Tuesday 27 July 2010

graduating lady

In the immortal words of the androgynous soul sista, Pink: “In our family portrait, we look pretty happy/ Let’s play pretend, act like it comes naturally,” poignant and telling lyrics of diva Pink’s complex childhood experience of a broken home. Enhance these lyrics with a music video featuring the aforementioned artist parading around an urban loft apartment with her manly groin definition clearly visible over low rise, khaki combats, haunted by her former childhood self weeping in a matching outfit and you’ve got an rnb emotional rollercoaster on your hands.



Look at this family photo taken at my graduation ceremony last week! I’m sorry but we look really bloody happy, it looks natural, we aren’t wearing terrible clothes, we’re posed in aesthetically pleasing shade order. Little does anyone know my parents despise each other, did not communicate all day and my sister who agreed to mediate the event decided to jet off to Ibiza a few days before. Thus, I want to commend Pink for her insightful musical analysis of the distorting powers of the photograph, often highlighted by such sayings as ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ and ‘things aren’t always as they appear.’ I’m not as perturbed by my family portrait as Pink was. Unfortunately, a shadow of my 4 year old, bow-dotted afro sporting former self did not follow me up on stage to collect my certificate. That would have been quite funny and perhaps could have instilled in me an emotive response to the day. Instead I complained about being hot to my mum, attempted conversation with my mute dad and then stuffed my face with a complimentary cupcake with green icing that went all crusty on my academic robes. Enjoyable day nonetheless, the main highlight being a girl from my course nearly imploding on stage (,enlarged on either side by two huge projection screens,) after being announced as Oliver instead of Olivia upon accepting her degree. Ouch. Four years of further education to be called Oliver at the final send off.

That’s a little snippet of what happened to me last week. This is my new blog. My name is Sophie. I want to practise professional writing so I feel like I should have one of these. I expect nobody will read it, if they do they’ll probably mock it. I will pretend to take this lightly but really I’ll be cringing and convulsing inside like poor old Oliver did during her public mortification.

Kissles x