stay classy.

I hate to have to ask, but where did all the class go? No I’m not talking about students who are missing from school. I’m talking about looking classy, dressing classy, having elegance and taste. The summer heat, especially the Australian summer heat, causes females to dress in some truly tasteless clothing (or lack thereof) without a care that having that much skin on show is actually a turn off. When I go out at night it amazes me that some people have put so much effort and money into wearing nothing. Although, come to think of it, this isn’t just restricted to summer; it seems girls are willing to put up with cold temperatures and strong winds to show off their lack of class all year round. Now I’m not a boy, so I can’t exactly say that my next opinion will be the same as the males of the world. But when I look at girls and point out which ones are most attractive, it’s always the ones leaving something to the imagination. A nice, fitted, mid thigh dress. I don’t want to see plunging necklines and your ass hanging out. And if boys do, then it’s pretty obvious they’re not looking at you because they think you’re a genuine, nice girl. They’re looking at you because you look easy and they’re hoping they won’t have to work too hard to get in your pants. Which are probably already on display for them because your dress stops at your waistline. Good boys want girls who don’t give it all away up front. And boyfriends definitely DO NOT want you showing off things that are for ‘their eyes only’ to every other male in the room. In my opinion, if you’re going to go low cut, it should be your back. Nothing sexier than an open back. It teases you. “You wish this dress was the other way around so you could see my cleavage, but I’m too classy for that!” Now, I’m what you’d call ‘heavy on top’ and I’m aware of it. So I don’t try to accentuate it! I already get frustrated with boys leering at me when I’m covered up, I don’t want to give them anymore reason to look by having things on display. One of the best compliments I’ve ever received was from a boyfriend when I was wearing a tight singlet dress in a floral pattern. It was mid thigh, it didn’t show any cleavage, but had a slightly low scoop neck back (low enough to have to loosen bra straps so you can pull the back bit down, but not too low so you could actually still wear a bra with it). He said to me; “it’s your perfect dress – it doesn’t reveal anything but you still look sexy”. The perfect look.  

The worst part about this lack of class and the emergence of dressing in barely anything, is that fashion is supporting it. The new high shorts look is a prime candidate. Just because the shorts come up higher on your waist does not mean it is acceptable for them to come up higher on your butt. The amount of girls I see with butt cheeks literally hanging out in high short is astounding. You know what else is really classy? See through tops. Now sure, they’re most likely designed so you’ll wear another top underneath it, but who wants to do that when you can just wear a bra (preferably of a contrast colour) and walk around with something that isn’t really a top at all! And of course, we move to the scene of the crime, Supre. It looks like someone went into that store, took all their singlet dresses and hacked at them with a pair of scissors. You may as well just be wearing a bandeau and a belt. And the best part about this? Girls buy them when they don’t have the figure to pull them off! I’d like to think I’m of average weight, but I know not even I can pull those dresses off. There’d be bits of skin poking through the cut outs, and I mean literally poking through them, bulging out because I don’t have a toned as all hell stomach. Why would you want to accentuate the fat parts of your body by putting them on display like that?

I think that’s the worst part about girls wearing the smallest amount of clothing out. They aren’t fit enough to wear them and are only drawing more attention to their gut/muffin top/jiggly butt. Gaining a guy’s attention because you’re dressing for sex is not a good thing, ladies.  For god’s sake – put some clothes on! You might just find that you look a whole lot hotter to the opposite sex when you do.

the (in)significance of life.

“Whatever you do in life will be insignificant, but it's very important that you do it. Because nobody else will. Like when someone comes into your life and half of you says you're nowhere near ready, but the other half says: make her yours forever” – Remember Me.

I like this quote. Probably because it’s relatable to my situation. Possibly because I enjoyed the movie that it came from. But I disagree with it. I don’t think everything you do in life will be insignificant. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of it will be. A lot of life is repetitive and it feels like you’re doing the same thing day in, day out, and nothing’s really changing or resulting from it. But there will be some things, some choices, some activities, which will be the most significant thing you could ever do. They might not affect everyone else, but they will change the course of your life forever. They will change your outlook on life. They will define who you are. And how can anyone argue that that is insignificant?

I think the most significant thing you can do in life is be happy. Mind you, that’s what everyone aspires for and most people, no matter how much good they have in their life, still aren’t fully satisfied. So, instead, maybe the thing is to be content. Most importantly, this has to be something you do on your own. You can’t rely on others to make you happy if you’re not happy for yourself, if you’re not happy with yourself. And that won’t happen if you sit there moaning about how much your life sucks. People that say this are the worst kind of people, for two reasons.

