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Dear Aunt Know It All:
I don't know who to believe any more. I mean, I know that Cadbury poisoned people to save money, but it's not like they did it on purpose, is it? And, okay, so Head and Shoulders didn't explain right off that when they said their shampoo would leave your hair '100% dandruff-free' that they meant if you use it all the time it would make it impossible to see any dandruff from like two feet away. And those bottled waters that everyone thought were from natural springs? Okay, that was pushing it a bit, but if you were really paying attention you could have worked out that they came from the tap. But someone just told me that Penelope Cruz was wearing FALSE EYELASHES in that L'Oréal commercial!! If she was wearing a wig or tinted contacts it wouldn't matter, but she was meant to be showing us how BRILLIANTLY the mascara worked, wasn't she? I mean, that really is lying, isn't it?
Confused Consumer
Dear Confused:
If you ask me, L'Oréal was advertising the wrong thing. They should've been selling the false lashes. (They looked really good!) If Penelope Cruz was showing us anything, it wasn't how good the mascara is (since apparently she wasn't wearing any), it was how easy it is to make vats of dosh if you're already famous. Besides, it's not called LYING. It's called MARKETING. And you DEFINITELY don't want to believe it. As far as I can work out, what you see in your average advertisement has as much to do with the product as a ready-made curry in a box has to do with lunch in Bombay. Obviously, a girl has to buy mascara fairly regularly (because if you don't buy new mascara every three months and just use any old wand you find at the bottom of your make-up bag you risk eye infection!!! Which would be something else they don't tell you!!), but don't buy something just because you saw it on the telly. Not much else you see on telly is true (face it, if Blue Peter can lie like that, then trust is unconscious if not actually dead), so why should an ad be? Ask your friends what they use. (Unless, of course, they look like their lashes are one solid lump or as if they've glued feathers to their eyes.)
Dear Auntie K:
This really cool bloke at school asked me out the other day. I said I'd think about it. The problem is that, though he's exceedingly appealing and hangs out with the really trendy group and all, he's gone out with at least three girls I'm friends with. It's like he's working to a list. I can't decide which bothers me more: that he's got a list of datable girls and he's working his way through it; or that I might be on the bottom of the list! What do you think I should do?
Undecided
Dear Undecided:
This sort of thing is pretty popular amongst celebrities who seem to swap boyfriends the way other people swap T-shirts, but celebrities do a lot of things that more responsible people wouldn't do. Personally, I think you're missing the point here. The point is that he's not going out with any of these other girls any more. So either he does have a list and is a Serial Dater who isn't bothered that half the girls in the school know that he puts ketchup on popcorn; or no one can stand going out with him more than once. I know we're meant to be RECYCLING EVERYTHING now, but I'd draw the line at boyfriends (them and underwear).
Dear Aunt KIA:
My best friend has a bit of a weight problem? She's got as much flesh on her as a hibernating bear. (She's not über obese or anything, but you can tell she doesn't miss many meals.) I heard on the radio recently that it's dangerous for normal sized people to hang out with overweight people because it could make you overweight too. I love my friend - she's funny and smart and generous and loyal - but I REALLY don't want to be fat. What should I do? Do you think if I just talked to her on the phone instead of actually seeing her I'd be safe?
Watching Her Figure
Dear WHF:
If you ask me, the thing you should be watching is your gullibility level. Are you mad? You really think that hanging out with your best friend is going to make you FAT? It's not like catching the bubonic plague you know. You usually have to EAT A LOT to put on that much weight. What's too bad is that you can't 'catch' some of your friend's other qualities - you know, the humour, brains, generosity and loyalty. If you ask me (which you HAVE!), it looks like you could use them.
Dear Aunt K:
I was mucking about with my mate and we took some silly photos - you know, for laughs - the way you do, and then I put a couple of them on my Facebook profile in a TOTALLY PRIVATE BIT so my friends could enjoy the joke. Only something went wrong. Now like the ENTIRE SCHOOL has seen this picture of me and my best friend pretending to snog. My boyfriend's chucked me, everybody's calling me names and looking at me like I have two heads or something, my best friend's not speaking to me because she blames me for what happened and I'm not speaking to her because I blame her. My whole life's RUINED. What can I do????
