RIP Tankini

Innovation is a wonderful thing. Practicality is also, as life is not as magazine beachwear shoots would have us believe. The tankini, on paper, should therefore be a saviour to all women, salvation to the many problems incurred by a beach holiday. No more unsightly tummy when frolicking amidst the waves, no more one-size-must-fit-all swimsuits, no more bikini’d philanthropy. Perfection incarnated, right? Wrong.

The tankini is so, so wrong in so many ways. Any woman who believes it to be a solution of any kind needs a stylist’s overhaul immediately. It does not mask one’s poolside dignity, or lack thereof, but merely opens the field for infinite wardrobe malfunctions. Besides, reader, have you ever had the delight of perusing an even vaguely shapely or stylish tankini ensemble? No, of course you haven’t, because tankinis are ubiquitously unflattering. That two inch ring of flesh between the top and the bottom, the catastrophic necklines, the lack of body contour. I have only ever seen a tankini look half decent when there is no gap between the top and the bottom. It may as well be a swimsuit.

Jump into any good swimming pool for further reasons as to why tankinis are the devil’s spawn. The lack of below-breast security means that you may as well have only bought the bottom half anyway. Either way, it all leads back to our tried and tested friends, the bikini or the all-in-one.

Forgive me if this all seems overwhelmingly hyperbolic, but the rules are simple: if you are lucky enough to be lean, toned and body-confident, don a bikini, if you are none of the above, brave a swimsuit and invest in fake tan for your pasty bits. There are some innovations which do not work. And this is one of them.

Mamma Mia/Jeremy Kyle

Last Christmas, 372,000 children received a DVD of the Mamma Mia. In fact, prepare for red faces all round as it is in fact the biggest selling DVD of all time in the UK, to date counting sales of 6 million. Essentially the story of a young woman searching for her father from a choice of a possible three, glossy tans and gleaming white teeth appear to have masked the moral core of the film. If the blonde starlet was a pasty faced, acne ridden, breezer guzzling pikey, would we still sing and dance along as she attempts to discover the true identity of her biological father, after her mother slept with three men, sans contraception? Would we allow our youngest generation to idolize such a pursuit? The truth is, the pretty girl from the idyllic Greek island with the winding vines, clear waters and golden sands is a façade; Mamma Mia is a bronzed, glorified replica of Jeremy Kyle.

There is a sick sense of schadenfreude when we see what a mess the people on this daytime talk show have made of their lives. The ‘my-violent-alocholic-boyfriend-slept-with-my-sister-and-now-she’s-pregnant’ car crash TV upon which we feast is the backbone of Mamma Mia’s concept. Yet this is something we don’t seem to realize. When one young teenager and her guilt-stricken mother sit waiting for the results of the DNA test which will determine the identity of her biological father, we judge. We sit with our condescending eyes and rest gladly that our lives are NOTHING like theirs. Relief that, to the best of our knowledge, our children are at school and not downing WKD blue behind Pound-Stretcher. However millions of parents condone the promiscuity of a mother when she’s having fun in the sun and is being portrayed by Meryl Streep and pursued by Pierce Brosnan.

Does it not say something about the blind obedience of our society; the aesthetic values that we place above those of morality? We have become ‘Hollywoodised’ by the media and our judgments are not based on equality and common sense, but on visual appeal. It’s all singing and dancing until we wake up to our hypocrisy.

Why is vanity a bad thing?

I care about my appearance, I think that most people I know do and I also would agree that society places a lot of pressure on us to care about what we look like. That said, the term ‘vanity’ takes this a little bit further. Defined as ‘that which is vain, futile, or worthless’, vanity is that friend who won’t go out because she got a spot. Vanity is that person who you really wish would just get over themselves and most of all, vanity is that trait in a person which makes them utterly inconceivable as a friend, what with being so self-involved all the time. It is possible to be self-confident, attractive and opinionated whilst not being vain. There is truly nothing worse than someone who can’t quite tear themselves away from the mirror, or is so self-indulgent that they can’t see past their own flaws. Not completely alien from a social epidemic, vanity consumes us. Vanity is encouraged by the media, Al Pacino even described it as his ‘favourite sin’, the fashion industry and it wreaks havoc on the self-esteem of those weak enough to imbibe it.

