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Technology has killed old fashioned ways nothing left except micro chips dumb, blind humans exisiting today no talking or moving lips. Technology killed the kids
For the opening issue of Opapue we went back to the days when nothing had to make sense and everything fell into place! With the notion ‘There’s no time like the past.’ With stories to make you smile and fanciful photography this issue will take you into a world of fantasy and nostalgia. Becky Grainger (Editor in Cheif)
xoxo
F Word Even if you don’t say it do you think it? I hate words like inn’it, and sick, which now apparently means good and people who use the F word as a form of punctuation but increasingly I find myself joining the flock of F word users if not verbally, then certainly in my head. I’m in a hurry I need petrol, the driver in front is doing a week’s shopping in the garage with several children in tow. I bang on the steering wheel, and say F… it! Screaming children on long haul flights, why do they always sit there kicking their legs behind me for 11 miserable hours? F…! A colleague from my team texts at 10 to 9 ‘not coming in today’ – F…! People texting at the dinner table – my brain says turn the F…ing phone off. What sort of brat have I become? Am I too sanctimonious for my own good – how the F… would I know!
How it all began I used to believe that nostalgia was a negative emotion and that looking back on my life would prevent me from moving forward. I always yearned for a younger sister, and when my mother became pregnant I was overjoyed at the thought of having a little sister I could play with. At the age of five I never considered the possibility of having a brother; it was never going to happen. I had decided that I wanted a sister, so that is what the stork was going to deliver to our doorstep. Still to my disappointment life does not work like that and I was presented with a little brother. How was I meant to play dressing up with a boy, aren’t they meant to like action men and cars? Jamie became Jane in my eyes and I refused to let his gender ruin my dreams of a dressing up partner, he was my imaginary friend in the female sense and in reality just an obnoxious boy! My fondest childhood memory is stumbling upon my two-year old brother attempting to totter around in my mother’s zebra print high-heeled shoes. It had worked! I finally had a little sister. My mother found it absolutely hysterical and its still a picture that haunts his life. Is there something in our DNA that at some stage in our life makes us embrace our femininity or masculinity? Or are we simply culturally stereotyped?
Everyone told my concerned father that Jamie would grow out of it, not under my watch I used to think. ‘Jane’ grew a love for Angelina ballerina and my tutu regularly became his outfit choice of the day. The whole family, even my 100 year-old great Grandma who could barely see, was convinced he was going to be gay. The parades of numerous girlfriends have proved the years of cruel teasing wrong and my hopes and aspirations for a gay brother as compensation for the lack of a sister became sadly deflated. Looking back 20 years I now question why is dressing up only acceptable for girls? When I used to try on my father’s mammoth suit jackets it was deemed as cute and not that I might have a leaning towards becoming a lesbian. French Vogue has recently used models that don’t even look old enough to spell their own name let alone sell fashion. They have slathered them in make up, given them a ‘glamorous’ hair do and made them sprawl provocatively across beds in some vague childish attempt to look alluring. There is some implicit sexual connotation that is beyond childhood.
Vogue calls it ‘dressing up’ I call it a distasteful publicity stunt. Their perfectly contoured make up shows no sign of dressing up to me. My first experiments with my mother’s Chanel make up led to lipstick all over my face, foundation cream on the duvet, and my intentions of charcoal eyes culminated in mascara in my hair and something brown on the end of my nose. This striving for perfection is destroying childhoods. When I was ten years old I was worried about what outfit I could put my Barbie into, not how much I weighed. My concern was with devouring chocolate cake not counting the calories in it. Growing up was something old people did.
Do we demand so much of ourselves that we are prepared to go to the limits of poverty and starvation in order to be able to exist within the fantasy bubble we have created. Is childhood no longer the time of dreams and peace but a few years to be galloped through in order to seek gratification through materialism? Frankly, I would give my heart and soul for the return of those innocent years when the rent was not my problem and the fridge both physically and metaphorically was full to overflowing.
I cannot, sadly, have my childhood back but for goodness sake can someone stop stealing other children’s childIs it our yearning to be the heroine of our hoods! own story, to be our own Cinderella and be whisked away by a prince?
