The Fine Line Between Making the Most of Yourself and Looking Like an Egg

Tarting it up. Preening and Primming. Getting out the big guns. Whatever you want to call it, we all (especially us ladies) do it on a daily basis. It’s that little bit of perfume sprinkled on your jacket, that extra nice pair of earrings you don’t always wear, even that checking that your clothes are stain-free before they meet the public eye (well, hopefully, anyway). It’s called sprucing yourself up, and with a multi-billion dollar beauty industry booming, it seems we’re just that little bit into it.

Lookin' Pretty at the Gym: The Duck Brigade

There’s nothing wrong with a bit of a touch-up now and then. I guess the question here is when it gets out of hand. This whole debate is of course contextual. Working out at the gym is a low-key spruce scenario - your hair can be matted, skin smelly, looks ugly (although this one is a bit of a paradox, as you are indeed going there to improve your looks anyway). But then there’s a few tricky ones. Class. Client meetings. A cheeky one in the pub. Aimless wandering around the streets pretending to do work you should be doing. Do you have to look polished for these activities? Do you look like a dork if you do?

I’m not sure exactly who wrote ‘the rules’, but I gather they certainly do exist. There’s that linger on the person in the room who definitely overstepped the boundaries when it came to personal presentation. There’s that instant shuffling with the person who looks completely out of context. The question is: why do we care? I’m not going to be insulting and say it’s because you believe that what a person looks like actually reflects what they are like inside, let alone their dress. But then they do, in a way. A fashion choice in the wardrobe goes through several key stages: the magical moment, the money, and the modeling. If you can like something enough to be bothered to go through these stages, then in some way the pieces that you wear reflect what you feel like or how you would like to be seen. So to what extent does a dressy missy or hard-out hunk personally resemble the way they dress?

A demonstration of how to naturally finish your set

Besides the fact that I have used the term ‘egg’ in the title as connoting a type of person, there is one other aspect that makes this column unmistakably Kiwi. It is that it assumes there is something wrong with being a ‘hard-out’. Our tall-poppy syndrome can be rather hindering in this sense. We can be successful and elegant, friendly and fun, but there’s always going to be some bitter biatch in the corner that can’t take it. In the matter of people that overdress or dress actually how they would like to (e.g. not in a jeans, t-shirt, hoodie/ Kathmandu jacket plus chucks kind of way), are we as a society just being a bigger, bitterer biatch? What is it to us whether someone likes to wear heels to the football or studs in the workplace? Is it because secretly we think they look fabulous and can't bear to express it? Because we would, underneath, love to rock out some crazy form of hippy gear but don’t have the confidence they have to take it from the closet to the street? Readers, please. There’s enough guys trying to naturally finish their sets without having to comment on someone else’s.

To leave you with a less bitter taste in your mouth: be happy for those who dare to dress up or dress crazy. Secretly, we all know, there’s a part of us like that too. Think about what your dress fantasy is. Pocahontas? The Grudge? Yourself? For the meantime, though, go back to your fearful black cardigans and I-clearly-don’t-care-but-pay-a-lot-of-money-to-not-care Kathmandus. Your peers will thank you for it.

Shakespeare goes Shorty Street

A darkened stage. A shout. A love embrace. It was all very Shakespearean, and it was all very Maidment Theatre. After watching the embrace and wondering what it was like to dance with your face under your lover’s t-shirt, I was serenaded with a cacophony of interpretative dance, raucous voices and imitated drunkenness. It was a nice introduction to a piece which, to my shame, I was simultaneously watching and adding to my literary education. It was also a show appreciated by the audience, who smelt of cologne and alcohol and consisted of many a face off Shortland Street.

For those that do not know the story, it is typically Shakespearean: it starts with a tale of passionately requited love that is forbidden, and ends with a death of the beloved that is a sorely regretted crime of passion. Somewhere in the middle there is a meddling swine that twists everything around, accompanied by many a party to get the festive juices flowing. It is a classical drama of ‘thees’ and ‘thous’, elaborately intensified through classical postures and trained artistic skill.

