PLEASE GENDER-SWAP EVERYTHING, BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TERRIBLE YOU ARE YET

THE LAST OF US

The world has been overrun with zombies, as usual, and the only people who survive are rugged individuals and bands of armed mercenaries.  You play as an ordinary tween girl, El, tasked by a boy you love and trust with protecting a headstrong middle-aged man, Joely, who may hold within his delicate body the key to human salvation.  For the first half of the game, you must use your skills to keep him safe, though eventually you trust him enough to give him his own pistol and he assists you during fights.  You grow to bond with your grizzled middle-aged companion through a series of incidents, while stubbornly denying that he is nothing more to you than a surrogate for your own father.  When you are gravely injured, Joely feeds you and brings you medicine, but while he is on his own he is captured and held by the tween leader of a cannibal cult, forcing you to torture and kill the cult members you capture before mounting a raid on their compound to rescue him.  

In an innovative twist, you are briefly allowed to play as Joely (though admittedly only while El is incapacitated by injury).  The writers have gone out of their way to present the men in this game as having their own agency and goals, a laudable change from the passive wriggle-and-squeal tropes of men in video games.  Also refreshingly, no one suggests that the cannibals will abuse Joely sexually (perhaps because of his age), only that they are likely to eat him.  The violence, however, is still quite shocking: especially when you play sidekick, the animations have you stabbing girls many times in the eyes, neck, and groin to disable them.  The context cues of the game ensure that whenever El kills a girl, you know you are killing a human being with personal relationships to her sisters-in-arms, and one of the last human survivors of the apocalypse--all the more distressing because the game frequently requires you to kill all the girls in an area before you can progress.  

The visuals, writing and music in the game are all top-notch, but it suffers from being mired in a survivalist fantasy that has always been about honoring and privileging feminine skills at the expense of masculine ones.  The world of The Last of Us is designed to make technological consumerism, lawn-mowing, and high-shelf-reaching look like ridiculous, obsolete skills; mending, cooking, conflict resolution and child-rearing are the valued skillsets of the post-apocalyptic age.  It gives me pause that so many of our modern fantasies are about this type of world.  It seems to presage a generation of women dreaming about a world where they can be respected for their base animal qualities, without having to worry about male concerns or social pressures.  I shudder to think about the position of men in such a world.  

let's pretend I have a tumblr

Lately I've been feeling a little like it was time for another of the periodic stylistic shakeups that we go through in our lives, so I started outlining the kind of themes and roles that I aspire to in my dress, based on Russell T. Davies' essay about pretending.  Davies, you may recall, is the creator of the initially warmly welcome (but later deeply mortifying) David Tennant series of Dr. Who.  [EDIT: Actually the man from that link is a different Russell Davies. My apologies for accusing him of responsibility for Love & Monsters.]

I thought I'd say a bit about the things I pretend from day to day.  A couple of sartorial constraints inform my choice of fantasy roles: I like to keep a lot covered (if only technically); I tend to wear browns, greens, and golds; I like flat-soled, lace-up boots and long coats; and I'm quite messy and disorganized.  And I want to be desirable--not necessarily desired, but maybe like an acquired taste.

Hippie
In truth, I am a bit of a hippie--I'm pacifistic, left-leaning, and my standards of personal hygeine are relaxed.  Only the passage of years and the development of the internet prevent me from really joining any kind of social movement.  "Hippie" as a style, though, covers a lot of ground.  Let's say it's round wire-frame glasses, flowing cotton prints, Indian influences, hair, and sandals.

Witch
My first association with a witch these days is Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena.  Anthy is Ishtar, re-interpreted as a devil in a newer patriarchal myth structure, but to my mind a witch isn't so much a force of nature (a la S6 Willow) as a woman who leverages a bit more personal power and fearsomeness than would generally be considered acceptable to get what she wants (a la Granny Weatherwax).  I find this image of the unregenerate scary spinster to be somewhat romantic.  So: Fluevog witch boots, black dirndl skirts abbreviated to the low calf, that whole 19th-century librarian vibe.

