Beauty; in the eye of the cardholder?

Five hours (and who can do it less in?)

By haughty Celia spent in dressing,
The goddess from her chamber issues,
Arrayed in lace, brocade, and tissues.
                 (excerpt from The Lady’s Dressing Room by Jonathan Swift)

Written in 1732, The Lady’s Dressing Room deconstructs and mocks the fashionable dress of court women by detailing and parodying the products that created the ‘haughty Celia’.  Consumerism was rampant amongst the eighteenth century aristocracy which trickled down to the remaining social classes in England [1] causing Swift to challenge this rise of materialism in The Lady's Dressing Room.  The poem challenges manufactured female beauty and mocks those men who fall for it.

Welcome

If you like literature, art, film, the human condition, religion, what makes us tick, the odd Victor Meldrew-like rant and a melting pot of other topics, then you have come to the right place. I am the bag lady and like a bag full of shopping that bursts across the floor, I will be spewing out random collections of scribblings, I hope to edify, enlighten or entertain you.

The Bag Lady