Never too old
My First I first became aware of boys when other girls had a ‘boyfriend’ and I didn’t. I was twelve and a half, my friends were thirteen and fourteen and I had a chest and they had a bust. For me a bra was a metaphor for success…. certainly in the boyfriend department. How do you tell your very prudish mother whilst on a shopping expedition for vests that you, with nothing to put in one, you need a bra? She actually took the request quite well and marched me off to the unimaginative Marks and Spencer’s to be faced with row upon row of padded bras that resembled fat nappies with straps. In those halcyon days of early womanhood I raised my arms high as a sales assistant measured my very flat chest, her announcement of 32AA meant that I had joined the sisterhood. Was it that first 32AA that ignited my hormones and within sixteen weeks I was a 32B. Many years later as a 34B, I vividly remember that wonderful moment of purchasing my first ever bra my first foray into womanhood.
Show me yours Winter has basically arrived, funds are low and procrastinating against anything productive has led to me and my so called side kick joining social suicide, otherwise known as a dating website. I have come to the conclusion that in fact there are ‘plenty of fish’ out there. Whether I would like to take any of them home to meet my mother, that’s a completely different story. As it happens men and probably the women in this other world have no shame. No message is the same, awful jokes, extreme flattery, propositions for sexual encounters, and some have scarred me for life. Is this really what my life has come too? I never thought I would actually say this but I now crave to rewind time by about sixty years and live in the time where letter writing was the only form of communication and idealized love was contained within the words. Long may we remember Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s words to her future husband, “How do I love thee, let me count the ways.”
“We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.�
“There is a face beneath I’m no more that face tha neath it, or the bones ben
this mask, but it isn’t me. an I am the muscles beneath that.�
I
For better and for worse
I
have tried relationships, I admit the last one was on the rebound, but my excuse is that I felt the need, in fact desperation to have a significant other. Without a partner I was single, a spinster, alone and often on the edge of desperation. When HE moved his belongings in to my wardrobe and I moved my belongings into the spare room, I knew we were doomed. That was before his football mug appeared amongst my Royal Albert china. How could I possibly share a bathroom and my Aveda products with a man who used own brand supermarket shampoo? His moving in was fast his moving out took nine miserable weeks. I am now currently in a state of bliss with Grey he is a grey and white mottled spaniel, hence his name- a la fifty shades of. Grey is 18 weeks old: house training is beyond him and destruction is his passion. But that warm snuggly body that shares my bed and kisses me every night and every morning illustrates that heterosexual relationships are not critical to one’s self esteem and in my current world its one girl and her dog, planning to live happily ever after.
I just want someone that I can act silly with.
Happier Living How many of you were brought up to write thank you notes. That tedious Boxing Day activity that mostly made you wish they had never given you the stuff in the first place. The same applied to birthdays, why did I have to write a letter to thank aged aunt for the twenty quid she had thoughtlessly shoved inside a birthday card, and so it went on… Here I am now mid twenty’s with my very own rented flat, (in reality a bedsit), buying presents for my two godchildren and frequently entertain friends. Gratitude – mmm what is it? I’m subjected to text messages or a note on Facebook to say thank you. In a very odd way I wish for a handwritten card or a note on scented paper that lands in my post box amidst the takeaway pizza leaflets and bills that shows however tedious the task a real thank you is precious.
Our world is always changing, Constantly re-arranging. From ocean depths to mountain peaks, Mother Nature moves and speaks. While telling stories of our past She tries to teach us how to last. Mankind, so smart, sometimes blind Leaves common sense far behind. We’re moving fast and living large, Forgetting she’s the one in charge. Amazed when she rings our bell, Sending us through living hell. She can twist our steel, shake any city, If her wrath you feel, we shall pity. Yet some who speak on her behalf, I fear just seek the golden calf. It’s true, we must treat her right. Or we will incur a deadly plight. Treat her with distinction Or surely face extinction!
It’s all up to you Jamie Grainger (Model) Nick Harper (Model) Rhiannon Hardie (Model) Olivia Reeves (Model) Sheena Darby (Make Up & Assistant)
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