Appearances don't add up
By Sheryl-Lee Kerr
SO there you are,
trudging along the beach in your too-tight bathers,
the elastic around
the legs - which you could have sworn fitted
comfortably last
summer - now threatening a double amputation. The
universe, as a
whole, is obviously looking at you and trying to hide
its mirth at your
winterly bulges displayed before the world.
And, right about
then, it suddenly hits you: you realise you can no
longer solve
algebraic equations. This is a sad reality.
No, seriously.
For all those who
ever wondered what bored psychiatrists in America
do, I have found
the answer after weeks of half-hearted and not very
intensive efforts:
they put people in bathers and ask them to sit for
maths tests. Yep,
indeedy.
This latest
absolutely-not-made-up-but-probably-should-be research,
from the
University of Michigan, found, for women at least, that the
wearing of bathers
is detrimental to one's mental health. They
couldn't think as
well when they were feeling body-conscious. But put
the same women in
sweaters and they blew their bather-impaired maths
test scores away.
Men, it may fascinate
you to know, scored the same no matter what they
wore.
Lucky blokes. But
I have long suspected this of men. As a general
rule, how men look
just is not much of an issue for them as women. In
their minds, their
daily dressing regime is complete once they have
sufficiently
covered their undergarments so as to avoid violating any
major
indecent-exposure laws.
I have observed that what men choose to wear comes down to two key factors (though, in a pinch, neither is essential) – the clobber is clean and it doesn't clash ... much.
After that, it's a
quick look in the mirror for a shave and a cheeky
grin at the
dashing lad smiling back, then out into the world they go.
In contrast, a
woman's morning dressing ritual is more like a
loooong, pre-flight
check list: the clothing is selected in advance, at which
time the outfit is
prepped and readied for duty. Any jewellery is
precisely matched,
rematched and crosschecked. Handbags are primed
and plumped.
Make-up is placed in an easy access panel overhead or under a counter.
And women plan
ahead for turbulence, too. Bad-hair days, sudden
eruptions of
pimples - well, never fear, they have the heavy-duty
apparatus ready to
be rolled on out across the tarmac, too.
The point is, even
if the average woman survives her working week of
introspection,
self-analysis and flawed reflections unscathed, by
the time she
wiggles into her bathers I wouldn't be at all surprised if
most women were
not in a lather of self-awareness. How a woman looks
really matters to
her. I mean really.
So the
ramifications of this hard-hitting survey are obvious: men are
living blissfully
in Noddyland about their looks (half their luck).
And no more should
hordes of women go to beaches to hone their calculus.
Life can be so
unkind.
© Sheryl-Lee Kerr & The Advertiser, 13 OCT 1998.