I must say, as an amateur Shakespearean follower, I did rather admire the way the cast brought the play into the present time and humour. Still true to form and word, they acted remarkably, but were not averse to a few drinking and cheating jokes. Not knowing the story, most happenings in the play were picked up at the start by cues of intonation and body language, upon which one could build the scene with the beauty of old-world language like an artistic trifle cake. It was all very fluid, duly dramatic, and only a little over the top but in the most apt and predictable fashion for a play of such an era.

Remarkable on the stage was lead Robbie Magasiva (Othello), whose anger was gradually built up to the point of bursting shockingly and consistently throughout the story. Otherwise, none were under par but of particular mention was Olivia Tennet (Amelia), whose supporting act showcased her ability to sing, play the violin, dance beautifully and act modest all at the same time. All the characters, it seemed, were truly developed by the last quarter; nevertheless, the whole bunch of them were quite beautiful gym bunnies who contributed in some way to the tale.

Packed to the rafters with much laughter, Maidment’s Othello was certainly a sturdy effort. I would find it hard to pick holes in the performance, and certain scenes were truly delightful (Othello’s discovery of his deception after Desdemona’s murder was particularly heart-wrenching). All in all, a rainy night at the Maidment appeared to rain on a few faces within the theatre, too, a sure indicator of success.

Maidment Theatre. Dir. Jesse Peach. Duration: 2 hours; starring Robbie Magasiva and Matt Minto

The Art of Hustling: Free Shopping as a Gangster’s Paradise

The world is made beautiful by many skills and learned arts. Music, singing, oration, acting, socializing, story-telling. Arts are usually noble, subtly acquired things, like learning how to beat an opponent in a game of chess. They carry an aura of sophistication and you are proud of your leaned art or skill. You, attempting to be modest about it, will subtly brag of your talent, devising situations in which your talent can be put in the spotlight for all to see. Your talent might be a nice pair of legs you worked hard at Les Mills for, or an incredible general knowledge, or an aptitude for putting together a beautiful outfit that is kooky and classy at the same time. Nevertheless, arts are things acquired, admired, and often hired to improve your confidence in front of that daily bathroom mirror.

Until recently I had never regarded hustling as an art. It was always one of those awkward talents that bordered half on embarrassment, half on fun. Your friend might notice someone giving you the eye and hustle a drink through your looks, but you were always left with a taste of seediness in your mouth after the event. You might have worked in a hell-awful call centre, hustling free surveys and minutes of people’s time, always left with a touch of desperation you never really wanted to experience afterwards. Hustling as a form of bargaining was like the guy you would never show to your parents, but would meet in some secret location away from prying eyes: you liked the feeling in the moment, but you didn’t like the consequences. Unclean, humiliating and with a crooked smile, hustling was a part of yourself you didn’t want to truly embrace.

After reflecting on a few of life’s beauties, however, I realized that there was more to hustling. It had hidden virtues and was actually a different entity to the one that I had envisioned. Hustling was a way of life. It did not have to be associated with bad boy rappers and drug dealers, or with people whose desperation had got the better of them. Hustling, indeed, was the art of persuasion. After having heard the other day in one of those oh-so-informative classes that persuasion informed any kind of social agreement or relationship, I realized that hustling too was an important part of any relationship (if you decided to take that theoretical line). Was hustling just persuasion’s dirtier younger cousin? If we persuaded somebody to do something, we were really proud and told all of our friends. But if we hustled something, oh no, ‘that was low’, that was not ‘one of our finer moments’. Hustling had been stereotyped, and I felt bad for him.

Being a charitable person, I decided to try and restore hustling’s good name (did it ever have one?). I applauded those that hustled free drinks or numbers. I began to admire those that could knock money off a dress new to the store that had no defects. I elevated people’s persistence in trying to hustle a good deal out of their next purchase (which had to be over the amount of $20; after all, giving hustling a good name did not have to amount to glorifying stinginess). Consequently, I made a hustling breakthrough. I, the one who had always been embarrassed of trying to get things for free, hustled something of substantial value. I must say, surprisingly, I was rather proud. And why shouldn’t we be? Isn’t it in the nature of New Zealanders to go to Fair Go if they get a bad deal? To try and get the best value for their dollar? To always go the extra mile for customers (which includes getting good service at the other side of the counter)? Hustling had not only lost its shame, but had acquired a kind of national pride, and I loved it.