Firstly, because no matter how much you think your life sucks, there is always someone who would trade you for it in a heartbeat because their situation is 12 times worse (don’t ask me why I picked the number 12 – I guess maybe I wanted it to be realistic). Take me, right now, for example. Today I am having a terrible day. I actually have a headache from crying. And I never get headaches so it’s a strange feeling. I’ve barely moved from my bed, content on letting myself be miserable and not bothering with much else. But I know there are people out there, hell, there are people I know, who are going through things worse than I am. And so I let myself be sad for just today because I know I’m in no position to be self indulgent when there are people with real problems out there. And yes, I’m talking about problems such as being ‘food insecure’ (a lovely term picked up from Matt Damon in an episode of Entourage, meaning ‘they don’t know where their next meal is coming from’). Compared to that, my life is peachy.

And secondly, moaning about how much your life sucks means you’re not doing anything to make it better. I’m not going to feel bad for someone, or try to help them, if they aren’t even trying to help themselves. Because in the end, you’re the only one who can truly make yourself happy.

father figure.

As I was writing my blog yesterday my dad came in asking what I was doing. I explained it to him and he said, "I hope you're saying good things about me". When I informed him I wasn't writing about him at all he put on a sad face so I promised to write about him next time, promised to devote an entire blog to him. So that's what I'm doing.

It kind of makes sense that I would devote a blog to him. I've always been a daddy's girl and I look up to my dad in so many ways. He's got the classic Tempest family outlook on life which is summed up by one of his favourite sayings 'control the controllables'. If something's out of your hands, don't waste time worrying about it. That's what I love about my dad, he's so easy going.

I know people often take their families for granted and I know I may not always express my graditude or love for mine as well/often as I should, but I think about how lucky I am to have such a great family all the time. I think about it when things are going wrong because it makes me realise how fortunate I really am. My parents are the ones that if anything were to go wrong with their relationship, not only would me and my brothers be sad, but my friends would be sad about it too just because it's 'Mary and Rob'. There'd be something wrong with the world if it wasn't like that.

My dad's the kind of guy you can have really in depth conversations with one minute and find yourself quoting an adam sandler movie with the next. He's pretty cool as far as dad's go, but it's funnier when he just doesn't quite get it. Like when he refers to "dude where's my car" as "hey dude, someone stole my car" or "snoop dogg" as "snoopy puff dogg". Most importantly though, he doesn't have to say much for me to know what he means, and vice versa.

So to sum up the contents of this blog, I love my dad.

italian.

Today I ventured to the library, something I haven’t done in apparently 2 years because my $10.50 fine was from 2008. My plan was to find a few good books to read to keep me occupied over the holidays. I’ve just finished re-reading twilight – lame and very ‘tween’ of me I know, but you can’t deny a love story where the two characters are so completely confident in their love and devotion to each other that they refer to themselves as the same entity. Anyway, I needed something new. My other reason for the library was because I also plan to learn Italian over my break. It’s been something I’ve always wanted to do. My mum is Italian, making me half Italian, not that you’d guess that by looking at me, and even though my extended family all grew up in Australia I’ve always wanted to be able to speak the language that is part of me. I wish I’d had the time or motivation to do it when I was younger, as maybe it would mean I could have more in depth conversations with my nonna, who’s still much more comfortable with Italian than English. I was offered French in high school, and while I think it’s safe to say I prefer France over Italy, the appeal of learning the language of my family is clearly stronger.

That’s where the name of this blog came from, by the way. I was named michelle mainly because it was my mum’s favourite name when she was a little girl, but my dad was keen on it too because of the Beatles song; “michelle, ma belle, these are words that go together well”. It’s a song that was sung to me often while growing up, but of course ‘ma belle’ is French for ‘my beautiful’. As I’ve always been interested in words and other people’s words, opinions and views on life, I guess I think blogs are a beautiful way of portraying that. And, sticking to my Italian background, ma belle became mia bella.

But back to the learning. I’m still not sure how I feel about learning from a tape. It’s not like the tape can tell where or if you’re going wrong with pronunciation and help you correct your fault, so I’m sceptical over how well this whole learning on my own thing will go. But I’m willing to give it a shot. I guess if I tell you my mum speaks Italian you’ll wonder why I don’t just get her to teach me. Well, my mum’s always been very caring and wanting to help me learn throughout school. She’s a teacher’s assistant, so she’s used to the classroom environment. But when it comes to me and her, student and teacher, it’s never really worked out between us, normally resulting in an argument. So I decided I would learn with the tape and practise with mum. I hope it goes well. I’m so excited to be able to speak fluently in another language. I love seeing people in the street or in the shops walking around talking to each other in another language. It’s so secretive – they could be talking about you and you’d have no idea.

