Low Rise demise, but High Rise horror?

This is a short one today, because we're in the thick of term three school holidays. Even though it's only Sunday, the six year old and I have:

• Farewelled Love Chunks as he left for a week in Chile to meet up with his international weather bureau meteorologist equivalents to discuss, well, weather I guess;
• Had Holly join us for a playdate that involved three-and-a-half hours of swimming at the North Adelaide Pool, dinner at the Golden Arches (the best method yet of bribing them to behave); a bath together afterwards for the purposes of de-chlorination and an intense viewing - and later discussion - of all the incidents shown on 'Australia's Funniest Home Videos';
• Been woken up at 6:30am this morning with a gentle tap on my forehead, hearing her state: "Mum, I've run out of sticky tape, and I must have some to finish making this dragon out of paper cups and your satay sticks...."; and
• Spending a lovely sunny day in Victor Harbor with my folks, daughter and dog Milly and managing to stagger along Franklin Parade for a 6km run before driving home at 8pm and putting six year old to bed...

...and that's just the last two days. This week there's a picnic at the Kensington Adventure playground; a playdate and lunch at the zoo; meeting a friend at the airport from Darwin who's in town for the Masters' Games; a group playdate at Kate's house for the kids and us Mums to discuss term four fundraising ideas and a Friday picnic in Koster Park. And somehow I promised the wee one that we'd also go and see 'Wallace and Gromit', make bowls out of salt dough and paint them; enter a few competitions; take Mills for several walks and learn how to play basketball. It's exhausting just typing this schedule out, let alone contemplating how we're actually going to be doing it all.

However, I've digressed so far away from my original subject that I've found myself driving up the freeway to Tailem Bend when all I reall intended to do was pop around to the BP in the next block for a litre of milk. Without further ado, I attach a recent photograph of current young movie star, Scarlett Johanssen.

There are three things that bother me about this get up. Firstly, the dark red lipstick on a pale, pasty face. I've always detested the look - if we could rewind a hundred and fifty years or so she'd resemble a Bronte heroine who'd taken to her bed with a mystery illness for the past year or so. In 2005, it just makes her look as though she's a valium-ed up housewife from the 1950s. Yeeeugh.

Secondly, all girls in this world who have mothers with brains would have been told that you should never wear a white bra under a black tank top, and vice versa. Those globes of hers look as though they're about to burst through the flimsy fabric of her tank top. (Speaking of which, my mother also advised me that women over thirty and over size 14 should never wear sleeveless tops and raise their arms above their waists - no-one wants their arms to still be jiggling ten minutes after they've waved goodbye....)

Thirdly - and this pains me the most, seeing as I'm extremely anti-hipster and low rise jeans and am grateful to see that fashionistas are now gushing about their demise - the jeans. They've risen beyond her bellybutton to the arm-pit region, producing a look not unlike Rain Man's younger sister. In addition the loose fabric in the map-of-Tassie region is a bit puckery and producing the dreaded 'denim willy' that most of us would rather do without. Luckily for her, she's slim enough to not have the dreaded 'volksie bonnet'. To those not in the know, it's a podgy tummy that is stuffed into high waisted jeans, recreating a rather frightening physical bulging 'V' representation of a beetle's bonnet.

If I was a movie reviewer, the outfit would be rated using stars from one to five. However, I'm a South Australian gal who loves her Farmers Union Feel Good Iced Coffee in the 600ml size. She gets a 50ml rating for at least trying (rather too stridently) to move away from jeans low enough to make lifting your arms a risky prospect unless you're Paris Hilton or a porn star. Oh wait, that's the same thing..........