For those who still despise the hustler, I ask you: have you ever felt the feeling of elation in getting something for free? Did you like the feeling when, after a great bargain you made happen yourself, your wallet was still that bit heavier afterwards? For the unspoken truth is that if human relationships are persuasion, and persuasion equals hustling, then a big part of good socializing is indeed the humble hustle. Hustle friends, hustle contacts, hustle sex if you must. But hustle with your head held high.

Bitchin' on Bad Boys: Why Losers Can Be Alluring

Muscles. Tattoos. Mohawks. Leather jackets. Cigarettes. Whiskey flasks. All these things have one thing in common. Depending on where you live in Auckland it could be your next door neighbour, an imaginary character that you could never even imagine meeting, or a gangster thug from Tarrantino movies. All these things too, are our favourite things. Push the feeling of disgust to the side, and all you have left is sexy. Leather, smoking, half-haired freaks who we like to call the bad guys. Unfortunately, in this case nice guys do finish last.

I am yet to meet a girl who has not been out with a guy of this type. Post break-up, they are always referred to as ‘that loser’, or that ‘bad period in your life’ when you were on self-destruct mode. Because, let’s face it, to date that guy, you had to be. To be honest, when you saw them sidling up the sidewalk with that smirky look and  an unwashed feel, a feeling of ‘ugh’ did seem to shiver down your spine. Then some talking happened, and you went somewhere cool you hadn’t been before, and they became aloof and unreachable and suddenly, well, you kinda liked them. They acquired mystery, and charm, and eventually an irresistible aura because they didn’t give you the approval that that sweet-so-and-so from down the road always did. They were inaccessible. And they had a motorbike. For most teenage girls, this is enough: enough to bypass usual judgment, ignore family and friend’s warnings, and to go down the dirty path of boyfriend badness.

Classiness,  a high calibre of education, and perfect beauty are not enough to stop the luckiest of girls who have the world at their feet swooning for some suave stoner. Being romantic begins to equal romantic suffering, a suffering borne of the reality that the bad boy is an egotist who could only love himself.  But still the love continues on. Ending in some tragic, Romeo and Juliet episode, the bad-boy love affair is one-sided.  The girl believes their love is forever fated, destined despite poverty and substance abuse, meant to be despite his endlessly roving eye. The bad boy, forever his iconic self, thinks of her as hot but needy, replaced by another long-haired lovely to share his sordid sheets.

The question is: what makes the bad boy so appealing? Why, after all their ridiculous escapades and shameful secrets are left exposed, is there nothing left to hate?  The lovable larrikin of the social group, bad boys, I would argue, know the sciences of persuasion and flattery. I say science because, well, it is rather evident that some people fail with a capital F, most are mediocre, and some are euphorically charming in a way that they seem to be born with in the art of social interaction. This charm, if it is not tended to with the care needed for the most beautiful rose, will degenerate into slutdom. And with slutdom comes confidence, with confidence comes apathy, and with apathy comes an anti-establishment attitude. Ever notice that the lovable loser always carries an underlying resentment for authority? I point to the above as evidence for this common and often appealing trait. Most bad boys are, in reality, outsiders.

Gingerbread Man: Modern Man Without the Strings

Outsiders aside, the fact is that many women are romantic creatures. Carrying inside themselves Victorian novels and movies such as The Notebook and other Jennifer Aniston rom-coms, they are taught that there is a moment in their lives that will be their perfect romantic moment. This moment will contain candles, a starlit dinner, a beautiful ball dress and perfect etiquette, a man in a suit and maybe even a ring in his hand. Many women get carried away in these fantasies, reading Cosmo to try and find how they can improve themselves so that this moment can take place in their lives. It is a perfect delusion, and a delusion that is perfect for a master romantic rogue.