My timing could have been a little better, I will admit. For example it would have been nice to know a little bit of the language when me and my best friend travelled through Europe in early 2009. Wow, almost 2 years ago. It doesn’t seem that long – the memories are still so clear. But at the same time, it seems like a lifetime. I’m excited to go back and know what food I’m ordering at a restaurant and not look like so much of a tourist. Though it’s kind of sad thinking about when/if/who I’ll go with again (I’m sure by this point my best friend and her partner couldn’t stand to be away from each for longer than week), and I don’t know how many other people I could find who want the same experience from travelling as we do. I don’t so much care about the histories and the ‘tourist’ attractions. I don’t want to go to see some statue just because everyone says it’s something to see (except the eiffel tower which is just amazing, especially at night). I want to walk down the street and find my own things to marvel at. I want to be immersed in the city. I want to sit on a rooftop balcony in Venice and people watch all day long, again.

I really hope I can succeed at learning Italian and cross something else off my ‘life to do list’ I created when I was about 15. Free time – you might not be the most boring and lonely thing after all :)

p.s. apparently I can’t keep these blogs short and sweet, so I guess you’ll just have to deal with reading a long rant each time!

spare days.

Nine days since becoming single. Seven days since finishing uni (forever, might I add). With so much spare time on my hands at the moment, I figured there wasn’t a better time than now to start a blog. I’ve always been a fan of writing. I studied journalism so I could have a career in writing, before realising the strict structure of news stories and my apparent lack of interest in news itself meant that I wouldn’t be writing anything I enjoyed. So aside from all the free time, the other reason I’ve started this blog is so I can archive everything I write, and use it to direct magazine editors to, to sample my work and hopefully one day publish some of it.

So anyway, I’ve finished uni forever. Scary, but relatively easy. Easy for now at least, because I don’t have to deal with it right away. My plan has always been to actually have this time as a holiday, like everyone else. When the people I know who haven’t finished their degree go back to uni next year, that’s when I’ll start applying myself and looking for a job. Right now, I need a break. Hell, I deserve a break after 15 straight years of studying. And this summer was going to be so great. No immediate worries, spending it with the people I love. Except of course now I’m minus one of those people because I’m single. I don’t like being single. I’m much better in a relationship. I like making people I care about happy. I don’t like guys coming up to me in a club, I don’t even bother giving them the time of day. I don’t like the idea of having to get comfortable with someone new and find out their little quirks all over again. And obviously after just over a week I’m not even close to being in a state where I’m even capable of thinking about doing that.

They say that if you love someone you should let them go and if they return then they’re yours forever. I agree with the second part – if someone comes back to you, it clearly means they’ve realised there is no one else they’d rather be with. But how can anyone fully agree with the first bit? How can you let someone go if you’re still in love with them? If they’re still in love with you? That doesn’t seem logical. One of my life mottos has always been that you can’t stop people doing what they want to do - it’s their life. So when my ex (not sure how I feel applying that word to him after just nine days when it still hasn’t really sunk in for me yet but anyway), when he said he thought we should end this, I knew I couldn’t stop him or talk him out of it; his decision had been made. And more than anything, I want him to be happy. Even if he finds that happiness with someone else. If he does, then this break up was worth it because he found what he truly deserves. But then, naturally, there’s that little jealous part within me, and I’ve never been a jealous person, but it’s there in the back of my mind continuously poking me like an annoying child who wants your attention. “What if he finds someone better, and you don’t?” “What if you have to settle for second best?” “What if his decision means you have to be unhappy the rest of your life while he gets to live in bliss?” These questions won’t go away no matter how hard I try not to think about them. I don’t want to think about them. And I shouldn’t have to. I’m only 19 for god’s sake. We met at 17. How can you possibly know it’s the right person at 17? Doesn’t everyone have that little voice in their head wondering if there’s someone better? I guess that through this break up, that’s what he’s trying to do, decide whether I am the one he wants to be with in the long run or not. I like to think I’m a logical person and I’d like to think that because I can see his reason in that, it’s helping me be reasonable about his decision to leave. But you know what? As logical as I am, I don’t care. I don’t care if there’s anyone better. If there is, I don’t want to know about them ... unless he finds someone better in which case they better hurry the hell up and get in my life so I can be happy too! I guess the thing I keep coming back to, and perhaps am struggling to say, is how do you know if it’s the right thing to let someone go, if you don’t know what’s waiting for you?

p.s im sorry about so much writing. I doubt anyone except the people I know will be bothered getting all the way through it, but I’ve got a lot on my mind at the moment. Promise I’ll try to cut back next time :)