The second term in my definition is ‘futile’; that which is pointless, false and wasteful. Through futile acts we dilute the purpose in our lives to the extent that they are rendered meaningless. Vanity’s negative connotations can hereby extend beyond appearance and engulf our lives; there is no value or profit to be gained in it, and even fewer friends will tolerate it. The vacuous minds of those worthy of the term ‘vain’ are centered around the pivotal ‘I am’. Conversations don’t normally entail the need for other people’s input, they’re merely soundboards upon whom the aforementioned person can ingratiate themselves. The worthlessness of vanity is sadly only perceived by those that are not afflicted by the trait.

But we must look back and beyond the image of the mirror to understand the damage that vanity has done to society for hundreds of years. The ignorance of man has perpetuated the inferiority of women throughout our history. Vanity gives rise to ignorance, as recognized by Samuel Butler when he said that ‘The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance’. Male supremacy has dined out on these reprehensible traits for long enough, but that is not to say that vanity doesn’t afflict women in other ways. We know that vanity sells because celebrity sells. Isn’t it a little despicable when a mere month after an earthquake kills nearly 200,000 people in Haiti, with a worldwide rescue operation still going on, that John Terry parades across the front pages of our bestselling publications? That public humiliation as a result of one man’s vanity is what we are concerned with? Are we not an inherently vain society when this kind of story is what sells? We take pleasure in criticizing the acts of others which have been induced by pride, arrogance and vanity, yet all we are really doing is glorifying ourselves in comparison to the demise of others.

So next time you look in the mirror, don’t feel bad, but next time you feel secretly happy that you’ll never end up on Jeremy Kyle, know that you’re doing what every other human in the Western world is doing; indulging in that fantasy of self-worth, which is futile, worthless, and ultimately the reason why vanity is a sin.

The X-Factor Decoded

Is The X-Factor a Modern Day Myth?

The X-Factor evidently turns peoples’ dreams into a reality, showers its finalists with untold wealth, lifts them from the customary drudgery of their underprivileged upbringing and thrusts them into the glorious yet fleeting spotlight. The now superhero status of Mr Average Joe is so blindingly obvious that the voting public wonder exactly where he (or indeed she) has been all their lives.

The answer, more often that not, is obscurity; that abstract place where people with a talent that is never internationally recognised live. They hide somewhere, just waiting to be plucked, preened, pampered and then propelled to stardom. Most spend their whole lives just waiting for their dream to be fulfilled. It is their destiny, after all, they could sing before they could talk, they danced before they walked and performing is, ubiquitously, in their blood. It is so deserved, this adulation, and deep down they knew they could do it; their families were behind them all the way, so much so that they spent their life savings on vocal training and stage school. Now it’s the contestant’s turn to give something back. In evoking such chaos, it is not surprising that The X-Factor has reached mythical status.

Unwittingly, the wannabe popstars become national possessions. There is a very prevalent sense of ownership over one’s desired winner that verges on hysteria. Going out on a Saturday night morphs into a ludicrous concept, as if the absence of one supporter will induce that particular contestant’s departure from the competition. The British public are protective of the talented contender whom they have watched blossom into a national treasure since their first audition. Like a hole in the head, they’ll miss them desperately once they are all too dramatically removed from our television screens. Alas we must remember that a mere two months ago, these people were mortal hairdressers and brickies, and once dropped unceremoniously from the dizzying heights of fame, they will revert back to their former professions without so much as a whimper. So what are the pre-requisites that we subconsciously require for our vote to be secured? Sparkling charisma, dashing good looks, a self-effacing charm and a heartbreaking sob story. Without the sob story, they are simply undeserving.

The live audience boo and hiss when one of the judges, normally the perma-tanned media mogul Simon Cowell, criticises an act’s performance. Maybe it was just not up to scratch, maybe they chose the wrong song, but whatever it is, it inoculates the contestant against the true evil; that they are, essentially, his commodity anyway. What drives The X-Factor is Cowell’s brutality and business acumen. He is there to make money at his prodigies’ expense. If you win, it’ll be Cowell that’s behind it because even after the public have voted, the judges choose from the two least popular which individual leaves the competition. When the credits roll, it’s Cowell’s company’s logo that culminates the programme, like a resounding stamp of his authority, therefore, when the audience cry ‘Fix!’ they aren’t far wrong. Every departure is superficial; every contestant is his to do what he pleases with, his product, his programme, and his profit.

Thus the public are ultimately powerless, yet they continue to pour their money into the ever-swelling pockets of Syco Ltd. The myth operating here defines the gullibility of Britain’s seemingly blinded, optimistic populace. Our assumed relationship, when we vote, is between the voter and the voted, whereas our actual relationship is between the voter and Syco balance sheet. The British public are transformed into minions of the corporate and commercial brigade that drives The X-Factor to be one of the highest circulating televisions programmes of modern times, drawing in 11.8 million viewers on the 7^th November 2009.