Amy Pond
The newest Dr. Who makes the next-newest Dr. Who look shameful and silly.  One of many reasons for that is the character of Amy Pond, who is some kind of goddamn sexual tyrannosaur.  Did you see the Comic Relief special?  The contents of Amy's panties nearly caused her men to become permanently lost in time and space.  That's not even mentioning the power of Pond's crack or her Pandorica Box.  On account of being so fucking foxy, Pond basically clomps about in a man's shirt or sweater, a short skirt, colored nail polish, and Converse.  Like the 80s with flat hair. 

Flapper
The meaning of this iconography, like any of the sexualised roles I've listed, is fraught.  There's the romance of the sexual revolutionaries: Louise Brooks, Zora Neale Hurston, Josephine Baker, Tallulah Bankhead--but all these women were subjected to terrible abuse and exploitation because of their sex. The twenties was this period of incredible sexual objectification and subjectification of women, not unlike today.  Unlike today, the silhouette is boyish instead of hyperfeminine: dropped waist, longish skirts; tight hats with little to no hair visible; sculpted-heel mary-janes or t-straps.

Pre-Raphaelite
Another artistic/fashion movement which was about glorifying and exploiting sexy women in equal measure.  Long cotton-lawn gowns or tunics, tight sleeves.  Velvet if you absolutely must. 

Gunne Sax Girl
It's a sort of 1970s interpretation of the Laura Ingalls Wilder look, with lace and calico aplenty.  Prairie Underground (aside from having the perfect name) is currently producing some fine pieces in this idiom (albeit not in calico).  Occasionally Free People as well.  I can't quite afford either.

memento mori
A bunch of my fashion life has been spent orbiting goth--trying to dress as near as I can without falling in.  It's worth interrogating what it is about goth I find cool, and what it is I find embarrassing.  Goth is a look which is all about details, proportions, lines, with colour taken out of the equation entirely.  For that reason, it's a good place to start a journey into fashion.  And because of that, there's something adolescent and unsophisticated about it, as well as retro in the mortifying way that anything from your early high school years can be.  What I think of goth as being is all about D-rings, but what I want it to be is distressed Victoriana. 

Daria
Sometimes, you just need to look like you're Not Trying.  You can't do the big shop in all your finery.  That's when Daria is my fashion icon.  I hardly need to say, but the look is prescription glasses, longish skirts, sturdy low boots, and sensible outerwear. 

Kabuki
This would be David Mack's Kabuki, the complex pre-Alias tale of a cyberpunk agent's psychological journey.  I used to be a Japanophile, but now Japan and I are just good friends.  Similarly, I used to regard cyberpunk as a dystopian future, rather than the dystopian present and/or a dystopian retro 80s style.  Still, there's a goodly amount of this retro-future-present in my day-to-day style: think Black Milk. Shiny tights, sinuous cyber seams, Japanese influences.

Elf
My elf aesthetic is all about practical gear for the forest, made from the forest.  Legolas or Link.  Pixie hoodies, ragged-edge jersey skirts, pocket belts.

Snake

Snake?

SNAAAAAAKE!
Like Naked Snake and The Boss, I'm about having a camo index of 98% while still sporting military and Red Commie influences. 

Wonder Woman pin-up
This one has very little to do with the rest, but it's been relevant to my life since I moved to Scotland and am trying to live here as an American.  When I'm out and around, I want to be a cheerful, helpful, 1940s American in a smart uniform handing out Marshall Plan candy bars, not Ugly American Neoliberalist.  Coincidentally (perhaps) Wonder Woman is the MAC theme this spring.  There's an absolute wealth of 1940s retro style about, you're probably familiar enough with it.

I feel like I'm honing in on what I like and why, as a result of this exercise. There's a militaristic/anti-militaristic thread, a sort of natural or environmental theme, and the idea of death and decay.  Also anything with a nipped waist.

Might stop to holla and pop my collar

I had this plan.  Having, at one point, changed dramatically in my look and style to the point where people who had known me well did not recognize me when I passed them on the street, I developed some interest in the makeover genre of films.  I was going to make myself a project, looking at the styling of all these movies and trying to duplicate the stages the actresses travel through, but in reverse. That is to say, refiguring the films as though they had been about women blossoming from trembling Hollywod beauties into self-possessed awkward-looking freaks. 

