Awkward Situations For Girls Blog

On being a gadget maverick

I have a secret: I don’t use a case for my iPhone. Or my Kindle. 

Every day, as I cram into the London Underground carriage and look around at the hordes guarding their gadgets protectively in a leather or plastic wallet, hands pushing the case irritatedly out the way while they read, swipe or listen, I feel like… a maverick.

“You don’t need it,” I want to whisper. “Jobs did a good enough job. Trust Jobs! Trust the casing it was built with…”

But I guess it’s human nature to protect your babies.

I tend to pull out my Kindle self-consciously - like a self-conscious superhero, I suspect - eyes darting around to see if anyone has spotted that I’m using my gadget naked. Un gadget au naturel. 

What is this obsession with buying a beautiful piece of kit and immediately covering it with a garish rubber fetish suit? 

I saw a girl on the way to work with an iPhone 4S dressed in a bunny suit today. A BUNNY SUIT. (The iPhone 4S, not the girl on the way to work.) It had these alert little bunny ears sticking perkily off the top, like some sort of clitoral stimulant. 

When what he says changes a little bit

When you first meet your fella, you’ll probably say nice things to each other all the time. Stuff about finding each other wildly attractive; “I like your hair pushed back off your face”; general rubbish about being destined for one another because no one else would’ve spotted that clever reference in the film you saw together that one time. 

When you’ve been together a year, your conversation is likely to skew a little more like this, which I enjoyed yesterday:

Him: Are you going to wash your hair today?
Me: *puts on mirror face, tosses hair, smiles through eyelashes* Do I need to? 
Him: Yes. It smells like wet straw. 

Romance doesn’t die: it simply gets absorbed into the practicalities of the everyday. Things you might tolerate with affection at the start of your relationship - “aww, her hair’s like a damp hay-bale!” - become factual truths we chuck in each other’s faces without a care. (“I wasn’t kidding when I said your feet smell like Brie.”) But who else do we do that to? Well…

It’s sort of what we do with family.

Why I feel uneasy about Lana Del Rey

It’s not because of her fabricated identity – because, let’s face it; that has long been pop music’s way. Bob Dylan, Elton John, Gaga.

It’s not because she’s a bit rubbish live – that’s also frequently pop music’s way. Britney, Milli Vanilli, Steps.

It’s also not because I feel duped by her failed past as Lizzy Grant; I don’t really care about that level of manipulation - what’s in a name? Just as I don’t mind that, despite releasing Video Games as a limited edition 7’ on an obscure label, Lana Del Rey was actually signed to major label Interscope the whole time. I don’t mind all the ‘gangster Nancy Sinatra’ front, or the pertinent outreach to hipster blogs, or the curiously self-conscious posturing.

So what is it that makes me uneasy?

I think it’s her face.


There’s no denying that Lana Del Rey is very pretty, and cosmetic surgery has long been acknowledged an expected part of celebrity. Gone are the years when Posh Spice emphatically denied breast enlargement; here are the days when the media widely reports Cheryl Cole spending £14,000 replacing her teeth, while Katie Price has botox and boob jobs on camera in her reality show.

What’s more, corrective surgery among non-celebrities - so beautifully termed ‘civilians’ by Elizabeth Hurley - is broadly acceptable, should that person’s defect be adequately ‘severe’ enough: perhaps a large nose that engenders bullying; maybe a boob reduction to ease back strain. The war on ageing is also roughly allowed, socially - so long as it doesn’t devolve into the semblance of a cat woman.

But there is something sad and even a little deplorable about a young girl who changes her face and body to improve the chances of a career. Even more so, when an artificially-enhanced sultry look hints at an increased sexuality.

I find myself getting cross about the level to which Lana Del Rey has changed the way she looks to better sell a product. I mind that Lana Del Rey has allegedly had lip augmentation and purportedly changed her appearance through cosmetic surgery… to what end? To look a little more old Hollywood?

It’s ridiculous that LDR is arguably more famous for her manufactured and enhanced image than for her songs. (What kind of message does it send out to kids growing up in our TOWIE culture which celebrates fame over talent time and time again, when a girl with a nice voice had to change the way she looked to be successful? What does it say to young girls, who become insecure about their body image at the age of 9 - that you can’t make it unless you look like you could suck a black hole into your mouth and swallow the universe whole?)

We’re making Lana Del Rey famous for making it after she’d changed the way the way she looks. We keep bloody writing about her. Look, I’m doing it now! We’re idiots.

Cosmetic surgery makes women distrust women who’ve had it. I’m sorry, it does. It undermines our sense of who they are; we wonder why they were so unhappy with themselves that they felt they had to change so significantly (and permanently). Purely from a genetic standpoint, we look at bone structure and evaluate whether we should procreate with that person - whether they’ve inherited good genes which they’d pass on to any offspring, or not. But how can we know if they’ve fannied about away from the genepool?

Enhancing image down to the airbrushing of every last thumbnail has been rife for so long that we’re used to unobtainable, perfect stars. My problem with Lana Del Rey is that she’s 24 and she’s changed her face to make it more sexy. And that, in turn, indicates that she didn’t think she was sexy enough before. And now she wants us to perceive her as more sexy. And what’s sexy about that?

Lana Del Rey’s album, Born To Die, is released on Monday

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