Do you own any of the following published titles: How to Walk in High Heels, What Not to Wear, The Goddess Guide or The Dangerous Book for Boys? Do you knowingly keep anything written by Lynne Truss or Gillian McKeith in your possession? Do you occasionally tune in to Channel 4 or Five or BBC1 between the hours of 7.30pm and 9pm on any given weekday? Do you find yourself irritated by my shameless and clumsy use of rhetorical questions at this point in time?
Comments on my vaguely irritating faux-conversational manner aside, the odds are distinctly in my favour that you would have answered yes to at least one of my first three points of interrogation, because as a nation we’re becoming increasingly preoccupied with self-betterment.
At the time of writing, Amazon’s topseller’s list featured the following veritable smorgasbord of questionable ‘How to’s’: Trinny & Susannah’s Bodyshape Bible, Gok Wan’s How to Look Good Naked, Thing’s I wish my mother had told me: Lessons in style and elegance, I before E (Except after C) the aforementioned Dangerous Book for Boys, and the somewhat alarmingly titled The Girls Book: How to be the Best at Everything.
Combined with no fewer than nine cook books by various celebrity and Michelin starred chefs, seven Question & Answer format books - including three from BBC2’s QI-General Ignorance franchise - seven history books, four travel books, a gardening guide, Benrik Ltd’s This Diary will change your life and the sublimely dubbed How to Fossilise your Hamster: And 90 other experiments to try at home, I would guesstimate that nearly 40 percent of today’s bestsellers are devoted to personal-improvement and self-aggrandisement.
Now, one could put this literary monopoly down to a nation dominated by the purchasers of uninspired Christmas gifts, were it not for its televisual other half. Over the next five days’ TV schedule, between the hours of 7pm and 9pm on the terrestrial channels alone, there are no fewer than eleven lifestyle “inspiration” type shows, meaning that out of a possible ten hours you could spend well over half of that viewing time being told exactly how you should be living your life. From what to eat to how to run a business, self-styled media gurus are only a click or a zap away. Forget “Citizenship” lessons or whatever hair-brained curricula we’re currently enforcing on feckless secondary-schoolers. So saturated has the goggle-box become, they might as well bunk off and watch Property Ladder followed by Dragon’s Den instead.
Nowadays it would seem even without being a Spice Girl with a career to relaunch you are not exempt from an endless battle to be the richest, the thinnest or the best dressed. Moreover (and here’s where I feel the Spice Girls analogy comes into its own) we are now, perhaps unlike before, encouraged to make this competition as vocal as possible; I see your Gillian McKeith and raise you one Diet Doctors: Inside and Out.
Of course, I don’t altogether fail to see the appeal of such facilitation of self-improvement; there are many things I would like to learn to do – just not the things that are in these books.
Therefore for the time being I am going to continue to take great delight in ignoring the current penchant for bettering oneself and I urge you to do the same. Wear clothes that don’t suit your body shape, don’t worry that you almost certainly aren’t getting enough Vitamins and never, ever fake-tan despite promises it’ll make you look younger, slimmer or more like a member of Girls Aloud.
The thing is, with everyone else clambering over themselves to be fitter, thinner, cleverer, and more fabulous, being normal gives you a niche. Suddenly, normal becomes a novelty. Exotic. Daring, even. Wearing skinny jeans when you’re distinctly pear-shaped, or a plunging neck-line when you have no cleavage to speak of, practically makes you a hero. “Gosh, that’s brave”, people will remark in awed tones, all the while wondering whether they should inform you of the numerous sartorial rules you’re in violation of.
The thing is, they won’t. You won’t end up with the maniacal Trinny and Susannah shining a torch in your eyes trying to eke a confession out of you as to why you like horizontal stripes or Gok Wan forcing you to get naked for a billboard in Piccadilly Circus. Why? Because it doesn’t matter. Not one jot. That, and the fact that you didn’t apply to be on their programme.
So go! Go forth, be normal, ignore Sarah Beeney and Jamie Oliver and prosper! And, just in case you find it hard shaking off the well-heeled, elegant, self-improved veneer that you’ve spent so long cultivating, I’ve penned a quick “how-to” of my own to help you on your way...
On being cool
I have felt truly cool on one singular occasion in my life. This was, thankfully, when an ex of mine phoned up to ask how I was and to casually gloat about his pay-rise. In this somewhat painful conversation he also oh-so-casually mentioned that there was this “awesome new band” that I might like called “The Klaxon [sic].” It was here that I oh-so-coolly declared that I had actually purchased Klaxons’ album nearly three months ago. Naturally I casually forgot to mention that I hadn’t in fact listened to said album yet. It is in this vein that I offer you the following advice:
Announce loudly to the nearest indie-scenester that you downloaded Cyndie Lauper’s “Time after time” after you watched Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion.
Enjoy going to Robbo’s.
Go to Robbo’s, drink VK’s till you practically need your stomach pumping, do what you think is a really competent Irish jig to any B*witched/Westlife/Ronan Keating/Corrs track they happen to play.
Fall over.
On location, location, location
Travelling with style and grace is practically an art form. By exclusively using public transport you guarantee your journey will be stressful and undignified. Make packing badly your specialty (only truly achieved through practice). If possible always end up travelling on a packed train with a suitably ludicrous item on your lap: over-sized sombreros and papier-mâché dragon’s heads work particularly well in my experience. Lastly, it is essential that whenever you travel anywhere, even for a weekend, that you leave a trail of toothbrushes, odd socks and various toiletries in your wake.
On being a social-butterfly
Drink. Dance. Repeat until you reach desired effect.
On how to look good naked
See above. Once brimming with Dutch courage, hop under duvet (preferably with lights out). Give a silent, though futile, prayer that underwear items match and are not the be-holed, greying, Primark variety.
On being organised
You don’t want to get too het up about the administrative aspects of your life. To keep it real, I advise taking your lead from an established and trusted government body, such as Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs. Now where did I put that disc......?
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