But hang on, you say. My ex Steve, or my friend’s ex Gary, or my girlfriend’s ex (that I’m secretly jealous of) was not in a suit with 40’s style hair, would never have lit candles and does not in the least resemble Colin Farrell. The problem is indeed this:  the bad boy does not resemble the fantasy. The catalyst for the bad boy’s chances with a self-respecting woman, however, is not what they look like: it is what they sound like. Women love with their ears. What they might be seeing is a pair of dirty socks, a smoke-filled car and a reddish dope eye, but what they hear is what they have been told they would one day hear as a young, hopeful child. ‘You are the One’, ‘You are the most beautiful woman in the world’ or “I have never loved anyone the way I love you’ are all things that are easy to say but, for the stoner, hard to follow up on. Coupled with the resulting aloofness and unreachability, a girl who thought they once had a poor guy in the palm of their hand begins to feel as if her hand is now guy-poor and, subsequently, she believes she loves him too. It is reverse psychology at its finest, and often hard to escape.

Does it have to be the destiny of every fine girl in Auckland to have gone through the human disappointment of dating a bad boy? It really depends on how fast you can learn. Can you watch your friend go through a similar situation and be able to spot a bad boy from a distance? Could you keep a mental list of what your requirements are in a boyfriend and stick to them regardless of contrary feelings of passion? Unfortunately, many a Kiwi woman cannot. But for the smart ones among us, you only do it the once. Lovable though they may be, alluring though they are, the boredom of their dumb-ass behaviour sets in pretty quick. Make one your boyfriend and your love radar will forever be on the anti-hunt for one that resembles anything close. Love-smart we may not be, but perhaps for a good reason: you don’t make the same mistake twice.

Distraction Attraction

Celebrities, these days, are everywhere. They have invaded our newspapers, magazines, internet pages, television, life. People talk about them as if they were just Brad and Angelina from down the road. And if they actually know Brad and Angelina? Well, they’ve just jumped a few steps up the fame ladder themselves.

The question is, why do we like celebrities? What, really, is so interesting about them? Being a public relations student, one can see that really they’re normal people with a feisty agent behind them. The agent puts them in shoots, changes their name, gives them a sultry image, and boom: a star is born. Being a celebrity, to my mind, is no longer actually about having talent, like it once (or at least we thought it once) was. It’s about presenting yourself in a light that’s in line with the times, that gives people something new and apparently interesting to look at that’s just a bit different to what’s already out there (not too crazy; then you won’t be mainstream enough to be popular). Being a celebrity, it might seem, is all about presentation.

Presentation is a facet of our world that, especially in the last century, has come to dominate what we see, how we look at it, and whether we buy it or not. Presentation is really a personal word for self-marketing. When you think about it, much of what we see and do not even recognize as presentation is actually just that: female faces on the street (a presentation of make-up products);the city streets (a marketing and upkeep of the city as brand); the words on this page (presentation of information in a readable fashion). So, if much of our world is presentation, and presentation is always something a little better-looking or better placed than our real selves, does that mean that we’re continuously making a commodity of ourselves and our world? Additionally, if celebrities are the pinnacle of the sexy, perfected image that we are looking for, does that mean, subconsciously, that they are some form of super commodity? It all warrants extra room for thought.

If it follows from here that much of our world is commodity, and that celebrities are super-commodities, then the question of societal celebrity adoration simply takes another angle. Celebrities become, then, not just another person we admire because they are the best (or in some celebrity cases, almost the worst), in their field, but because we want to replicate their look. Their look is our ideal. And because ideals never die, but the outfit and the premiere does, we can continue to turn the pages of the latest NW and sigh at the latest. As the post-modernist author Nicholas Carr would argue, humans are suckers for the latest (in that it represents either a threat or opportunity as biological instinct), we are suckers for the newest presentation of celebrities. They are flashy, they represent distraction, and they have just that bit of sexy we want to inject into our lives.

Distraction indeed has a large part to play in all this. As well as living in a packaged world, we live in a world of distraction, a distraction that increases as the days go by. The Internet persuades, the television competes, the I-Phone beeps away to increase to distract us from one product to another: to buy this, to be available for that, to be enticed by the newest and the latest. Even products usually meditative and soothing activities, such as reading, is changing through the Kindle and other e-books, distracting us from the content and onto the links of advertising and dictionary definitions that surround them.


