1,001 Things every woman should know…

Dressing your age...

Being over 30 is fantastic and it doesn't mean you can't follow trends and be fashionable. Here are some basic tips and advice so you can keep on looking great…


Age before beauty
It's the modern fashionista's dilemma. Ever-eclectic fashion means there are fewer rules and regulations as to what we can wear, yet in an otherwise anything-goes era, age remains a strict style divider. However open-minded we are where trends are concerned, there are still prejudices about what looks good depending on how old you look.

Updated classics
There's no reason why you should replace your creative style with mumsy-wear. On reaching your thirties, you tend to choose quality over one-season high-street buys and better earning power means you can afford to splurge on classics. In the wake of logo-mania, luxury labels have become trendy, which in turn means the signature pieces of high-end brands demand cult status. The Burberry trench coat and Hermès's Birkin bag are coveted by style setters young and old. While Kate Moss works the (albeit bashed up) Birkin bag with panache, '60s actress Jane Birkin looks elegantly youthful in a fitted trench. The key to adding a quirky twist is to search for the seasonal updates. If Chanel's quilted handbag seems too grown up, consider its modern incarnation in denim or bubblegum-pink leather.

Toon time
Luckily, designers of luxury items are making things easier by including kooky details in their upmarket wares. Case in point is the Louis Vuitton link-up with artist Takashi Murakami. If an unknown label had designed these cartoon-emblazoned bags they may have been deemed far too wacky, but the heritage of Louis Vuitton makes them highly covetable. Similarly, younger designers known for their sleek style are dabbling in humorous details. Both Markus Lupfer whose grown-up garments ooze sophistication and Helmut Lang have experimented with cartoon graphics. Lang's sweatshirts have a super-sized Felix the cat motif emblazoned on the front, while Cartoon Network's Powerpuff Girls are printed in glorious technicolour on Lupfer's ladylike dresses. What's essential is quality and simplicity. While any old Felix tee might look grungy and therefore too young, the same character on an expensive fabric that's well cut is, ironically, so much more acceptable. Simple shapes let the print speak for itself, whereas a fussier outfit can look as though it's trying too hard.

Less is more

With retro-chic the toned-down approach comes into play even more. Fifties-style winkle pickers, quiffs and prom skirts are all great items, but when they are worn one at a time your own individuality is more likely to stand out. This theory is best proven in the success of Marc Jacobs. His designs are popular with customers of all ages because his version of retro-chic is mixed up so you can't easily pinpoint the references. If you do the same with your best-loved pieces, you can't help but create a unique style of your own.

Ladies who beach...

Till death us do part?

We all had our opinions about the marriage of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles all those years ago, but if you were female and over 35, it can’t have failed to have lifted your spirits. And I’m not going on about the enduring love thing. I’m talking about the miracle of an older woman registering on anyone’s sexual radar, let alone snapping up a chap with his own duchy. On the one hand there is Sharon Osborne, 58, always raving on about how a face-lift has turned her life around. On the other, there is Mrs. Parker Bowles, now 62, bon viveuse, a woman who doesn’t look a minute younger than she is, has hit the jackpot without so much as a glycolic acid peel.
Still, we have all been so conditioned to believe that fortune only favours the young; we can’t help but think of their union as a shadow of the youthful equivalent. What we haven’t stopped to consider are the advantages of tying the knot later in life. Once you do, you see that the late-life marriage (LLM) has more going for it than you might imagine. For example, there’s the baby factor. It’s well known that young children put a huge strain on a relationship, as do children from previous marriages. With LLM, there is no question of babies, and those who exist are grown-up and gone. This also means the couple can concentrate on each other and their own pleasures, which brings us to sex – another area where fiftysomethings score higher. They may not be as acrobatic as they once were, but they are less likely to be suffering from room spin, exhaustion (from the acrobatics), fear of getting pregnant or the physical complexes that plague everyone under 40, regardless of how good they look naked.
Fiftysomethings are usually way past caring what other people think. They are less likely to be on a diet and more likely to have stopped beating themselves up about their parenting skills, achievements or inability to give up smoking. They are also better off financially, have less stresses and are inclined to believe that attractions pass – and that there is no substitute for someone who is sympathetic about your bad back.
In turn, this means that, in general, they fight less and don’t fall out when they are on holiday – a crisis point in many marriages. The LLM has realistic expectations of its two weeks in the sun or snow, and each of the couple is happy to let the other do their own thing – unlike younger couples, who imagine endless beer and sex (him), and romantic swimming clinches (her).
The best thing about the LLM, however, is that it eliminates the ‘looking over the fence’ factor. A marriage is 100% safe only when it has past the point where starting afresh is a realistic possibility. If you plight your troth in your late fifties, you know you’re both signing up for the duration, and the pressure to keep your wits about you, your tummy firm and your undies fragrant is off. Sounds like heaven, now I wonder if I should go for duck-egg blue or black?

