Curvy women are happier

It was the Weekend Post headline that did it for me: “Curvy size 14 women happiest of all, poll indicates”.
Dontcha love it? Apparently women who are size 14, which is fairly ample, are the happiest with their life and looks. Now, the population of South Africa are predominantly that size or larger, I would imagine, so that should mean that we are a pretty happy lot.
The Herald Miss Port Elizabeth promo starts in a week or so and you can bet your bottom dollar that there won’t be any size 14 entrants among them. Or, if they do enter, they are likely to be sifted out before the gala finale evening.
Which is quite a shame as this year the competition is really trying to move away from the “bimbo in bikini pageant” image that always has dogged competitions of this nature.
This year The Herald will no longer be having a swimsuit section and is putting more of an emphasis of asking the finalists to be ambassadors for Nelson Mandela Bay, visiting charities and being informed on the issues facing the city. Certainly, Nono Gali, our winner in 2008, has been fabulous.
Diarise the date: April 24 for the finale and this year it will be held at that grand old lady of Whites Road, the Opera House. Sure, it’s smaller than the Feather Market C, but sometimes less is more. Less flesh, more class, for one thing as far as the finalists are concerned – plus it’s a beautiful and stately venue.
Keep an eye out for your La Femme on Wednesday, February 4, for all the info on how to enter, as that’s when this year’s competition launches.

Polar plunge fund-raiser

January is the time of year that certain lunatics in the northern hemisphere raise funds for charity by doing something called the Polar Plunge.
The state of Maine, for example, has already had at least nine plunges this winter and Rhode Island had at least 10 on New Year's Day alone.
The idea is that you sponsor your friend to jump into icy waters, and they give all the money they raise this way to the charity. It works on much the same principle as other events do in South Africa, such as a big walk, a readathon and even those calendars where random groups of people strip off and pose for a photo.
It makes my blood run cold just thinking of it but if you go for a polar plunge, I suppose you may as well go big.
These four students in the picture, from Mankato in the Minnesota River Valley, were really putting their money where their mouths – and freezing limbs – were when they did their polar plunge.
Mankato’s winter temperatures dip to well below freezing in centigrade terms. I checked online and saw that tomorrow’s weather forecast for Mankato is 4 deg C – not to be confused with our winter low of 4, this is equivalent to our minus 16 degrees celsius. And don’t forget the wind chill factor which will take it down to minus 33 deg C.
Eina! You can rather sign me up for that 5km walk while reading a book in the buff right away ...

People for Earth

South Africa was just starting to dip its toes into the waters of green living when along came the recession and made us all think about budgets rather than organics. You may have noticed that the organic food section is not the cheapest.

However, that doesn’t mean the green world movement is slowing down - which it certainly won’t if it’s up to people like Sabina Pojded who runs an NGO in Europe called People for Earth

She’s also got a blog, which I’m going to add to my list of favourites (you’ll find that list at the right hand side of this site).

I totally love it when I discover how and what other people are doing to make a difference. Read what she has to say and be inspired.

What is so amazing about Sabina is that she doesn’t live in New York, Los Angeles or London, but in Gorenjska, Slovenia ... now where the heck is that?

One of the features of her site is a “daily action” plan to help save the planet – and one of them ties into one of my pet peeves, bottled water. It has its place, to be sure, but read what she has to say about it in this post from January 6 and you'll think twice before reaching for that Bonaqua.

The Little Black Dress

Black is beautiful, black is flattering, it's a colour which allows most most women to feel just a slight bit slimmer and everyone should have at least one “little black dress” but – as my colleague, Susan, noted today after ploughing through the news wire shots from the Golden Globes awards – black also can be “boring, boring, boring”.

In fact, said print-savvy Sue, what possessed these celebrities to wear so much black to the awards ceremony when the media so love colour? From the plunging neckline of Tina Fey (top left) to the more modest garb of Rene Zellweger and Sally Hawkins, most of the stars wore black ... including best supporting actress winner Kate Winslet and Amy Adams (below).

There were a few splashes of vibrant colour, with Eva Longoria (red) and Cameron Diaz (pink) among the few to wear bright colours. Fashion pundits called the palette of black, grey, cream, mustard and off-white that dominated the dress divas “sophisticated”. On the whole, though, I have to agree with Susan ... here's hoping they ramp up the colour for the Academy Awards next month.

Don't sweat the small stuff

January 1 has been and gone, and along with the date so too have most New Year’s resolutions.
We all faithfully promise to lose five kilograms, eat five portions of fruit and veg a day, go to the gym five days a week, drop five shots off our golf handicap (well, OK, maybe I’m alone on that one) and be five times nicer to our fellow man ... but we still keep on trying.
This year I’ve decided something quite different. After all, it is exceptionally difficult to make life changes, even with the best will in the world.
And, when you stop to think about it, what is it that makes you happy or unhappy? Surprisingly, it's not usually who is president or how awful the economy is. In my case, it’s often really small things (as you might have noticed from Friday’s post) so I’m going to try and not sweat the small stuff.
As my psychology professor at UPE used to say, “don’t push the river, let it flow”.
Here’s to a free-flowing, marvellous 2009 ...

These are a few of my least favourite things

The sins below are, in the big scheme of things, not big things at all but they really do irritate me. This year these folk will not qualify for my “be five times nicer to your fellow man” New Year’s resolution.
In no particular order they are:
* Drivers (who are clearly not disabled) who park in the disabled parking bays at shopping centres.
* People who work in an open office environment holding private conversations at high volume (you know who you are)
* People who work in an open office environment eating KFC at their desks (you know who you are too)
* Able-bodied people who take the lift up one floor and taking it one down is even worse (you probably don’t have a clue if you are one of these, but I can tell you now, I have some pretty plump colleagues who do just this)
* People who send an SMS when a phone call would be almost as quick. Yes, it’s easier but it’s so often a cop-out
* White South Africans who talk about black South Africans as “them” and “they”.
* People who toss litter out of their car windows.
* Drivers who don’t strap in their young children on the front or back seat.
* Those who automatically opt for bottled water. PE’s water is still pretty OK, you know, despite the fuss reported in The Herald so just get over yourselves.
There, now I feel much better and, apart from that, I really will try and be nicer ...

Life begins at 40

At the beginning of a new year many a woman’s thoughts turn to ... getting another year older.But why is it that so many women fear turning 40? Scientists have revealed the age at which we reach our mental peak – and the answer is not, as Douglas Adams would have it, 42, but 39.

So, if life does begin at 40, it’s because you’ve hit the summit and can now freewheel downhill for the rest of your life (wouldn’t it be wonderful if life gave you a “free pass” at age 40?)

By testing how fast a group of subjects aged 23 to 80 could tap their finger in 10 seconds, a psychiatry team at the University of California found that the brain was at its most efficient at 39, but that its power dropped “at an accelerating rate” once it hit 40.

They reckon it’s because of the loss in middle age of a fatty sheath, myelin, that coats the nerve cells or neurons (in case you’re wondering that’s not a pic of pot plant, it's actually a close up of a myelin-sheathed axon). When this starts getting dodgy, your responses start slowing down.

And you’ll suffer more if you’re a tippler because the brain is made of fat and when you feed it alcohol you dissolve that fat, and destroy your brain cells.

Maybe this is why when you’ve had too much to drink you think you’re a genius when actually you are behaving like an idiot. Perhaps you should have thought of this before that New Year party ...