Busted
Dear Busted:
This is a really good example of just how DIFFICULT life is in the twenty-first century. In the olden days, all one had to worry about was confiding in someone with a really big mouth or your mother finding your diary. Now we have to worry that the next time we go to YouTube we're going to find a clip of ourselves singing 'Material Girl' whilst dressed as a chicken. The thing is that 'privacy' doesn't mean the same thing on the net as it does on a door. The GOOD NEWS is that you're not alone. This sort of thing is happening all the time. In fact, a v similar thing happened to Miss New Jersey and a friend of mine recently. In my friend's case, she put a picture of herself exchanging salvia with a boy at a party on her page. Unfortunately, the boy in the picture wasn't her boyfriend, and her boyfriend saw it. [NB: This was virtually inevitable. My nan calls it Sod's Law - you know, if something can go horribly wrong it will - and probably be worse than you thought it would be!] The next thing my friend knew, the picture was all over the virtual world with the caption: This Is What a Two-timing Cow Looks Like. Trust me, it won't be long before someone you know will have an even more embarrassing picture spread from one corner of the globe to the other and everyone will forget about yours (except your ex-boyfriend, of course). In the meantime, it might be a good idea not to advertise something you don't want the whole world to know where everyone in the world can see it.
Dear Aunt:
What do you think about really Big Bags? I know you're used to dealing with the truly major stresses, traumas, problems, humiliations and indignities of modern teenage existence, and this is not like exactly a Matter of Life and Death or anything, but I can't seem to decide whether I should get one or not. Yes... no... Yes... no... I swing back and forth like a hammock. On the YES side is the fact that they look really cool (unless you're short - if you're short they sort of make you look as if you're leaning on a fence or possibly moving house), and you can get EVERYTHING you're likely to need in the course of a day into them. But on the NO side is the fact that they might make any serious shopping difficult. You know, because you're already carrying the equivalent of twenty carrier bags it could limit how much you buy. I suppose I could take a smaller bag when I hit the high street, but there's not much sense spending all that money on something that you have to leave home half the time, is there? Which side are you on?
Should I or Shouldn't I?
Dear Should/Shouldn't:
I understand the lure and pull of fashion (if you grow up with a woman who wears purple velvet dungarees decorated with tiny blue flowers OUT IN PUBLIC you know the perils of ignoring the trends), but I think that some things do have to pass the Practicality Test - and amongst them are handbags. The bags you're talking about don't need a hand, they need a forklift. Let's face facts here: you have to have nerves of steel and be agile as a gymnast to get down Oxford Street or through Primark with a normal-sized bag, never mind one that could double as a trunk. And let's not forget what we learned in science class: NATURE REALLY DOESN'T LIKE A VACUUMN. This means that if you've got a bit of space, it'll fill itself up in no time. So at first you'll just put all your usual things in your GINORMOUS bag (the make-up, the tissues, the hairbrush, the bottle of scent, half a dozen earrings and a necklace, the torch, the fork, the diary, the phone, the calculator, the CDs, the change of clothes, et al...), but it won't be long before you start chucking in things you wouldn't put in a regular handbag (mainly because you couldn't). There's a CAUTIONARY TALE to be told here, and we can call it: WHY YOU WERE THROWN OFF THE BUS. Here's how it goes. You're getting ready to go out and you spot those library books you've been meaning to take back for the last few months. 'I know,' you say to yourself. 'I'll stick them in my bag and drop them off as I pass the library!' Only you don't pass the library because it isn't actually anywhere near where you're going. Days go by. In those days you never manage to pass the library, so the books are still in your bag - but a few other things have joined them (including the shoes you were wearing when the monsoon suddenly hit and a bag of bottles for the recycling). Then one afternoon you head out to the world of bright lights and people who don't brush their teeth with charred aubergine. You're not going that far, but your bag is SO HEAVY that you opt for the bus. The bus, of course, is tres crowded. There are at least three women with pushchairs and one man with a television right in the middle. Making it EXTREMELY difficult for you to get up the aisle, even with the driver shouting at you to move back. Your bag gets caught, either on the TV or one of the pushchairs or both (or possibly the old lady with the trolley). Your yank it as hard as you can, and it suddenly lurches open. Gravity is against you. Everything falls out like water from a full-on tap. Bottles roll down the floor. Your wet shoes hit the lap of a bloke with no sense of humour. Your make-up bag explodes as it bounces off the telly. That half a sarnie you forgot about from the week before lands on a v grumpy toddler. It's about then that the driver pulls over and stops the bus. He orders you OFF HIS BUS (like he owns it, right?). You scoop up what you can, but of course it's totally impossible for you to do much because you're wedged in place by the bag. So you drag said bag out the door, planning to dash back inside for the rest of your things. The doors shut so quickly behind you that it's a wonder your skirt didn't get caught in them. The bus pulls off with half your make-up (and all the recycling) still on its floor and passengers yelling at you out the window. Take my advice, if you do get a Big Bag, don't put anything in it - and only use it if you're going someplace with LOTS OF ROOM (like Texas or the moon!).
[to be continued!!!]
(Note to You: For those of you trying to find my old Diary it is here... )
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Sunday 5th August 2007