See that top fox, that's me that is....

Have been pondering the dedication it would take to look this amazing. Obviously more than I could ever manage. I'm very much lo fi in my approach to grooming. One of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me was " ooh, don't you scrub up well?" .Actually, the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me was that I had all of Madonna's good qualities and none of her bad ones. Given the time and the inclination I can do the whole lilly guilding thing fairly well, and I often offer thanks at the alter of the magic pant. In the normal run of things though, it's a quck bit of mascara and a fleeting brush of the hair. I don't think this is necessarily down to being old and married with my minxdom very much behind me,although there is a certain hideous comfort in having let oneself go. I've never been a high maintenence kind of a girl. Obviously as a teenager there were full scale costumes to be assembled and I've certainly done my fair share of applying my personality from the tube of ridiculous hair colour.
Lately though I 've been wondering if I should stop dressing like a kind of overgrown art student. I look at the lusciously beautiful Joan Holloway and wonder if I could ever be that dedicated to personal grooming. Look at her, she is perfect. Normally I love the imperfect. Also , it's a very artificial stylised look, almost ironic, the aping of an historic ideal of feminine beauty.I may as well go the whole hog and start wearing a crinoline.
These perfect women with their shampoo and sets and twinsets, do they ever slob around in jarmers and a faintly smelly jumper? I once worked with a girl who wore costumes. That's the only way to describe them really. Every morning she'd turn up in some perfectly realised concept of an outfit, accessorised and made up to match. She even wore actual hats, not beanies or berets but proper millinary. She was amazing. I saw her once when she had a really nasty bout of flu. No costume. She looked like someone had erased half of her character. With me, the only way to tell if I'm ill or not is to check for vomit in my hair. This is shamefully, almost true.The joy of scrubbing up well occasionally is that people really notice it. The impact is much higher than if I regularly appeared in full slap and blow dry mode. I fear that I'm just about arrogant enough to enjoy the novelty of the attention. Ironically I think that I'd feel uncomfortable if this became. I'm fairly certain that I'd quickly come to resent the dedication required. In this I guess that I'm fortunate in that I have the choice.A choice that was denied to lovely Joan Holloway and her like.