Paean to Helen Reddy: I am strong, I am invincible — I’m just not stylish long as they already are. Yikes, what would Helen think of me making Barbie’s resemblance to any real woman even more tenuous? My granddaughter knows nothing of Helen Reddy and her
IDOUBT Helen Reddy would have been impressed. It was one thing belting out Am Woman and Delta Dawn into the wind in honour of the late Australian singer on my bike ride. She might not have appreciated the voice, but I like to think she might have thought the sentiment was OK.
It was, however, something else going into a service station to pay for petrol and a coffee with my bicycle clips adorning my ankles, hours after I had
Idiscarded my bike for car transport.
Reddy, who wore some amazing outfits in her varied career, did not seem like the sort of woman who would be seen dead or alive in bicycle clips, even metal ones with a snazzy red stripe.
You might want to reassure me nobody would have noticed in these days when women my age are invisible and everyone else is wearing activewear. Activewear. Who coined that ridiculous description? Who were they kidding? For many people/me it is inactive wear used for nothing more strenuous than lolling around on the couch avoiding anything resembling motion unless it involves feeding (check out the Skit Box Activewear song to see if you are on trend).
Apparently, according to a news report I saw last week, the former faux pas of teaming jeans with sneakers is now OK. That’s good news for those of us who have been ignorantly flaunting this fashion crime for years.
But, and there always is a but if not a butt when fashion’s involved, we’re told you must have the right sneaker. The right sneaker, I am guessing, may cost roughly the value of New Zealand’s preCovid GDP. It is not likely to be one which has holes in the top of it which I have attempted to sew up with invisible thread. The thread may be invisible, but I am not fooling anybody about the holes.
The fashionistas did not say anything about jeans, bicycle clips and holey shoes, but my son, famous for having the sartorial splendour of an unmade bed of skyscraper proportions, did note the bicycle clips.
Luckily, they were removed before my 6yearold granddaughter spied them.
She was more concerned about the sparkly bellbottoms I had knitted for her Barbie, which would have required Barbie’s calves to be twice as a 1979 60 Minutes interview, she said she did not like to appear in situations where she felt women were denigrated.
She had spent too many years as an opening act for comics in small clubs when, as she left the stage, the comic would ask the audience for applause and then say ‘‘take your clothes off and wait in the dressing room for me, honey. I’ll be right there’’.
‘‘. . . I would just die inside. I don’t have to put up with that any more, and I won’t.’’
A pity some of her sisters took much longer to wake up.
I wonder what anthems my granddaughter will be drawn to when she grows up.
I have been leading her astray with The Chicks’ (formerly The Dixie Chicks) latest CD.
She is happy to sing along with ‘‘March, march to my own drum, March, march to my own drum, Hey, hey, I’m an army of one’’ and attempt the complicated clapping in the instrumental breakout. She is indignant about the swearing in this and some of The Chicks’ other songs, virtuously pointing out every instance.
I have tried to explain that some of us get a bit sweary in our older age because we find much to swear about. She is unmoved.
After my next bike trip, to Mitre 10 in my waterproof overtrousers (active in my activewear!), I remember to remove my bike clips.
As I am holding them in one hand when proceeding through the checkout, the assistant thinks they are something I should be paying for. Embarrassing all round. I am strong. I am invincible. I am just not stylish.