We are attracted to celebrities in that, they too, are tools of distraction. When you turn the pages of a magazine, or the channels the TV (especially E), one celebrity competes with another for your attention, brawn bodies over reclusive geniuses. Movies, good or bad, are made like revolving doors, spurning your interest away from your current duties (which most of us want to be distracted from anyway) and onto their glitzy, glamorous selves.  These Prada-preened goddesses and steroid studs tell us what society wants us to be: ideals, which we must buy their products to attain. To know about these products, you must be distracted by their presentations first. It all makes sense in the consumer cycle.  So it would be safe to say, behind the masks of their agents, celebrities are perhaps so alluring because of their promise of the unachievable. They are distracting because flashy, desirable because unreal, objects of adoration because they represent the everyday perfection we mostly achieve only on nights out.

So as for the question of whether we should adore them or not; well, do at your own peril. It is a rather fickle fantasy to admire something that in many ways is not real. But then again, aren’t most fantasies fun in that they represent something so opposite to the world we live in? We’d all, around study season, rather see Eva Mendes in the mirror than some entity with eye bags and pen on their face. Drugs or not, celebrities are just people hiding behind an agent or an image, a representation of what we ourselves would like to see: societal perfection. It’s just good to remember that in this age of distracting commodities, all you’re really luring after is the flash of the camera.

Skintight: A Canterburian Paradise

The lights dim. A pair of feet hide behind a curtain; to your mind trembling, but only because if they were yours they would be. A young woman, slender of build, walks on to the gym mats. Playing with an apple and a bucket of water, she seems peaceful, Eve-like in her simple dress and ruffled hair. Content, that is, until a man strides in, his breeches screaming the 1940’s and his rugged look marking him Adam to her Eve. It is upon his arrival that you realize what the gym mats are for. Lunging towards his lover in violent abandon, this first act encapsulates so much of what this play symbolizes: a fighting eroticism that is as romantically passionate as it is shockingly abusive, showcasing a violence that is well directed enough to not speak of anything but love.



The play itself is very simple: two people, a bucket of water, some apples, a knife. Even the clothes are discarded at one point (a fact which, although poignant and altogether fitting, is still shocking when you’re in the front row). A play evoking nostalgia for days gone by, its poetic pronunciations by the actors are perfectly Kiwi and well spoken. The actors speak much of rolling around in the haystack and other hillbilly-esque activities, of riding horses and pure, sweet innocent love. The story carries an aura of nature and simplicity.

Simple, that is, until the war is mentioned. With the war, aptly introduced as the marker of a bad turn in the actor’s Eden-esque Canterburian paradise, come tales of adultery and of lack of faith in one another. Of course, tales of death and destruction within the war setting are mentioned. Running arguments between  the actors, Croft and Neels, become almost thematic of the play; the fact that an argument is almost always present increases the tension between them and thus your interest in them as characters. It also keeps the question alive as to whether they will forgive each other for their latest trespasses,  which, almost immediately, they always do. Although it may seem frivolous and unrealistic for the characters to make up so easily, the argumentative thread ensures they never really do make up. In addition to their potent chemistry on stage, you come to accept their forgiving nature as part of what makes them husband and wife. So forgiving, in fact, you wonder whether the relationship has been carried on off-stage.

Amid the blissful violence, there is one point of confusion. Throughout the first three quarters of the play, they appear to be a young married couple, perhaps separated for a few years by the war. Played by actors that look like teenagers, it is rather a surprise when they allude to a grown daughter figure that lives overseas, which effectively makes them grandparents. This demographic surprise does not take away from the beauty of the whole, but it does distance your mind from some of the play’s climactic graces, as it is mentioned in the last and most dramatic third of the play.

The passionate scene involving a large event at the end (which I will keep a surprise for you), however, quickly takes your mind hostage from these particulars. After a few hand-to-mouth episodes, you are quickly whisked away to a peaceful and rather cleverly designed conclusion which prompts afterthought. I must say that, overall,  I was rather delighted with the whole experience.

To summarize, Skintight is not a play for the faint-hearted, the unromantic, or those disgusted by nudity. But for those who do not fall underneath these categories, it is a well-directed, poetic, and indeed well worth seeing peace of theatre.

Skintight. Dir. Melissa Ferguson, Starring Julia Croft and Chris Neels. Dur: 1 hour.