, monochrome!

For me, it represents the ugly delusion of the youth of today. Here are all these girls and boys who (to me), are emblematic of an increasingly apathetic and anti-intellectual society. Why do you keep blindly taking what the celebrities, celebrity-worshipping sites, shops and magazines dole out to you? Why in the fuck do you want to look like the ever-vacuous Peaches Geldof? Why don't you descend on the shops and ask them why they keep making clothes for the likes of Agyness Deyn and Alice Dellal? There are plenty of boys and girls - white and non-white - who don't fit the fashionable norm, and instead of trying to bridge reality a little, Fashion simply pounces upon girls like Jourdan Dunn, who, although beautiful, still represent Europeanised ideas of beauty and the ideal shape.

Why on Earth am I getting so worked up over what people wear? - because it matters! In a heavily-mediatised, visually-obsessed age such as is ours, it MATTERS more than ever! Perhaps because the speed of change is so great these days, that young people dress safer and more formal because they start having to 'grow up' sooner. Or maybe they can't be bothered to rebel. Maybe I sound like a fashion-fascist, but I think it's a shame. Why? Your youth is supposed to be a time of experimentation and craziness! Maybe it is simply a sign of the times; maybe people are so sick of gnawing upon their future prospects amid The Impending End of The World (aka the never-ending financial crisis) that risk is (and has been) dying out in the search for stability...

Or maybe the amount of introspection, analysis and obsessive-symbol-seeking of my degree is driving me insane, and I need to get a life?

I will probably post some related thing at some point soon, trying to explain a bit more why I feel this way. In the meantime, I will let VICE sum it up for me (replacing 'New York' with 'London', of course).