Being a model: a family tradition

 I've been taking advantage of a bit of peace and quiet this week to try out some old items that I couldn't get into when I was overweight. Monday's post was about my black daisy dress outdoors, and Tuesday's about styling a short denim skirt indoors. 

Yesterday was hot and sticky outdoors but I was determined to take advantage of the ongoing privacy to try out various combinations of miniskirts, tops, shoes and one or two other items for summer, like this summery skirt and kitten heel combination, which would make a good summer evening outfit, I think. 

But I propose to sort through the photos and post about the combinations I came up with next week. Today I want to talk about my trip to Nice's art shops as a followup to my post the other week about My Transgender Artworks 

So last Saturday I took the train across the border to France and had a day in Nice. It was hot but it's never too oppressive here by the sea. I tend to go to Nice about once a month as it's a big city full of big shops that sell things you can't get locally in my smaller town, and there's food that's different, especially a lot of ethnic restaurants that are not really a thing in Italy. I mean, Italian food is lovely, but sometimes you need a change. For lunch, therefore, I enjoyed a curry in an Indian restaurant. And I was happy to reward myself at the end of a successful day with a huge ice-cream sundae. I've been so good with the slimming that I've earned it!

Mainly, though, I went to the big art materials shops and got some fancy oil paints, a top quality canvas and some new hogshair brushes. I went for the most expensive brands because I think that if you're going to do something creative with your own hands, do it properly. For everything else, there's AI! I wanted Michael Harding paints which I know well and which that shop claims to stock but not in its Nice branch, so I went for Old Holland paints which are costly but loaded with pigment and should last years. I see it as an investment. You don't really need more than white, black, red, blue, umber and sienna to create virtually any colour yourself but I treated myself to a bright yellow and a flesh pink to make life easier. The canvas has already been sized and gessoed because I can't be bothered with all that preparation (rabbit-skin size is gelatin made from animal skin and, frankly, you don't want to know what you have to do to a bunny to get it! Kidding, rabbit is just a description of the consistency. Like cat gut or orange pekoe tea or Bombay duck, it's not what you'd expect.)

Let's see what sort of self-portrait I can come up with as part of this new trans art project. One of the reasons for taking quite a few photos this week was to use one as the basis for a painting. My face isn't so photogenic as my clothes, though, but this is the advantage of paint. The camera never lies, they say, but paint can flatter a less attractive subject. Given that one of my grandmothers was a fashion model when young in the 1930s and my mother has always been strikingly chic, especially as a young woman in the 1960s, I have an impossible act to follow, in any case. 

A painting will emerge in due course. If I like it, I'll try a full-length picture after that.

 

Pro-LGBT celebs news

I'm sad to hear of the passing the other day of singer-songwriter Bonnie Tyler. You'll find ample tribute to her in the music press and general media. I mention her not only because she was very pro-LGBT, a genuine ally, but also because it was dancing to her Holding out for a Hero that The Great Drag Race I took part in in 2010 set the world record for the largest number of dancing drag queens. That was a memorable occasion and I described it here: A trip down Memory Card Lane: The Great Drag Race. Thank you, Bonnie, for your support. Rest in peace.

Sad also to hear of the passing of Victor Willis of the Village People who turned American macho aesthetics on its head through his camp disco hits. This did so much to make LGBT culture popular, mainstream and unthreatening. Hell, even Donald Trump liked him enough to create a nice contradiction in his gay-bashing. Phobics always present specific types of minority people as a dangerous threat to a properly ordered society; Willis may have done more to neutralise that false notion of threat than anyone else in the Seventies. Right-wing homophobia now is not making as much progress as it once could, precisely because of the infectious, harmless, open-to-all exuberance of artistry like this. May he rest in peace, also.

Mel Brooks has celebrated his 100th birthday and he's been a good ally to the LGBT community. In fact, his cheeky rendering of many gay and crossdressing characters and insistence that their scenes not be cut or toned down actually made it clear to producers of stage and screen that there are more LGBT people in the performing arts that almost any other industry. Hollywood and Broadway still have a way to go to be fully inclusive but its thanks to efforts like these that they've made progress at all. Humour is a powerful weapon in that it presents seriousness and tragedy in that non-threatening way that brings a wider audience. Thanks for the laughs and the allyship.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum: speak only good of the dead (for they cannot defend themselves). But when the living are given a hard time to defend themselves, Ann Widdecombe, I don't think the adage applies. Good riddance. Maybe your chum Nigel Farage has committed political suicide in sympathy. Look at the three creatives above and the joy they have brought. And look at the politicians like these two who actually run the world and the misery they bring to it. 

 

Wildlife news

I have a round concrete planter that wasn't being used for anything so I threw old garden sweepings and vegetable scraps in it and created a sort of compost heap. But plants are nothing if not resilient and it's now a thriving bowl of succulents, onions, parsley, grasses and other vegetation. I was impressed by the assortment of stuff that refused to die so I started watering it regularly. A few weeks ago I was squirting the hose at it and a tiny young grasshopper popped out. Harry Hopper is his name and he is now quite a bit bigger so I squirt a few warning drops first so he can get out of the way of the water jet. 

I think he's just a grasshopper not a locust, but I live on the 6th floor so I wonder how he got up here. OK, he might have flown even as a tiny youngster, or maybe he was dropped by a bird. Could he even have been born here from an egg in old soil? He's welcome, though, just as Laura the Lizard was in 2022 when she lived in my vegetable pots, visibly growing over the summer, and Genghis and Guinevere the geckos before that. If Harry was born in this mixed plant heap then it's the only world he's ever known. Anyway, I'll keep making this random collection of plants green for him so he's got plenty to munch on.

Harry Hopper's home. Untidy but edible!

We have some cicadas in the trees in the garden who make plenty of noise, which I love as it's so characteristic of summer. If Harry's male, maybe he'll start chirping, which would be nice. Female grasshoppers don't tend to chirp, or nothing like as loudly. I may have to change 'his' name to Henrietta Hopper depending on what I can work out about this little creature.

Sue x