Showing posts with label The English Patient. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The English Patient. Show all posts

29 June 2007

A *different* kind of wishlist item


Though it is one of the least labor intensive responsibilities of my ASJINE work day, selecting an item to showcase in the daily "If I had a sugar daddy..." feature consistently ranks as one of my most satisfying.

In fact, it's often one of the most satisfying parts of my entire day.

I'm a masochistic dreamer, I guess you could say, one who draws deep-down-in-her-belly pleasure from wanting things so painfully out of reach - the option to place a $1,540 cocktail dress into her virtual shopping cart, Hollywood moment-filled days every day, among others - that the usual how-can-I-swing-this? next-step isn't a consideration. For in my current and most likely forever future, there will be no "swinging" a dress that costs as much as my rent and there will be no cut-and-paste function to insert into my every morning the piano scene from Pretty Woman, the "Escort me by all means, but don't follow me...it's so predatory" slow dance from The English Patient and the Jonathan-finally-finds-the-copy-of-the-Marquez-book-and-goes-after-Sarah realization from Serendipity. Yet day in and day out, I give into those cravings that are not only unlikely to ever be sated, but in some cases, like the one I'm about to describe, where doing so is a physical impossibility.

Both here in my blog and in my daily life, I've always been very forthright - much to my parents' dismay, I'm afraid - about my impassioned views on female beauty. Particularly those lovely bits that rest just below the collarbone and just above the ribcage. Like some men are "leg guys" and some guys are "ass men," I'm without a doubt, in the purely admiring sense, an unabashed "breast girl."

And until a few weeks ago when I came into close contact with perhaps the most enviable pair DNA ever did link together, this affinity, like that which I have for the price-upon-request runway clothes and the tidy romantic comedy endings, was very much an abstract appreciation -- something I could safely dream about without any expectations and without the complication of having to watch others enjoy in front of me that which I could not - and would never - myself be able to enjoy.

But for better or worse, K and her perfectly symmetrical, perfectly teardropped, as perfectly primed for a push-'em-up-and-out bustier as a faded university tee breasts came smack dab into my life. My real life. My daily life. And now I have to deal not only with the awkwardness that is unconsciously staring at my new friend's bosom (though she assures me this is a common "problem" with which she has grown comfortable over the past decade) but I also have to confront an extreme wanting-what-I-can't-have-edness - a desire even the most impressive implants couldn't palliate - not only when I'm in her presence but even when a "K"-scribed e-mail pings my inbox.

Like I would with any uncomfortable quandary, I forced myself to face the problem head-on, and as a result transitioned through several phases, including the disingenuous just-be-happy-for-K phase, the futile what-can-I-do-to-make-mine-more-like-K's phase, the selfish maybe-I-should-stop-being-friends-with-K-so-I-can-go-back-to-pretending-my-breasts-are-the-most-perfect-I've-ever-seen phase, and finally, where I am now, the Dove commercial inspired channel-this-energy-to-finding-something-about-myself-I-love-just-as-much-(or-more)-than-I-love-K's-breasts phase.

So I'm still figuring out exactly what that "something" is upon which I can redirect my singular focus, but at least I'm now at a place where I can genuinely look forward to seeing K (and her beauties) without secretly hoping my memory of their fabulousness was colored by beer gogglery or my tendency toward selectively-positive recall.

Because frankly, as I look at the pictures she sent me as part of my informal therapy, they are that fabulous. There's no getting around it. Her rack is the Monica Bellucci rack of DC.

And as such, they're to be celebrated bra-free in a backless T-Bags graphic print maxi not only by lustful hetero and style-conscious Logan Circle men but also by women who can truly appreciate the beauty that is a large and lovely pair of lay-your-head-here ladybits.

25 February 2007

Casual never looked so alluring.


Because I consider Oscar night as serious and as endurance-necessary an event as a Princeton dual-race, I stayed in last night, ate a well-balanced sugar-free dinner, opted for Fresca over Stella and went to bed at a reasonable 11:30pm.

I had planned to On Demand "An Inconvenient Truth" - pretty much the last nominated film I'd yet to take in - but in the end, I just couldn't fork over $3.99 to spend my Saturday night learning about diminishing ice-caps and indirectly supporting Cameron Diaz going makeup-free at yet another hybrid-required green carpet event.

No, instead, I flipped to channel 49 and caught one of the 365 films chosen by the TCM network as part of their "31 Days of Oscar."

Rarely can I ever catch a film in its entirety on cable, but last night the stars aligned - and why wouldn't they on Oscar-eve? - and I was able to watch for the first time all 150 sweeping minutes of the Meryl Streep, Robert Redford classic, Out of Africa.

Not since The English Patient has khaki casual looked so divinely inviting.

Whether toiling in the coffee fields, on safari in the bush or sipping whiskey with Denys in wicker porch chairs listening to Mozart on the gramophone, Baroness Blixen was head-to-toe the lady in varying degrees of fitted khaki, rolled-sleeved oxford shirts, distressed caramel-colored riding boots and when the occasion called for it, simple structured hats and waist-cinched tea-length sheaths. In short, the perfect country-house attire.

It takes a quite a film - and quite a costuming director's eye - to make this can't-live-without-bronzer girl want to trade the Fendi high-waisted crepe trousers she doesn't even have yet for dust-stained dungarees and her sideswept bangs for sweat-stuck tendrils.

Then again, it might be because I assumed those matted tendrils came with a complimentary wash-and-rinse and Coleridge recitation from Mr. Redford.