Let's be honest, though.  Every Hollywood film is populated with Afters.  It's the Befores that really hold my interest, the films' ideas of what is unacceptable for a woman to look like while still being good enough to look at that people won't flee the theatre.  Among other things, I suppose, it's about making sure the typically perfectly serviceable selves from Before pictures don't remain uninhabited cast-offs, but are thrifted and refurbished as cherished vintage identities.  Also, apparently, I would most like to shoot these costumes as though they were American Apparel ads.  

This image pinched from
the Self-Styled Siren's
excellent post on costuming
she's enjoyed in films. I
do hope she'll forgive me.

Let's start with the granddaddy of 'em all, Now, Voyager.  It is the story of a carved ivory box-maker (Bette Davis) driven to being upset and mildly snippy to a teenager by her vicious and controlling mother, who keeps her locked away to prevent her from doing the things she enjoys (fucking in a car on a boat, like in Titanic).  She's rescued when her sister-in-law hires Dr. Claude Rains, who packs her off on a cruise to reignite her love of  tweezing her brows.  There, she meets some kind of European guy called Jerry (though he is not a Jerry) with a bitch wife and a hysterical, socially awkward daughter, Tina.  Tina is, incidentally, the spitting image of myself at her age. 

After returning home, Charlotte stands up to her mother, who thoughtfully kicks it mid-sentence once Davis has established that the tension of their relationship has run its course.   Charlotte then re-establishes ties with her European cruisemate, who elects to not leave his hateful wife but instead to gift Charlotte with their less popular daughter.  Charlotte promises to love and keep Tina with her always, which is not at all similar to the actions of her controlling mother because Charlotte is, I guess, prettier.

Besides the unusual ending, in which Davis' married love object's wife does not usefully die or depart and she forms a familial bond instead with his similarly distressed daughter, the most interesting thing about Now, Voyager is how it further develops Hollywood's love affair with psychiatry.  Rains is sort of a fairy godmother here, giving Charlotte not only her clothes but a bunch of pseudopsychiatric tips and tricks perfectly worthy of Carson Kressley or Gok Wan. 

Davis' costume when she is introduced seems to have been assembled from a checklist of fashion don'ts of the 1940s, and I've managed to tack on a couple more in my own take on the thing.  Her hair is flat, worn low on her head and parted in the center--later it will be up in a big pompadour.  She's wearing a lot of powder but no eyeliner or mascara, and, unforgivably, glasses, which the movie seems to believe are something that you might eventually grow out of wearing, perhaps if you lose some weight.

Her dress is just a train wreck.  Her mother refers to it as "the black and white foulard", if I'm hearing it correctly, but mine is just cotton.  The skirt length in particular hits at the widest part of her calf, which is said to make your leg look wide.  Mine is cut to my knee.  Davis is also wearing a fat suit, which I don't really have access to, but I can replicate the effect by generally being about thirty pounds heavier than she was in 1942.  I can't really muster anything as well-constructed as her foulard from my wardrobe, fast fashion having taken its toll on the garment industry, but I do have an incredible collection of polka-dots based on an offhand comment my mother made at some point about how dots are good because they attract men's eyes, like men were mynah birds or something.

"What man would ever look at me
and say 'I want you'?!  I'm fat!  My mother
doesn't approve of dieting!  Look at my shoes! 
My mother approves of sensible shoes!"

Unlike films of the 1940s, I am able to muster even an ounce of sympathy for women who don't want a kid but are made to have one anyway, so I can't really get on board with the fire-breathing demon portrayal of either of the two bad mothers Charlotte is set at odds with.  Even the teen who relentlessly trolls Aunt Charlotte seems to my eye to be acting out of a not-uncommon fear that she could become Aunt Charlotte if she doesn't do everything in her power to stave off spinsterity.  Even in films where fucking isn't a big thing, it is extremely important that women be thoroughly fuckable.  That's the main thing in Now Voyager, as in life.  Having myself been convinced already of my fuckability, I am free, free!  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

"I am my mother's well loved daughter. 
I am her companion.  I am my mother's servant. 
My mother says.  My mother!  MY MOTHER, MY MOTHER!"

Here's a special closeup on my makeup, which I love, I don't care what you say.  I think I just about doubled the width of my eyebrows, but I still can't quite match Davis', which appear to be tiny false mustaches. For authenticity, I shouldn't have used mascara, but I did.