Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Ladette to Lady

Last night was the finale of Ladette to Lady. I am ashamed to say that I watched a fair few episodes of this show. That's right, I have finally succumbed to reality TV. How tragic.
Anyway, in case you haven't watched it, Ladette to Lady is about a bunch of unladylike, binge-drinking, boob-flashing, blokey British girls going to an old-fashioned finishing school to learn how to become ladies. Their lessons include elocution, flower-arranging, cooking, sewing, and general etiquette.

The school is run by some formidable ladies who remind me of some of the teachers at my high school (which was an all-girls school). The sort who do not yell or scream, but rather scold misbehaviour in dignified rage - which is the far more terrifying - and cause even the most blokey ladette to hang her head in shame.


The teachers are the three women out the front. If curled lips could kill...

I found the show absolutely fascinating. Firstly, reality shows tend to ridicule one group. In this show, it was hard to tell who was ridiculing who. Was it the brash, crude ladettes who got completely wasted all the time and used bad grammar? Or was it the uptight teachers at the finishing school who would seem very upset over a bad flower arrangement and had a certain technique to fluffing pillows?

Upon looking up some information abou the show on the internet, I found a few blogs criticising the show. It was labelled as "sexist" and "old-fashioned." I personally don't think it's all bad. While I don't think that all females should be posh housewives who speak like the Queen, I don't think they should be drunken slags either. There's a delicate balance. Girls should be able to get a bit pissed and be silly, but not the extent that they end up vomiting all over the pub and flashing their boobs at everybody. At the same token, girls should be well-groomed for a special occasion, be polite to people and respect men like they'd want men to respect them.
Come to think of it, everybody should be like that, male or female. Maybe there should be a show called "Lad to Gentleman".
As blatantly cringe-worthy as some of the old fashioned values are in the show, there's a point; females shouldn't be like drunken boys.

As for me? I'm pretty sure that I'm a ladette. I dress for comfort, I drink too much when I go out and end up swearing loudly and I have burping competitions with Dan. But on the other hand, I can cook a mean marinated lamb, my calves look wicked in heels and my vase of fake gerbaras on the bedside table looks marvellous, thankyou very much.


Vicky, the winner of Ladette to Lady. She was my favourite - seemed like a nice person and had a fantastic Yorkshire accent.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

The daily telegraph =/= playboy

The Daily Telegraph website looked quite interesting today:

And the main story of the day is leaked photos of swimmer Stephanie Rice (who?) from her facebook. She's shown wearing 80's gear for a party. Apparently there were some "raunchy " shots of her and her boyfriend on there, as well as her dressed up as a sexy cop for a party. And of course, the Telegraph has posted up Stephanie's photos. Because it's not like these sort of photos are readily available on any young woman's social networking site.

Look, I'm not the sort of girl who's going to whine "that's sexist!" because girls who are prettier than me are in the media. But I do wonder what this sort of thing is doing on a newspaper site. It just reeks of blokey magazine. There's nothing wrong with blokey magazines - hey, sometimes I find their articles much more entertaining than the tripe in women's magazines - but I don't think that pictures of Gisele's arse belong next to a story about a grisly murder.

If I wanted to look at boobies and bums, I'd buy a copy of FHM, not the Telegraph.


(On a side note: How is Dita Von Teese starring in porn with ladies really so shocking? She's a burlesque star who's starred in Playboy, talks openly about her promiscuity and was married to Marilyn Manson for god's sakes. I think it would be a much more interesting news story if Dita Von Teese had a secret fondness for knitting socks for orphaned kittens, for example.)

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