Me Parents

Being a parent can be a real obsession. Everyone has a view, a documentary or even a book. A friend of mine who felt she was far from being a yummy mummy – who calls herself a sloppy mummy, which I prefer and is also a category I probably fall into – was given a book recently called Making Happy People: The Nature of Happiness and its Origins in Childhood!

This book identifies what it calls four parenting types – authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent and uninvolved. According to Mr Martin, “authoritative” is the category that makes for happy children, while the rest are a disaster.

But I feel that the author fails to emphasize the most damaging approach of all – me-parenting. Me-parents can be authoritarian, indulgent and uninvolved, but never authoritative, all in the space of a day.

There is just one consistent rule of me-parenting, and it is this: the parents always come first. Me-parents want to be a best friend to their children, they rarely refuse them anything, and they shy away from conflict.

They read this as being liberal and non-authoritarian – ie, in the child’s best interests – when the bottom line is really all about themselves. Putting a screaming toddler to bed on time doesn’t make you feel half as good as letting your progeny curl up in front of a DVD of Toy Story with a bar of chocolate – and it’s way more time-consuming, too.

Feeling loved, needed and comfortable is the first priority of the me-parent. A single whisper of “Mummy, I love you” guarantees a gooey feeling of maternal compliance.

Me-parents have never denied themselves anything, or done anything that could be construed as self-sacrificing – unless you count Pilates – so they are certainly not best-equipped to pass on the basics. Me-mummy parks wherever she likes, shouts at the maid, and refuses to take criticism from her children’s teachers – and Junior absorbs it all like a sponge.

But the discipline issue is merely the tip of the iceberg. Me-parenting means assuming that whatever is best for you is also best for your child – that high-pace working life you thrive on, exotic holidays and late-night parties at which all the mums dance with their four-year-olds.

...The child of the me-parent is expected to be a rewarding hobby and an expression of his or her parents’ life philosophy. Pretentious names, precocious behavior, highlighted hair (at four?) and offbeat designer clothes are all things that make it harder for the kid in the playground – but are more interesting for the me-parent.

When the children get older, even more fun awaits. An excellent example of me-parenting – recently cited by many teenage girls in the western world as a cause of their unhappiness – is the tendency for mothers to seek advice from their daughters.

“Do you think dying my hair blonde will make me more attractive to men?” is the sort of question the poor girls get asked while me-mum is opening her Mother’s Day card. And they say we had it tough when we were young

1,001 things every woman should know...

1,001 things every woman should know…

Why is Guinness black?
It’s not. It’s a deep, ruby red because its malted barley is roasted before brewing (turning it dark red). But it’s so dark that the creaminess of the head makes it look black. So how come the head’s so white, then? Guinness taps have a special widget in them that releases nitrogen into the beer as it is poured, creating tiny bubbles. This, combined with the pressure of the tap, gives the head its ‘whipped’ texture.

