Letters From Wogistan: Rugby World Cup

Beige of Honor

Some decades ago followers of the New Zealand Men’s Cricket team were called the Beige Brigade. It was because they adopted the then predominant colour of the team’s uniform. And whilst many of those supporters enthusiastically accepted and embraced the nomenclature there were others among us who saw Beige Brigade largely as a derisory term, haplessly promoting that most colourless of colours largely confined previously to the underwear of women who have lost hope, interest or purpose.
 The men’s cricket team soon adopted different colours—pragmatically those of its principal sponsor—and beige was soon confined to memory, a few hapless souls on the Eastern Stand at Eden Park, most of the Canterbury Cricket Crowd,  and all of The Warehouse’s ladies underwear lineup.
That was until this week. This week we saw the color (sic) make an appearance—indeed a predominant and assertive fanfare—at the latest fashion show of the self-proclaimed doyen of fashion, music and presidencies, Kayne West.
Now, as everybody knows, Kayne West struggles for kredibility in most all facets of life. His marriage to Kim Kardashian first and then and his proclamation at the MTV Video Music Awards that he would run for the American Presidency in 2020 eclipsed even his calling his son North. It is foolish to think of Kayne West as anything other than a talentless Chicago rapper with an inflated ego that borders on the Messiah Complex. If you would like examples of musicians who succeed where West fails look to P-Diddy and Usher—they at least have creed.
So, why does Fryday even mention him? Only because I am starting to feel about “our very own” Lorde in the same way I feel about Millie Elder-Holmes and Caitlyn Jenner. In Millie’s case her over-exposure is not entirely her fault, but as predicted by Fryday on August 21 we had not seen the last of her; barely a week later she was in the media again displaying and espousing a very important commentary on societal mores and their role in making her a victim of that self-same society—in other words, her latest tattoo.
Neither is it Lorde’s fault that she is pictured in the front row of Kayne West’s show, only one seat along from Kim Kardashian. But she was and she was photographed and that photograph was promoted assiduously throughout New Zealand as if New Zealand, through Lorde, had suddenly found its place in the world, and was now widely recognised—even without a new flag.
Frankly, I would have been more impressed if she had been photographed next to North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.
But she wasn’t. She was there at Kayne West’s fashion frippery where he unknowingly, and she knowingly, evoked and endorsed an image and colour that New Zealanders, seemingly with the sole exception of Lorde, have long forsaken and which today is treated much as an embarrassment.
OMG!
Lorde wears beige!
Tell me it is not so.
Lorde help us.

Women have periods. Period.

It must be one of the silliest articles yet in a periodical renowned for silliness. This morning the NZ Herald published an article on how much periods cost women over the course of their lifetimes. That wasn’t the silly part. The silly part was listing what else that money could be spent on. And no amount of obfuscation such as the article’s “Just Kidding” last line can obscure the fact that the article is just plain stupid.
Am I taking it too seriously? Possibly. What do I know? I am a man.
But the same edition of the NZ Herald carried an article about a British lawyer (a male) who has been roundly criticised for his “objectification” of women by describing a female lawyer’s Linkdin photo as stunning, and his own daughter as “hot” after she posted a photo of herself working out in a gym. And by the way, whilst his phraseology by contemporary standards may be unacceptable, they are nevertheless accurate—in both cases.
But is that story any more objectifying women than one calculating the cost of their periods and the equating that cost to:
*Nearly 4000 jars of Marmite
*4251 packets of TimTams
*A Damascus Skull Dagger (whatever that is)?
Now, I know the article is not seriously suggesting that the money—$16,000, by the way—could be better spent on these items. But then to compound the silliness by stating that items such as tampons, pads, pain-killers and panty-liners are “so-called luxury items” just rubs it in. And who calls them that, by the way? I am sure women don’t. And I am damn sure you would be hard-pressed to find a man who does. The most you would get from a man would be why doesn’t the Herald even it up and ask what it costs for man to shave over his lifetime. The difference is that a man doesn’t have to shave. As I understand it, women don’t have such a choice—and I am not talking about the shaving.
No, women have periods. Period. They confront them. They contain them. They control them. But they should not be confronted with the cost of them—still less the implication  TimTams would be a more inviting alternative.

When Whetu Calls: Taking Note.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11507595

I knew the call would come. The knock on the door.

ME: Good morning.
HE: Kia Ora, Bro.
ME: And what are we selling today?
HE: Me?
ME: You.
HE: Not me, Bro. I’se saving you stuff.
ME: Really?
HE: I’se saving you the stuff of having all that embarrassment stuff of offending my cultural identity…and stuff.
ME: And how am I doing that? And how are you going to do that?
HE: What?
ME: Save me the embarrassment of offending your cultural identity.
HE: I am going to take off your hands—free, like—all those $10.00 notes you got that got my Tauranga all over them.
ME: You mean taonga—treasure.
HE: Yeah, what you said.
ME: And why?
HE: Because it has got all that tukutuku design that you fellas don’t have permission to use from us fellas.
ME: So, you are from the Te Hau ki Turanga Trust then?
HE: The who?
ME The Te Hau ki Turanga Trust. The “fellas” who are saying that the Reserve Bank doesn’t have the right to use the tukutuku design panel on the new $10.00 note. That it infringes their cultural identity and that the wharenui in which the weaving patterns used on the note is owned by the Rongowhakaata Settlement Trust, which was confirmed in the Rongowhakaata Claims Settlement Act 2012.
HE: Yeah…what you said.
ME: I don’t have any.
HE: Any what?
ME: New $10.00 notes. They are not released until October.
HE: Oh.
ME: Yes, oh.
HE: No problem, Bro.
ME: No problem?
HE: No.
ME: No?
HE:We fellas in the Trust will trust you.
ME: I am delighted to hear it.
HE: A cheque’s okay.