Well here I am dear readers, at home recuperating and becoming proficient at looking after myself. The biggest problem for me now is my inability to remember things . The other worrisome thing is a noted lack of inspiration to create-my studio is neglected and I feel no desire to write. The truth is I find myself saying I can't think properly. It seems my thinking is connected to my hip and my hip is not well. ?? Do I think with my hip? I have just finished reading an article in a science journal about the fact that scientists have discovered we have more than one brain - that a second brain is in our gut-well I have always known that. Now it seems that perhaps my second brain is in my poor recuperating hips. Actually that makes sense for the female of our species. After all hips are the cradle that contains the source of human kind [ I won't discuss where I think the secondary brain of the male of our species resides] and hips play a very important part in the lives of the female as we know from unhappy experience. As I ponder on this new idea of mine I can see where it is leading. If the hip is the source of our creative brain ,no wonder there is so much controversy about the female hip. It has been the butt of the most vicious and demeaning jokes, it has been abused for it's dimensions and the way it moves and there has been consistent attempts to have it reduced to nothing- and no wonder-it behooves the male establishment to control the female ability to create and above all to think clearly. Hence the hip reduction brain- washing. The obvious place to control the hip is in fashion. We can go back as far as Marie Antionette in the eighteenth century. She is exquisitely portrayed in seductive clothes until her waist and then disappears into a submarine shaped garment. Her hips thighs and legs do not exist. No wonder she lost her head. The female form in the Victorian age-an oppressive age for woman- is worse. The hip is encased in a grotesque bustle which distorts the body and the hip is nonexistent again. At the beginning of the twentieth century with the beginning of emancipation, the hip emerges in an almost normal form with the suffragettes and it remains normal until women want to improve their education and apply to the higher learning establishments. To thwart this tendency is the narrowing of the female silhouette until it resembles a pencil. The device which enables all this is a garment called a girdle. This torture item was made with rubber and encased the body from the knee to the waist. You can imagine how hard it was for the young woman competing with the bright males in Oxford in this hip reducing, therefore creativity reducing, garment. With the advent of world war 2 fashion changed because
rubber was needed for the war effort and women with their intelligence and creativity were needed for the war effort. Consequently shoulders broadened to build confidence and skirts were short, loose and flirty. After the war the need of women's intelligence plummeted and we were plunged back into the kitchen- Kuche and kinder- the fashion changed and the girdle was brought back in -a nasty rubber garment you had to peel on-and off. Note-as a teen at this time ,the garment did not pass my hips. The girdle of course prevented us from thinking again -it was discouraged anyway-and until the late fifties all we thought about was the engagement ring and the possibility of having matching refrigerator and stove -oh yes and a husband. The hip is resilient of course and there was a small movement starting by the late fifties. The movement was the feminist movement and by the sixties the world for women changed. Off came the bra. Off came the girdle and there was a burst of creativity lasting for twenty years at least.The sixties of course was the age of the hippies. In the eighties Jane Fonda happened-with her exercise program-"exercise til you burn"-and as women moved up the ladder of success the pressure to get thinner and less hippy increased and they got dumber as they spent hours in pointless relentless exercise programs and trying new diets. The cost of this was high as women lost confidence-and hip brain-and anorexia ,bulimia and low self esteem emerged. However , at least the girdle remained buried. Then with the millennia a new garment was created as women tried to "break through the glass ceiling."
The new garment is called "spandex" a high tech breathable-I bet-garment that starts at the knees or lower and goes up to the neck flattening out and encasing in armor the entire female body in a neutered form resembling all the world an unyielding pipe -with hard breasts-no that is not where our brains reside. I tried spandex on in a shop-not breathable! I have just read an article in the Vogue about the top model-- gorgeous Gigi Hadid who fought back at the vicious snipes by the media and internet about her curvaceous body saying"yeah-I have boobs I have hips I have thighs. I am a woman." So we have now reached the point where the most beautiful features of the female body is again denigrated- especially the hips. So my advice to you dear female reader the next time you eat a piece of chocolate and someone says "an ounce of chocolate in your mouth puts a pound on your hips"be smart, smile enjoy the chocolate and definitely toss the spandex giving your lovely body freedom to move as it should- especially your hips-nothing is more enticing -remember Marilyn Monroe walking to board the train in the movie "Some like it hot" with such hip intelligence. And now, feeling much more intelligent myself as I diligently do my hip building exercises and as my hip gets weller I am able to think and write again. Hip hip hooray!