Vintage 1940's makeup tutorial

Tips from a married lady (part three): trigger control

Men are not attracted to women who let their emotions control their interactions. This is especially true when women act needy or overly sensitive to anything a man does or says. Overly needy women will never figure out how to get to that fun, playful, risky and passionate state with a man that takes his mind close to thinking “long-term girlfriend material”.


So why don’t men like women who are overly emotional? Because men never feel attraction for women they can control. The more control a man has over you, the less attraction he feels for you. The less of a challenge you are, and the more predictable you become, the less attraction he feels.


It’s very simple. To put it another way; if you are the type of woman who lets her emotions take over, then you need to learn how to “own” them. If you don’t, you’re going to have a very hard time succeeding with men after a date or two.


The first step in learning how to own your strong emotions is to realise how they’re created or triggered. Most strong feelings are sudden detonations. Something happens that pushes a button inside you, and Bang! Emotion floods in before you even have a chance to think about it. But the fact is that such triggers have a structure to them. All kinds of little things happen during a trigger moment. One of the greatest insights I’ve had about these triggers is that they are usually caused by making something that happens mean something negative. In other words, it’s not the actual situation itself that pulls the trigger or pushes the button... it’s what you think it means.




For example, let’s say that you’ve met a great guy, gone on a few amazing dates, and then he wasn’t as quick to call you and make plans as he was at the very start. You wait a day or two, and he still doesn’t call. What do you usually think if this happens? “Maybe he doesn’t like me... Maybe he has a woman. Maybe he’s trying to avoid me. Maybe he’s withdrawing like those other guys did in the past...” We make the fact that he hasn’t called mean all these different things.


Another major insight I’ve had in this area is that women allow their imaginations to take over and imagine the worst possible outcomes. Then they get nervous about that outcome actually happening and freak out. The point is that most of us (women as well as men) use our minds to imagine the worst possible outcomes for dating and relationship situations... and it pushes all the wrong buttons, getting us all nervous and upset. Which, of course, makes us screw everything up.


When it comes to men, it’s important that you lose the need to make everything mean something... and stop imagining the worst. Think about those situations when a man doesn’t call you back... or plays hard to get. Yeah, thinking that someone is playing games sucks, but the belief that there’s a “game” going on is exactly the kind of negative meaning I’m talking about. If you immediately start to wonder where he is... what he might be doing, and who he’s with, you create the game in your own mind. Then you make pictures in your brain of him with other women, doing fun things without you, and it’s really upsetting. Bad idea. this is the kind of thing that makes us do all kinds of stupid things that scare the other person away... like calling him 100 times a day, asking where he was and what he was doing.


Instead, start doing yourself a favour and visualise your ideal outcome, and make positive meaning out of the experience for yourself. If he doesn’t call you back right away, imagine that he is freaked out with his own life and schedule (maybe his boss just threatened to let him go...), and make it mean that when he finally does talk to you, he’s going to be even more interested because it took you so long to catch up with each other.


If he tells you he’s not ready for a relationship right now because of his past, realise that he’s first of all feeling that way because he really likes you and has had to think about being in a relationship because his feelings are so strong. He’s probably scared of his deep feelings for you and doesn’t know how to deal with that yet. Once he figures it out for himself, he’ll miss you and want you... and you don’t have to be there waiting around for him to grow up. There’s nothing wrong with you or how you are. And it’s great that you got to see this problem of his early on, and that it’s his to deal with.


Does all this sound strange? Let me tell you something: all of the women I know who end up in great long-term relationships, with great attractive men think this way. This is their mindset.
Have you ever noticed that confident people seem to get more confident? That optimistic people tend to become more optimistic? That people who believe in luck seem to get luckier? And that people who are negative become more and more negative?


