Blog - Would Jess Like It? | Jessica Bellamy

Expensive Skin Products

HOT.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking that SKII stuff that makes Cate Blanchett look so radiant in all the times I’ve weaseled up next to her and smelt her hair at theatre openings. I’m not talking diamond-speckled moisturiser drained through the urea of endangered marsupials. I’m just talking about the art of investing in skin products in a slightly decadent, but still appropriate for students and the stingy, sort of way.

I’m talking hand creams so thick and luxurious that you become one of those people who thinks for just a moment about wearing freaky mime-gloves to bed, just so that sweet sweet moisturiser sinks right in (with the added bonus of your sleepwalking gropes going fingerprintless). I’m also talking toner spritzers that smell like lavender, and cleansers that strip your skin of even its whispered threat, even its latent potential, to break out one day in the future.

And what I’m really talking about is body wash. Expensive body wash. If you have ever paid over $29 for body wash, you know what I’m talking about. That zesty whole-body refreshment. That blend of grapefruit and sea-minerals that makes you get out of bed in the morning. The silky chestnut and lotus delicacy that lulls you into a false sense of relaxation before you go to bed and have your nightly trauma-dreams.

I guess all I’m really saying is that if I’m not spending my money on food, it’s probably on deluxe skin products. And you should tap that shit.

Libra.

NOT.

I’ve been wanting to write about this one for ages. For at least 28 days. Waiting for the right time. OF THE MONTH. Yep. It’s period-time, and I knew it needed a proper treatment on Would Jess Like It so I forced the right time of the month on myself; I hung around all the most dominant females that I know, and finally, the blissful and contemplative time that is The Red Tent came to be. So let’s talk menstruation.

Let’s talk more specifically: Libra. Libra is a multinational feminine hygiene products company, named after all womens’ emotional weaknesses: astrological signs. And because no one wants to ram a ‘Cancer’ rod up their c-bomb, they settled on the name Libra. Ah, Libra. Wikipedia tells me it’s considered a masculine sign, and what better way to lead into the discussion.

Libra, I vouch (and will proclaim from the trees without any backing except for my own sense of spurned fury) is managed by a panel of rich men who have never had unfertilised ovum come out through their vagina, not once. They have never felt the unique pang of ovulation. They have never had to spend an extra $10 per month plus extra for GST for the privilege to cram something up their hooha. THEY JUST NEVER HAVE AND THEY NEVER WILL, UNLESS THEY HAVE RUGBY-RELATED NOSEBLEEDS.

But this is so not the focus of today’s post. The focus is the ridiculous Fun Facts that grace the back of Libra products, little scraps of cheap tracing paper, a bit like the wrappers of Minties, that tell you bits of trivia about the world. For example, in this month’s course of bleeding and moaning, you might have found out that:

Clams have a row of eyes around their shells.
A mysophobic person has an intense fear of infection.
The cheetah is the only cat that can’t retract its claws.
If the stomach did not store food, people would have to eat every 20 minutes.

The first thing I have to say to all of this is: THEN CALL ME MYSOPHOBIC BECAUSE I AM PROUD OF THAT SHIT.

The second thing I have to say is: bitch, please. Libra, please. I am angered, and do not like, your attempts to make something that is at BEST a confirmation of not being pregnant and at worse an expensive and unpleasant ordeal, into something fun. I would suggest that you replace your Fun Facts with something practical like caricatures of all the politicians who voted for a GST on feminine products, or maybe just pithy one-liners from 90s sitcoms.

Solved.

I’m not a prophet. I just know what I hate.

My many friends have been telling me that’s it time to foist my niche interests on the world a bit more than I currently do, and I thought, what better way to do so than through the internet, especially on a blog where I don’t have to pay to do it, the only thing it costs me is sweet sweet time, and I’ve got enough of that anyway, I’m not even a quarter-way through my life, assuming I live to 100.

Here’s how it works. I’ll update this with things that are Hot or Not and then you read them and either agree with me or don’t. It’s pretty easy really, but then I dunno, maybe it’s not.

Westernised Ethnic Food

HOT.

First cab off the rank, and it’s a controversial one. I’m going to tell you the kimchi tofu story, and I know that tofu isn’t necessarily the people-magnet to everyone that it is to me, but just hear me out you little monsters.

Back in 2004, I was working for Janita (and to a lesser extent, her husband Dharmesh) in PULP Juice, level 3 of the brand new Westfield Bondi Junction. Whenever Janita would come down from her sentry post on the fourth level of WBJ to relieve us for lunch breaks (the post from which she’d spy on her employees and then tell us we were working too slowly), I would go for a sushi break. It was a little sushi kiosk right near PULP Juice, which was good because Janita’s tiny clawlike fist was an iron one, and she liked us nearby during our lunch breaks in case there was a Juice and/or Smoothie Emergency that required us to forgo our ‘Workers in the Sweet Sweet Overpriced Refreshment Industry Union’ rights to a 30-minute lunch break.

Anyway, this sushi was amazing and they made the best kimchi tofu. It was a tiny bit spicy, a bit like a baby slapping you; nothing too offensive, but something that just reminds you that you’re alive. It was set off beautifully by a lump of soft avocado, which meant that the creamy fatty goodness of the avocado worked with the salty, ever-so-spicy kimchi like some sort of tightly-rolled dream.

And then things changed. The sushi joint was no longer managed by an obese Polish man with the same management techniques as Janita. He dropped off the face of the earth, and the sushi joint became rightfully managed by some very nice Korean women. Women who KNEW HOW KIMCHI TOFU SHOULD TASTE.

No longer was Mr Czeslaw dictating that the sushi should accord to his very specific taste. (“MORE CABBAGE”?) Instead, the sushi started getting mega-authentic. And you know what authentic kimchi tastes like? LIKE A BABY IS PUNCHING YOU IN THE EYEBALLS. Chilli-town, population ‘OH MY GOD’.

I don’t know what I’m getting at here. I don’t know how to solve this problem. I also don’t think it’s really a problem, except that I’ve managed to write 350 words on it. I guess all it’s taught me is that sometimes men like Mr Czeslaw really should follow their dream, a dream of making geriatrically-palatable sushi for people like me to enjoy. And that when Mr Czeslaw ultimately does wither up and die, people like me can gain a sense of agency, and a pair of kahunas, and learn to eat some freakin’ chilli and stop whinging about it.