Trial by Judgement

This is a bloody good effort if I say so myself. I’m wearing biker boots, saggy jeans, maroon man jumper and military green homeless cat woman coat. Everything is two sizes too big. I have no makeup on and have been getting an average of five hours sleep. My hair is greasy, flat on top and tied in a spinster’s bun with bits sticking out and not in the cool yet casual kind of way. I am carrying an academic paper and a mechanical pencil. I have drawn the line at rolling in the dirt but the only thing I could do to make myself more unattractive would probably be to switch my boots for a pair of running shoes or Crocs.

Surely the only attention I could attract is from well-wishing charity workers?

I say a Hail Mary and walk in.

“Hi, I’d like two lamb kebabs, both with sour cream and one with chilli, thanks.”

“Ok, lamb kebab ... sour cream .. chilli... would you like anything else?”

“Yeah chips thanks.”

“OK chips ... thank you this is ... $18.80 ... where are you from?”

“Er, here?”

Surely...

“Yes but you have such a beautiful face it is not like Australian girl.”

“Yeah, I’m Chinese.”

“Ahah see I knew it! So many pretty China girls just like you, my friend Talik here loves China girls! Talik! Come here, don’t you love China girls ...”

Hatred.

Don't Judge The Bird, Judge The Worm

The Bird: Sometimes there's no other option

I enjoy going food shopping. I feel empowered being able to amble up and down each aisle, perusing the goods on offer, each one of them begging me to choose them. The bright packaging tantalising and taunting me saying, "If we look this good on the outside, imagine what we taste like on the inside".

Obviously, I end up buying the item that's the cheapest per 100g, but that's beside the point. I love to browse, the fundamental difference between a man and a woman is the love affair the latter has with browsing.

We like to pick random foodstuffs up, lazily read the label, run our eye over the nutritional content and say something like "Ooh this one has less carbs than our normal one", then proceed to pick up our usual brand, hold the two items side by side and look at them for longer then probably necessary. 9 times out of 10 we end up picking our regular item.

So you can imagine my irritation when the touched in the head monkey-woman Coles have hired to stack the shelves, drags her knuckles off the ground and pulls her cart full of re-stackables directly in front of the curry paste jars I was just about to move on to.

May or may not be an exaggeration

This woman, if you can call her that, has not only manoeuvered her trolley in between my cart and the shelves but has angled her ample frame directly in front of me.

Now, I'm on the small side of average height, so it's no feat for someone to be taller than me but this woman, this woman was huuuuuuuge.

Not only was I unable to reach out and gently caress random items, but I couldn't even see around this abominable snow-thing to lovingly sweep my gaze over the different sizes of pasta shells I probably wasn't going to buy anyway. It was an outrage!

I stand on my tippy toes and reach up to tap her on the shoulder and ask in my sweetest voice if she wouldn't mind moving over a little bit.

I get nothing. I try tapping again.

Suddenly the animal speaks, "Tell me whatcha want and I'll pass it to you," the thing grunted at me.

"But I'm not sure what I want, I'm browsing at the minute, so if you wouldn't mind..."

"Just let me know what you're ready love."

Well just where did this (wo)man get off, doesn't working in customer service mean she should be servicing the customer, i.e. me? She is cutting into my browsing time and my shopping buddy doesn't appreciate my browsing to begin with, I start to panic that I won't be able to fondle the different gnocchis when my worst nightmare was realised.

"Come on, let's go I've got shit to do."

My shopping mate is moving me on, this is worse then being moved on from the police, I beg them to permit me a few minutes more in case the bullpig finishes with this shelf and I can swoop in and stare.

Nope, they're not having any of it. We were on the move, I had no choice. Curses!

As we round the corner I turn back to look at the proverbial thorn in my side, she looks at me and smirks. What a ball of flubber.

Bitch. I flipped her the bird.

A Judgmental Letter To Isabel Lucas

Dear Issy,

I hope you are keeping well over there in Hollywood and not busying yourself too much with all those movies and commercials I've seen you in lately... 

None of your movies spring to mind that readily, to be honest, but I do have a shocking memory! I really (only remember) enjoyed that faintly disturbing commercial you did a while back about an Australian winery/resort, that meat looked rather tasty and I bet that cleansing/symbolic rebirthing bath was very refreshing and also must've left you quite refreshed!

(Note the difference between an event feeling refreshing and leaving you refreshed afterward i.e. a can of coke is refreshing but does not leave you refreshed. Learned that the hard way)

On the subject of bathing, I'm curious to know as to when it is that you will be taking one? I appreciate your style and the kind of look you're trying to achieve and in some communes in the middle of the country I'm sure there are many more who look quite similar. However, those hairy-armpitted greasy haired aging children of love most likely do not have access to running water let alone razors, shampoo and a revitalizing intensive hair treatment.

We Still Know That You Haven't Washed Your Hair All Summer

I understand that taking a shower/sitting in a warming massage chair at the hairdressers while you pay someone else to wash your hair can be tiresome but it's a price we have to pay to have clean hair - and by the looks of your do, I think we can safely assume your pockets are very small indeed.