It’s like a universal magic. The more we expect things to go well, the better they go. Try it — it works. Start noticing those particular situations that trigger your strong negative emotions. Learn to spot the warning signs, and then learn how to keep yourself cantered. If you can learn how to do this, the quality of your relationships will improve dramatically. Especially with men. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. It’s also important to learn how to improve your self-image, overcome fear, maintain your emotional and physical attractiveness, and communicate using your truest indicator of desirability to a man — your body language.


Then you can learn how to learn, grow and stay connected with a man.

elvis presley - always on my mind

Tips from a married lady (part two): drama nausea

Have you ever heard a woman (or a man) say “I can’t help the way I feel”? Of course you have. We’ve even got terms we use to describe when we’re overly upset and just need to “get it out”. You can call it venting or dumping. I call it “drama nausea”.

So here’s my point. Is it OK it to be upset, to get emotional and to show exactly how you feel inside with a man? You create what you share to make things simple, so let's file emotions under two categories...

First, there are those you might call positive emotions or those based on joy. And then there are negative emotions, those based on fear. In other words, there are the emotions that make you feel good and emotions that make you feel bad. We all know that emotions are not self-contained. Isn’t it frustrating when you feel angry or down and all you want is the man to listen to you... but then he gets all wrapped up and intense just because you wanted to share?

If you’ve ever had this happen to you and you got frustrated or angry, then you have something important to learn: emotions are contagious. In other words, when you feel an emotion you can very easily pass what you’re feeling on to the person you’re sharing it with. And the stronger the emotion, the more it will over-ride the other person and get them on your emotional level. Even if their level is constructive and positive and yours is destructive and negative.

And when an emotion starts to become too strong, it literally takes over your mind and body. Then you’re driven by body language and your words to share that feeling. In some situations, this can be a very powerful and positive thing. Imagine your favourite actor or singer giving a world-class performance... you can literally sense the same emotions she or he is feeling. Or how about when a man surprises you with a romantic night with candle-light and he’s open, connected and sharing himself with you?

It can be an amazing experience when men allow their emotions to take over. And you get to go there with them. But it can also be a very powerful negative thing. Have you ever spent time with a guy and he became less connected to you as you became more connected to him? It probably made you so nervous, anxious and out of control that you made yourself sick. When an emotion becomes so strong that it actually “becomes” you, your behaviour and your sole motivation... then you are definitely out of control.

Emotions can actually trick you into trying to control others, just to get back to where you feel comfortable. And instead of simply communicating what it is that you’re going through and what you want, you actually try and make the other person feel the bad things that you feel. Ouch. And sure, the short-term payoff for this is usually some sense of immediate relief or resolution. You get your feelings off your chest and get to release them, which can feel great at the time. But the long-term effects are not so sunny. So let me ask this: what if your quality of life and your relationships could be better than the negative emotions and fears that hijack your mind? What if you made a man feel a deep sense of love instead of sharing the contagious negative emotions that arise from your fears?

And what if you broke out of those same old patterns that keep happening again and again? Fear and the unconscious power of emotions — strong emotions — create strong memories. We tend to remember things better if we were feeling a strong emotion at the time, especially if the memory came during or after an intense emotion.

I can remember so many situations in my life when I was dating and was too nervous and afraid to share myself completely. So I kept one foot outside the door and I’d never say much about what I really wanted and needed in a relationship. It was my secret excuse and my way of staying unhappy so I didn’t have to fully commit to creating a great life with a man and take any responsibility for my own experience or for his. I still vividly remember situations more than 15 years ago in which I was so nervous and uncomfortable when a relationship became serious that the emotion literally seared the image onto my mind. When this kind of thing happens often, as it has with me, it starts to create a feedback loop. In other words, most of the strong memories I have about relationships with men were situations when I screwed up and made myself feel unhappy, unheard and uncomfortable. This meant I had less and less comfort and confidence as the years went by, and could never feel happy in a long-term relationship.

