Summer pet peeves

I have been in Harry Potter land - after the movie I realized I had absolutely NO idea as to what happened in "Half-Blood Prince", and I am getting "Deathly Hallows" on Sat at 8 am (yay Amazon! I think I will be sad to not have these random morning deliveries,) so I am speedily re-reading. And the funny thing is, you how you read something a second, third time, and you know where the plot is going, and remember the characters, etc? Well, not me! I am reading the book and I think "when did this happen? and why is Harry being so dense?" as if I'd *never* laid my eyes on it before, which is disturbing, 'cos I totes read it two years ago. Every once in a while I get flashes of recognition for small plot points, but they are very far in between.

So since I am kind of busy, here's a post I wrote last week:

I am not generally prude. I work in theatre. I am not often surprised by nudity or compromising situations, and found myself discussing dildo design at dinner tonight. Since I currently can’t think of a good blog topic that has to do with dildos, but have been wanting to post this screen caption forever, I am just going to do it:

That’s from The Libertine. Crappy movie, that. Even Johnny Depp is not excellent. On the other hand, everyone in that film is a snappy dresser, leaving no room for my pet peeves. I have a ton of pet peeves that deal with appearances. I’ve mentioned a couple of these in my earlier Summer post, but I think this deserves a closer look.

People often wear ill-fitting clothes clearly without thinking about what others might see. I’ve been guilty of that in the past, as I am sure we all have (umm, 1980s, anyone?) but mostly because I did not care. At dinner last night my entire thought process was thwarted for good 3 minutes by a lady who paraded past us to the maitre d’s desk to find out the wait time, and paraded back at the same rate. My friend SB was rendered speechless as well. Why? Because this woman’s girls (as Stacy London would note), which were at least a D-cup, were trying to escape her very open v-neck sweater, quite dangerously. In fact, I was kind of afraid that her breast would fall out at my feet and roll down the hallway, as it was being basically bisected in two by her bra cup right above the aureolae. As some bits of this woman were tan, and some were not, her breasts also caught light at a funky angle, drawing extra attention to flesh that should have been covered. Now, do you think she was getting dressed at home and thought “well, this bra doesn’t really fit me anymore, so maybe I’ll get some action if I just bare as much as I can?”

On the same note, a news item appeared today:

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German bus driver threatened to throw a 20-year-old sales clerk off his bus in the southern town of Lindau because he said she was too sexy, a newspaper reported Monday.

"Suddenly he stopped the bus," the woman named Debora C. told Bild newspaper. "He opened the door and shouted at me 'Your cleavage is distracting me every time I look into my mirror and I can't concentrate on the traffic. If you don't sit somewhere else, I'm going to have to throw you off the bus.'"

The woman, pictured in Bild wearing her snug-fitting summer clothes with the plunging neckline, said she moved to another seat but was humiliated by the bus driver.

A spokesman for the bus company defended the driver.

"The bus driver is allowed to do that and he did the right thing," the spokesman said. "A bus driver cannot be distracted because it's a danger to the safety of all the passengers."

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

But hey, at least she was mostly dressed. Not so much some others I’ve seen this week. I’m not even going to expound on girls in dresses and skirts that are so short they should be worn over pants – too easy. People wearing white – do you NEVER look at yourself in the mirror before leaving home? Do you not KNOW what happens to white cotton when lit from behind by strong afternoon sun? Sure, white is all light and summery and deflects the harmful rays, keeping you cooler, but…we have this fabric in theatre called “scrim”, which basically is a specific cotton weave. When you light it from the front, it’s opaque. When you light it from the back, it disappears, revealing whatever is behind. This is what happens to your skirts, ladies in white cotton. The thinner your skirts are, the more I can see. In certain situations this would be a good thing, but not on strangers, and not in Boston – not exactly the capital of pretty people. My high school graduation dress was fairly see-through, and my conservative grandmother insisted I buy a slip for under it. Boy, was she right. There is a video that shows my graduating class in all its see-through glory in the morning sun. The same exact thing happened with my college graduation (what IS it about schools I attend and white?) And my dress was only transparent to where you could see a slight shadow where my body ended and the skirt began.

Yesterday I saw a girl who wasn’t wearing any undergarments under her white skirt – kind of gross in the first place, or maybe she was wearing a dark g-string, either way there was a dark triangle visible. I think I need darker sunglasses to remedy this issue. In the same intersection I saw a man in white pants with – you guessed it – no undergarments. How do I know that? He dressed to the left, and if there were boxers involved, the pants were so tight I should have seen man-panty lines. So for people wearing white until Labour Day, here are some rules:

1. Briefs for men were invented a long time ago. Make use of them.

2. Undergarments should be worn at all times when in public! These consist of slips, bras, and panties. Unless you are planning on some tryst al fresco with your boyfriend/girlfriend in the extremely immediate future, or are returning home from same. In which case I salute your fascinating sex life, and STILL don’t want to see it.

3. When undergarments are worn, they should be nude or white. Black, red, polka-dotted, whatevs are NOT acceptable under white clothes. Unless you are having your period, in which case you shouldn’t be wearing white anyway.

4. Tight-fitting clothes only look good on people with zero body fat. Tennis payers look GREAT in stretchy white. So do dancers and faithful yoga practitioners. Size 14 women – not so much. Thankfully, the only men I see in tight white garments are Red Sox fans, and that’s a whole different shade of fugly.

5. Watch where you might sit! Grass stains on your ass as you walk down Boylston st makes me wonder if you were involved in #2 above. Same for general dirt stains. White is hard to keep clean, I know, but do try!

6. Unlike some people I know, I don’t actually have a problem with people wearing white when it’s not summer. But all of the above rules apply.