mon dieu!

i've just put up a post at the hand mirror responding to the notion that when in rome, we should be like romans. so nothing substantial here today, just a few links.

via facebook, this lovely 5-minute speech by a man who was on the plane which landed on the hudson river in new york:



then via email, this nice bit of satire on nigella lawson wearing a burkini:

But wanting to protect yourself from a disease that has killed your sister and your first husband isn’t enough for some. One tabloid wondered why she was going to the beach at all if she was so worried about sunburn. Ooh, I don’t know. Perhaps because she wanted to go for a swim and the bath in her hotel room wasn’t cutting it?

We are told to embrace our curves but had Nigella rocked up to Bondi in a bikini, a photo of her alongside some lithe surfer babe would no doubt have appeared the next day, complete with thinly veiled commentary about her weight. In that way, the pictures neatly show up the topsy-turvy world in which women exist, a world where you are damned if you do, damned if you don’t and judged by the way you look all the while. Can you imagine? A woman who cooks for a living being a bit curvy? Mon dieu!

Some argue that Nigella was drawing attention to herself by covering up. I find this quite funny, given that 10 years ago you had to take off all your clothes to get noticed. Is it possible we have gone full circle?

and finally via facebook again, for a bit of a laugh, read this (discretion is advised as the language may offend some people).