Give me a nod here if you know what I’m talking about. The “emotional attraction” that makes a woman addicted to being close to a man. I’m sure you’ve already figured out that I’m going to suggest that you learn how to “own” your emotions in situations with men. Let me talk for a moment about the reasons why it is so important to do this. Remember, when it comes to attraction, all so-called logic changes. You have to stop thinking about what you think you’ve learned about being “in touch” with your emotions and realise that a man’s attraction isn’t triggered by you being everything that you feel.That’s a nice fairy tale, but it’s a lie. Your friends, your parents and your girlfriends might give you unconditional love and understanding in this way, but men won’t start to feel love, passion and connection with you if you’re playing out all the things you feel with him.

You need to learn how to own your emotions around men: if your emotions own you early on, you probably won’t even be able to talk to him or date in the fun and spontaneous way that men crave. You’ll just be too freaked out even to get to the good stuff with him.

Zooma, Zooma ...

WHEN YOU'RE SMILING

Optimistic...

Wonder Woman: The Unfair Sex...

Every fashion event, as anyone who works in the fashion world will know, whether it is the London Fashion Week itself, or one of the post-show parties, is usually filled with bitchiness of the highest degree…
One of the things you must try ‘not’ to talk about at these places is your diet. I was caught recently at one of these parties stuffing a calorie-packed dessert down my throat in front of a well-known London socialite (who obviously spends most of the year ‘not’ eating) and was given the deadliest of jealous stares. This, as every woman who does not spend her life obsessing about her body, constitutes enough reason to be loathed by the women who do. If looks could kill, I would have choked myself on the sugar-laden delicacy and dropped dead, there and then. There is a universally accepted list of things that women obviously hate about other women, and scoffing goodies while others struggles to maintain their waistlines is definitely in the top 10. If you need to be reminded of the other nine unforgivables, I have devised a list:
Lying about dressing up. You ring on the afternoon of an important party and ask what Wonder Woman is going to wear. She says: ‘Oh, just something casual,’ then turns up in a slashed to the thigh, black bonk-me dress. Variations include the girl who says, ‘I’m so fat’, when she knows she has Madonna’s figure.
Behaving differently in front of men. We don’t mind ruthless and tough or helpless and winsome, but we cannot forgive switching from one to the other the second a man enters the room. Similarly, rewriting history for the benefit of men (‘Oh, I adore watching football’) is really irritating.
Being sexy during ‘chill-out’ time. I’m referring to those rare weekends in Troodos when you have an understanding that it’s to be dressed-down fleeces and well-worn jeans, but Wonder Woman brings her whole ‘casual’ wardrobe, plus ultra-tight jeans for the evening and a suitcase of ‘natural’ outdoorsy make-up.
Crying when the going gets tough. Sorry, but women who cry at work when they screw up, cry when their car breaks down, cry when they get criticized by their bastard of a boss, are just letting the side down and making it harder for the rest of us.
Lying about your age, cosmetic procedures, hair colouring. It’s okay to dodge these subjects in front of prospective partners, but to not be straight with your own sex is creepy. We like a girl who says: ‘Look! Feel these! Only three hundred quid.’
Always keeping the nicest present. There is no point of giving something if you always keep the slightly better version for yourself. We hate this more than not getting anything at all.
Being a one-glass drinker. You don’t have to be a lush, but we are suspicious of the skin-preserving, carbs-watching girl who sips on a glass of chilled white all night. Total control is alienating.
Not performing for women. We don’t dislike women who flirt, just women who only spark up when the opposite sex is present.
Attention-seeking mothers. These are the women who can’t stop reminding you that they have produced life. So they can only talk to you if junior is bouncing on their knee. If the subject should stray from junior’s little ways or routine, it’ll be back on course before you can say: ‘Did I mention I am a mother?’…

Lift me up ... can a feminist have plastic surgery?

I’m full of admiration for the credo that women should grow old gracefully and be proud of the wrinkles “earned” through experience. I’m not a full-blown feminist, but I couldn’t agree more – in principle.