Another myth of The X-Factor is that it encourages its family audience, inclusive of young and susceptible teenage girls and boys to aspire to something that isn’t real. Nobody knows what the ‘X-Factor’ is. Is it even attainable, or does the term refer to some kind of genetic twinkle in the eye? And since the show is supposedly about vocal ability, but ends up being about commercial viability, is the ‘X-factor’ as a concept ideologically redundant? If we go by what we see on the screen, then this ambiguous term could mean any number of things. For girls, it implies that one requires make-up artistry and a stylist to appear alluring, and for the boys it advocates that a cheeky grin and a charming, flirtatious and innocent persona will get you everywhere. Due to the popularity of The X-Factor, Britain now affiliates talent with performative aptitude, which is clearly misleading. It doesn’t treat intellectual curiosity or academic flair as attributes to aspire to, which in turn devalues the real breadth and meaning of the very concept of what it is to be ‘talented’. If Britain really does have talent, and this is it, we live in a very shallow and materialistic culture. If looking pretty in a dress or dapper in a suit and singing and dancing in synchronicity is worthy of international acclaim, as ‘The X-Factor’ promotes, it diminishes the very core characteristics that encourage a prosperous and developing society. In any case, all this assumes that ‘The X-Factor’ is a singing competition, and not the corrupt British institution that we suspect it to be.

For two hours every Saturday, we watch as this pantomime is played out in front of our eyes. Crocodile tears and false feedback; the patronising judges who wear a façade of concern and compassion raise the hopes of many a clueless competitor right from the audition stage. Cliché after cliché, an amazing performance is an amazing performance. With such a wide audience, the cultural implications of this cult-esque phenomenon are vast. We are a nation who are beginning to glorify talent that doesn’t actually exist, deluding an entire generation into believing that their ‘talent’ is electrifying. The X-Factor at best is a contemporary lesson in fakery and superficiality which has engaged the British public to the point of frenzy.

First Article published in the University of Exeter's student newspaper, Exepose

In Thomas L Friedman’s acclaimed book, ‘The World Is Flat’, he asserts that the recent ‘explosion’ of technologies across the globe is ‘flattening’ the world we live in by connecting knowledge and resources from Poland to Papua New Guinea and back. His lax use of the term ‘flat’ in physical terms shouldn’t detract from his message; we’re in competition with people from countries whose names we can’t even spell. They’re competent, IT literate, and they want the jobs that we do.

With the press prophesying utter disaster for graduates and indeed every jobseeker, it’s more important now than ever before that we equip ourselves with the skills we need to get jobs. One thing that struck me from Friedman’s book was that every single person he covered worked with a computer. From the call centre worker in Bangalore to Google’s number crunchers in San Francisco, IT skills are almost considered a pre-requisite for the acquisition of employment. Typing isn’t enough any more, you either touch type or you learn how to, and fast. As a first year English student, this scares me. I like pen and paper, always have done, I enjoy writing, not typing, so I stuck with the old routine and now I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel like a bit of a fool. Reading through the job ads in newspapers makes me feel a bit inadequate when lightening fast abilities with Excel and Publisher are the norm, or so it would seem.

Jobs, as most of us already know, are increasingly harder to come by these days and when computers are ubiquitous in offices, one must ask if graduates without IT skills are even skilled at all. Evidently this depends on your definition of what constitutes a ‘being skilled’, but rendering yourself only partially employable is probably not a good idea. Currently, approximately 13 million people in the UK alone work in front of or with computers and this number is growing. With companies outsourcing their manufacturing and in some cases their tertiary operations, it would appear that we don’t have much choice but to move into the western world’s relatively new brand of higher level technological services. Still, the fact remain the same, although America is still the world’s largest manufacturer, producing 75% of what it consumes, this figure is down from 90% just ten years ago, showing a substantial shift towards China and India. We, as the workforce of tomorrow must constantly upgrade our skills in order to keep up with the pattern of jobs in our economy. The fundamental point being that factually, jobs which don’t require computer skills are moving elsewhere and those that do remain here; we need to innovate to stimulate our development before we get left behind.

Some would argue, and I was one of these people, that employers and companies have lost sight of character and the sanctity of the written word in favour of vigourous mouse-clickers and spreadsheet addicts but essentially facts need to be faced. Inadequacy with computers is simply restricting your own chances of standing out in that ever- swelling pool of jobseekers.