Gorgeous Bollywood star and all-round goddess Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has caused national outrage in her home country of India.
Her crime? Steadfastly refusing to shift a few pounds after the birth of her daughter six months ago. The scandal has been prompted by a photograph of the 38-year-old actress and former Miss World which shows her, brazenly, looking rather normal.
As she makes her way to the Cannes Film Festival this weekend, all eyes will be on her. Will she have heeded the feverish advice of millions of her countrymen and women to sort herself out, do her duty for her country and snap back into her former glamourous shape? Hopefully not.
Don't critics realise this woman has tapped into an emerging global phenomenon? The skinny models debate has been rumbling on for years but (and perhaps it's the tough economic times) when it comes to splashing the cash the times could be a-changing. New research suggests that if retailers really want to shift clothes they need to narrow the gaping chasm between how items look on models and how they look on us mere mortals.
For a painful re-enactment of the current problem, go swiftly to the changing room, the theatre where dreams are ritually smashed. It's a familiar scenario: you swan in there, clasping a wad of colourful togs, your head swilling with images of those bronzed, willowy models which are plastered all over the shop. Then in all it's flourescent-lit glory, and from three equally unflattering angles, you are faced with inescapable reality. That tutu which looked so sweet on that snake-hipped model appears more like a gastric band. The skinny jeans into which you have to launch yourself from a great height leave you looking like a potato on pipe cleaners. And as for those floral leggings ... no.
The changing room experience is invariably horrific and results in most customers fleeing from the shop empty-handed. Retailers are not interested in the quiet weeping emanating from the fitting room when reality hits like a juggernaut – unless, of course, it affects the bottom line. Now they may be forced to sit up and listen after the findings of Ben Barry, New-York based modelling agency CEO and former scholar. He surveyed thousands of women and charted their likelihood of purchasing clothes against how closely the models wearing the clothes resembled them. His study shows that women were up to 300% more likely to buy clothes pictured on models of a similar size to them. Sounds like a business model for change. No-one wants to feel like Cinderella's ugly sister squeezing into her dainty threads.
The unassuming Welsh town of Monmouth woke up yesterday morning to find itself embroiled in some kind of Orwellian nightmare as it was named the world's first Wikipedia town.
Hundreds of articles, in dozens of languages, have been compiled about the people, places, flora and fauna of the town and posted on the website. All visitors need to do to access this vast tract of information is scan one of thousands of plaques which have appeared on every street corner with their smartphone. As Wikipedia can be edited by anyone and has been the venue for some entertaining grudge matches, how long, I wonder, before some of the town's fruitier gossip starts going viral?
NEWS just in from the Institute of Stuff You Knew Already. It's been cold. Parts of Britain have been shivering in temperatures lower than the Arctic this week.
Having pinched myself to check I hadn't wandered through wardrobe doors into Narnia, I felt compelled to seek out one of those last-minute cheap deals to the sun. Do you know anyone who has managed to secure one? Certainly, after 30 hours online, cross-eyed and having lost the will to live, I am forced to conclude that the cheap last-minute deal is an urban myth. So we're plumping for a staycation and gubbing some vitamin D tablets instead.
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