I’m currently in Hollywood. No, I’m not staying just outside of Hollywood. I’m staying in the heart of Hollywood. Hollywood Blvd is just down the road. The whole city makes me laugh. I guess you have to have some sort of strength to live here.
For one thing, these people are so obsessed with celebrities. I guess that really comes with the territory. But it is almost kind of funny. It’s as if once upon a time, celebrities inhabited the area (I guess they still do, not 24/7) and there are many stores around to commemorate this. There are endless souvenier places. Selling those stupid fake Oscars and “signed” photos of celebrities. The closest I ever got to even seeing a celebrity was Gisele Bunchen when Victoria’s Secret was having some sort of red carpet event near the Chinese Theatre.
The celebrity on Hollywood Blvd, is like a mythical creature. Like.. the Loch Ness monster or big foot. For example, there were t-shirts being sold that just simply said “CELEBRITIES”. It was quite laughable, but I guess they have a market. A lot of tourists lap it up. You will never see anyone famous on Hollywood Blvd unless it’s a late weekend night. Mainly on Sunset you might. But during the weekdays, Sunset and Hollywood are saturated with celebrity hungry tourists. It’s almost sad to watch, but amusing all the same.
One thing that I noticed in Hollywood was that a lot of people who were locals were made up to the nines. Every day. Unless you are someone who shops at Hot Topic. People are vying for your attention. You can tell with the desperate look in their eyes. Or the way they put on inches of make up and wear clothing that shouldn’t be seen outside of the latest porno. Everyone seems like they just want to get noticed, to have their fifteen minutes of fame. It might also be from the hip hop “artists” who flood the area near the Chinese Theatre, trying to get you to listen to their “music”.
Hollywood never gelled with me. There was just something about it that I couldn’t like. It wasn’t the people - a lot of people, although they may seem like they are scared of you for what ever reason - are really friendly and cool when you talk to them. It just seemed like the attitude. Words that were not being said.. feelings that were left on the city that just made me think that this was somewhere I didn’t want to be. I found myself trying to find things that would remind me of home. It’s funny when you do that… you get so far away from home yet you cannot wait for a sign or a friendly face to remind you of your neighbourhood.

I hated uni. Obviously. However, I was lucky to learn a few valuable things that I will always use in my life. Things that will stop me from becoming a dumb bitch. Maybe people think I’m slow or dumb, or maybe they don’t realise that I couldn’t give a fuck. I like to think. I like to think way too much. And sometimes I overthink that I cause a blowout. I blame uni. Slightly. But then I guess I can also blame the fact that I was brought up without a single issue of Cosmopolitan or Vogue in the house.

When I was growing up, my parents and grandparents pushed me to constantly be more girly. More female. Not that I wasn’t. I liked playing with Barbie Dolls. As I got older, I wanted to play with make up. At 13, I wasn’t allowed to buy a Dolly magazine. But I did anyway and hid it under my mattress like a porno.

One of the most interesting things I remember - my mother dragging me around at the Perth Royal Show every year to get me the Barbie bag, or any bag that was for girls. Although I did show an interest in them, the moment we got home I would fight my brothers for their Batman capes or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’s plastic nun-chucks. I liked to play footy and cricket.I liked to watch wrestling. And then I got into metal.

As I was sitting in the salon waiting for someone (ANYONE!) to come rescue me from looking like a tin foil alien, I tried to pass the time by reading Vogue and Cosmopolitan. I confess, I usually do read these magazines at salons because I don’t exactly want to seem out of place (more so than I already am) by just staring ahead as my hair is being done. Sometimes I will just stare at a page so it looks like I’m reading. But what I’m really doing is counting how long until I turn the page or think about conversations I had earlier in the day. I realise that in trying not to seem odd, I have just outdone myself.

I came across one of Vogue’s poor excuse for an article about women, youth, society and the media. I am somewhat aware that women in Hollywood who are nearing 40 are considered “hags”. And I am also aware that there is immense pressure on women to remain youthful looking and beautiful all the time or some guy won’t like us. I somehow thought it was Anna Wintour’s obsession with youth that seemed to fuel this fire. I don’t read fashion magazines, but I somehow know who Anna Wintour is. And I have a fair idea of what she is probably like in person. Ouch.

I thought it was amusing that I was reading an article that seemed to further shoot the world of fashion magazine’s in the fucking face. Here was this article, claiming that the media was to blame for this very ideology, when in fact the whole ideology was their doing in the first place. I almost laughed out loud. See, the one thing this uni class taught me was that these fashion magazines ‘condition’ women to stay or become society’s idea of what a woman should be - sexy, beautiful, youthful, thin, flawless. Possibly even some variation of “intelligent”. Not much has changed in these magazines in my lifetime. They are the chunder, constantly recycled. The article was based purely on their own doing and now they were questioning it? Classic.

After a while, I remembered why Cosmo and Vogue was not for me. Too shallow. Too easy. Too 2-dimensional. Too fake. I would much rather go out and find things that please me, instead of being served the monthly “how a woman should be” memo.