plastic fantastic

For reasons unbeknown to me, this weekend I read a paperback, popular fiction novel ‘Sinners’ by Jackie Collins whom, according to my mother, was quite a scandalous author in the 1980’s. I’ll give you the general gist of the text; Collins explores the ups and downs, the ins and outs of several fictional Hollywood actresses and actors, some veterans, some new shining stars. Oh, and there’s sex. A lot of sex. Not that I am a prude or a nun or anything, but seemingly Collins has attempted to hide an erotic fictional tale beneath a thin guise of popular fiction. After perusing our home bookshelf, it seems that Ms Collins has written quite a number of books, all with other creative and compelling titles such as ‘Hollywood Wives’ and ‘Lucky Star’ which, amazingly, are also about Hollywood actors and actresses. Where oh where does Jackie Collins talent end?

I read several of these books; and they made me feel a bit funny inside. Again, not because of all the sex. No, actually, what seriously put me off was Collins’ descriptions of her central female characters. It seems everyone was either ‘Blonde, buxom and beautiful’, or ‘an exotic beauty with a wide sensual mouth’ or ‘a fiery red head with a body to die for’ ect. 

You get my drift. So what’s so wrong about that? Well, in essence, nothing really. 

But then I picked up the next book, and the same women appeared again. And the same thing with the next text. Here I stopped reading. Are all women the exact same? Do we all fit into the same categories? Or is it simply in America? Or in Collins’ limited imagination? I was confused. 

At the end of ‘Sinners’, Sunday Simmons, a poor girl from the slums of Rio who climbed her way into the hearts of all Americans and the beds of several veteran actors, rode off happily into the sunset with her new handsome lover Charlie Brick, whilst the overweight and underworked Maria with red hair eats poisoned chocolates and dies. Do you see what I mean? No, well, I’ll explain. 

What made me feel funny inside is that, in this authors imagination is that all the slim, beautiful women with the large breasts all live happily ever after with their handsome husbands, whilst the fat and unsightly suffer death by chocolate. Well, perhaps not all of them. Is this purely a twisted reality of one Ms Collins being brought to life through her writings or does this also happen in our society? We are all aware of current issues surrounding adolescent teenage girls suffering from diseases such as bulimia and anorexia and the apparent heavy influence of todays media on these people. Everywhere we look, there are frail, waif looking women on television and in our magazines. That Miranda Kerr, for example. Everyone goes on and on about how attractive she is and how ‘good’ her body is, but I was looking in a magazine and she is seriously just skin and bones. I’ve seen prisoners of war look better than that. But she has got nice hair, I’ll give her that.

I’ve gone off track. I apologise. 

If life where a Jackie Collins book, I would probably be lying dead by now in a pile of un-eaten poisoned chocolates. I’ll elaborate. I don’t have big breasts. I am not blonde, nor do I have a ‘wide, sensual mouth’, whatever that is. My legs do not go on forever. I don’t sleep around just to climb to the top of the ladder. I don’t wear false lashes. And I don’t find sexist, chauvinistic men attractive. At all. If this was ‘Sinners’, I would be Maria and Miranda Kerr would be Sunday. I would be fat and dead and she would be glamourous and alive. There’s quite a difference. 

But really, do I actually think that these books are a reflection of reality? Because there are  lot of unfaithful husbands and wives in those books. There are drugs, and murder, and plastic surgery. There are wife swappers and rapes, dreams smashed and broken by oily 50-year-old men who date 19-year-olds. And whilst you have to be beautiful to be successful, just what is the cost of your success? A cheating husband, strangers hands groping you in the cinema, unhappiness? For me, I’d be much happier lining up in Safeway with my jeans and old woolen jumper and my hair up in a scrunchy and just be myself as opposed to being all dolled up in shorts (even though it’s winter), skimpy t-shirt and lethal lashings of mascara. Hey, we all know which one is going to get hit on by that sleazy 16-yea-old with the awful piercings. And that’s fine with me. I’ll just grab my milk and bread whilst you try to wriggle your way out of that one.

Plastic ain’t so fantastic.