I had quite a few friends at university who baulked even at the idea of make-up, claiming that adorning ourselves was playing to men. Liberationists such as Germaine Greer declared that women were oppressed babes, their strings pulled by male standards of beauty.

I even got into some nasty debates with girlfriends who saw me as a traitor to the cause because of a bit of lip-gloss. Surely, I argued, the point of feminism was that we could do as we wished with our appearance?

Twenty years on, the focus has moved from lipstick to lasers, but the arguments are all too familiar. We should stand up brave and bold, and confront a culture that defies the baby smooth face of youth. We have to alter perceptions so that we’re valued and seen in a new way.

That’s fine, but I doubt if it’s possible in my lifetime. And I really don’t think that when my face starts looking like an Ordnance Survey map the outside world will admiringly say, “What a fascinating and interesting life she has lived. She must be jam-packed full of wisdom to impart.”

No, I see them glancing away, failing to register me at all.

Today’s women want to work longer than they have traditionally, and they want to be seen as desirable at a life stage when their mothers had consigned all that to the past. Many women believe the best chance of having the confidence to achieve these things is the way they look.

One of the advantages of the technological age is that it offers women a nip and a tuck, a peel or a suck, to adjust some of the ravages of time and unwise living, thereby restoring a sense of the self that they’ve enjoyed living with.

I don’t mean taking off a decade or two, although wanting to wind back time to join our kids is pathological and doomed to failure. But some subtle cosmetic aid is mere damage limitation, I am assured. A friend of mine crossed a very difficult Rubicon for feminists and recently chose cosmetic surgery. Yes, it’s “Laura” again.

She first started with an eye job seven years ago. “My eyes seemed to be sinking into the slack flesh around them and this depressed me. I’ve always liked my eyes, and see them as one of my most effective tools for communicating.”

Laura was delighted with the results. People stopped saying she looked tired and told her she looked well. She was able to twinkle and flirt with her eyes again. When we met up in London a few months ago she admitted having not stopped at her eyes.

“This year my face seemed to have become dull, droopy and wrinkly. The ‘you look weary – are you all right?’ questions started coming back at work again.”

Although Laura wasn’t ready for a facelift she thought she would investigate face peels. She chose a “blue peel”, which is less drastic than the popular laser peel. While she was at it, she wiped off her forehead frown with a botox injection, boosted her lips with collagen and had her pale eyebrows semi-tattooed.

Phew! I didn’t criticize her one bit, I admired her. I haven’t even got the guts to pierce my ears. But I was probably the only friend who didn’t tell her she had sold out and that she must have really disliked herself.

The British actress Julie Christie was pulled to bits by the media when she had a facelift, but she merely said that if you want to work in Hollywood at her age, it doesn’t pay to show your face in all its wrinkled glory.

We don’t attack women for spending hours in the gym, using fake tans in moderation or coloring their hair properly. But once someone goes for a change administered by a cosmetic surgeon, the view is that we forfeit our feminist credentials.

There are a few feminists who have concluded differently. Kathy Davis, in a survey of women for her book Reshaping The Female Body, changed her views when she saw how cosmetic surgery helped them maintain an identity they valued. They talked of being surer of themselves, more able to be authoritative.

And while Rita Freedman argues in Beauty Bound that women should understand how the beauty industry oppresses them, she also sees that cosmetic surgery may be a pragmatic choice.

“The facelift is sought by many psychologically healthy females who… want to get rid of their preoccupation with a cosmetic distraction to turn their attention to more important things,” she says. Surely they’re then more able to stand up to the world, to make it stop and listen?

I believe feminism is about helping women. We have every right to choose how to negotiate the human condition if it doesn’t harm others. Laura is very open about her procedures, rather than treating them as a dirty secret. When someone asks her she just admits to having had surgery rather then lying.

I haven’t been tempted to dabble with the surgeon’s knife yet, but who knows how I will feel when I wake up one morning and discover more bags under my eyes than inside my wardrobe?

Still waiting to start...bricks waiting