Issy's Ideal Wash - What's Wrong With This Picture?

I strongly suggest you use that hefty cheque you received from that fantastic(?) commercial and bank roll a personal hygiene campaign, I've already started making plans and have thought of a catchy cause-name:

"Irrigate Issy"

I feel like you could ask some of your fancy famous friends to donate a few couple mil to the cause, if they are cold towards the idea of paying to hose you down and throw lice powder at you then we could put a different spin on it and convince them that they misunderstood the reference and its actually a charity to bring sprinkler systems to Istanbul. Tell them it's very dry there as it's in the middle of a desert and the water table is so low they are unable to tap into it. But Issy, under no circumstances are you to show them a map of Turkey.  

Anyway, keep up the good work of hanging off the arms of men who are 10000x more successful than you,

Love always

J.Fox

VULPES: a Judgee

I had a hard time getting on board with Captain Judgement’s skilful ripping of Tituba to shreds. It’s not because judging people on their clothing is shallow, superficial and unbecoming of a cultured fox. Because it’s not. It’s mostly because it’s hard for me to do and not feel like a Beyonce-ass sized hypocrite.

Irony: different from hypocrisy

For work I have to speak in front of my class court room, leaving me wide open to a lot of little judgey eyes. On this particular day, I was wearing jeans that let’s be honest, are a little bit tight on the rear.

Just so you know, I didn’t buy them small on purpose; I got them off the net and some misogynistic troll in Germany told me to order them two sizes down as apparently this brand of jean is made that way. In fact they’re exactly two sizes too small for me. Danke, wanker.

Anyway, on this particular morning I was late, there was nothing to wear, I put them on and left. Actually they look good and are quite slimming when pulled up properly (it’s very difficult and requires lying down and various leg-to-the-side movements).

At first everything’s fine since I’m sitting down. But come writing on the chalkboard time, I have a dilemma: the jeans have come down a bit, my crack isn’t showing, but they are definitely not at optimal hip height. The thing about jeans is that if worn at the correct height they can be as tight as you want but if not it's just poorly executed style (PES). Not quite Susannah trying on Trinny’s pants bad, more like that slightly too tight shorts boy from first year uni. (Nice guy, just slightly too tight!)They cut off your legs a bit, restricting your movement ... The whole thing’s really NAGL¹.

JUDGEE PROBLEM 1: Do I pull my jeans up so that they look better, or do I leave them as they are so as not to draw attention?

The following table illustrates the situation perfectly. You can see my ‘pay-off’ or shall we say ‘self esteem gain/loss’ depends on the type of people in the classroom and my own action.

	People in classroom
	Judging bitches	Non-judgemental
Pull up jean	-100	100
Don’t pull up jean	-50	0

Strategy 1: Don’t pull up jeans

If I don’t pull up my jeans and the classroom is full of nice, understanding girls who have no self-esteem issues and oblivious boys, nothing happens. I don’t look great, but they don’t care. My pay-off is zero.

If on the other hand, I'm teaching a classroom full of Captain Judas’s, I'm in trouble because apart from the aforementioned issues, the pants are sitting too low making the back pockets crease so it looks like I have a massive VUL². Which I don’t fyi, foxes don’t even wear underwear. Now not only do I look like shit, I’m misunderstood as someone who wears Spanx that aren’t even working. Self-esteem drop: -50.

Example: VULPES

Strategy 2: Do pull up jeans

This option results in the jeans looking better, but it’s complicated by the fact that the action of pulling your pants up when everyone is watching you is SABL³. Not only do you look uncultured and generally bogan, you’re also drawing attention to the problem at hand, thus revealing your insecurity.

If the class is miraculously filled with slightly too tight shorts boy type characters, then they’re not going to care about matters surrounding public decorum. I can pull up with no fear. Jeans look good. 100 self esteem points!

Of course it’s obvious what will happen if they are little judgers, they will hone in on the fact that my pants are slightly too tight, that I know about it and am uncomfortable about it, they will feel superior to me in every single way. Self esteem -100. I will require many packets of sesame snaps to get over this.

So, what’s a fox to do?

I’m not going to bore you with economics, but suffice to say if you actually applied game theory to the situation, (which I definitely did not do) there is no best option for me. Winning isn’t worth the chance of getting screwed but doing nothing doesn’t get me anywhere either.

So in the time honoured method of cornered foxes and teen girls on Maury, I went with option 3: ‘pretend not to give a fuck’. Tell myself I am above matters of the flesh, my mind is too brilliant to be concerned with such trivial issues. ‘She has a certain je ne sais quoi about her’, people will remark when unable to find the words to describe my casual, yet cool demeanour.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide how well that went and how many fucks I actually gave about my pants situation (the length of this post is in no way indicative of my caring). Anyway, the point is that at heart I will always be more Tituba and Slightly too tight shorts boy than Trinny or Susannah.

1. Not a good look
2. Visible underwear line (goes hand in hand with (1))
3. Such a bad look (common adjective for (2), often said in scornful agreement to someone pointing out (1))