Scrub Up Or Get Scrubbed Out, Scrubbers

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday May 13, 2000

KAZ COOKE

IF ANYBODY thought the craft of journalism was looking a little tatty let them only thrill to these words from one of last weekend's newspaper magazines: ``Good looks, like a well-presented home or car, depend entirely on...discipline, daily maintenance and diligence."

Shall I compare thee to a mock-Georgian tilt-slab unit with rudimentary plumbing, or perchance to a Datsun 120Y with a wobbly big end? Never rest while there is still something to be plucked, buffed or bruis'd with unguent! Some people have been known to attend to children or read a book before waxing their ankles or doing their front teeth with Liquid Paper. Evil, ugly, lazy, fatty, bastard swines.

The article went on to suggest 20 essential murmurings: ``Slouching makes you seem shorter and heavier. The stomach looks flatter when you sit straight"; ``green eyes plus purple eyeshadow is sensational" and the extraordinary suggestion that ``shaping eyebrows with a pencil can look hard and theatrical".

My favourite tip was to wash your face. This is called ``cleansing".

Here's the biz: even if each of your bosoms look like a couple of pond stones in an old Explorer sock, or you have buttocks larger than a Kinder Surprise, even if your jowls flap in a breeze like a spinnaker halfway in the Sydney to Hobart, you must keep trying. This, of course, does not apply to men, who are quite welcome to look like old leathery dog's bottoms, have hair coming out of their noses and smell like sick on a hot day. (Not that it's compulsory.)

Ladies: memorise our updated list below and perform its suggestions religiously.Gentlemen: as you were. When you see a woman who has done all of these things, show your appreciation by grunting approv ...what am I saying? If she'd had both her legs removed and placed where her arms used to be, you'd probably ask if she's had her hair done.Beg some street posters from a nearby rock promoter. Cut out the apostrophes and use them as glue-on eyebrows. It gives a nice, straight edge. Brackets can be used for a more fashionably astonished look.Facial expressions cause hideous wrinkles that will make strangers shrink away in disgust. Avoid facial expressions, either by paying someone to inject poisons between your eyes (``Botox treatments"), or by becoming a catwalk model or the Minister for Immigration.Have your hair cut every three days and styled each morning and evening by an internationally known hairdresser who is having sex with you and will not acceptpayment.The original article says that ``to improve and protect the chest or decolletage area (decolletage is the French district between the bosoms. If it is squished up it is called cleavage) simply extend daily skin care: whatever you do to your face, do to your chest". Why not sketch in a couple of eyebrows above your nipples and try to feed your tummy button half a banana for morning tea?An unruly pubic hairline may well cause prospective suitors to quickly clasp a handkerchief to their face and turn away in kindly pity.

(Either that or they won't even notice and go, ``Whay-hey! You're a corker! What can I do for you?" But ladies, why risk it?) Have that area tidied up during any cosmetic genital surgery you can now have at several clinics which can supply classy looking pamphlets, time payments and doctors who have seen whole slabs of the instructional laser-machine video a great deal of the way through.If you are such a loathsome person as to have been genetically programmed to be (I can hardly bear for the word to pass my girlish lips) (oh God, I don't know whether I can ...all right. Another snifter and we shall try again) short, there's no need to go around looking so really vile. Stilts, for heaven's sake. Or, simply arrange to be sedated at home.

All I can say is thank heavens for the gun laws. In my darker moments I'd have at the lot of you with a pearl-handled missile launcher.Halternecks. They look disgusting on any body, but they are in fashion. Get several.Get someone to smack you on the back of the head at irregular intervals.

It opens up the eye.