Nasty Gals Do It Better, But In a Pretty Way

Nasty Gal in Awesome Shredded Jeans

My yahoo email page spouts out ads which at the moment I can't be bother to block. The most recent said this:

"Nasty Gal," with a subheading "Awesome shredded jeans."

When I returned to the main page to click on the ad, it had changed to something else. I googled "Nasty Gal" (nothing else, and with no quotes) and the first link I found said:

Nasty Gal.com - Nasty Gals Do It Better

Under the website's "About" page, this is who the nasty gal is:

Who is a Nasty Gal? We like to think of her as the coolest girl in the room‚ pulling off whatever wildly unique piece that suits the mood. At Nasty Gal, we are our customer. Because of this, our job is an easy one: inspire and be inspired by cool girls the world over.

And who is the inspiration?

The name was inspired by the song and album “Nasty Gal.” Betty Davis [NOT Bette Davis, who another kind of gal who could run circles around this crude and crass one], the patron saint of badass women, was known for her unapologetically sexy funk music which comprises our vision of femininity - complete with lamé platform thigh-high boots.

And of course, the perennial disclaimer:

“Nasty Gal is inclusive, but also cool. A lot of companies make the mistake of being one or the other.” - Brett, Producer

Nasty Gal makes insipidly pretty clothes (my theory has always been that all girls want to look pretty, and all women want to look beautiful, except the rabidly angry ones like the singer). A name like "nasty" gets turned around to mean "cool" which is the quintessential claim to fitting in with the crowd these days. Nasty means cool, cool means fitting in, fitting in means looking pretty, since, as I wrote here in Camera Lucida, even sluts at Slut Walks want to look pretty.


Nasty Gals Trio: Betty Davis, Girl in the Ad, and the Real Bette Davis

Here is the quintessential pretty gal (via Mark Richardson's Oz Conservative blog), who has a website to showcase her pretty items. Well, it actually is all about her. Almost every post has a photo of her, in various poses of happiness at discovering all the pretty things around her which make her look so pretty. This is where it ends, the narcissistic desire of girl-women. The Aussie Pretty Gal is not really a gal. She looks like she is in her mid-thirties. Can't she find something serious to do, like start a charity, or better yet, have children?

Her poor husband pops up in some of her photos, but he's probably quite content to have a prancing girl-woman around without the responsibilities of raising a family. I bet she works too, and the reason why she acquires these relatively, cumulatively, expensive items for herself. (My intuition was right about this. Here's an interview where she talks about having a day job.) I tried to find the meaning of her blog's name Esme and the Laneway. Laneway is a British variation on Lane.

But Esme is more obscure (it's not her real name, which is Marianne). Wikipedia lists Esme Cullen as one of the vampires from the latest series of vampire books The Twilight Series. I've written before that young women these days have a fascination for vampires. This youth-worshiping Esme surely is into that as well. Her literary activity is limited, though. Her list of books are either beauty instructional ones (what else) or she uses books as accessories for her photos. So I doubt she's read the vampire books, but the culture now is so infused with vampirism, she must be aware of them.

Below are photos of Esme (Marianne). It looks like she has someone taking some of the photos  (the outdoor ones, for example), but she can make clever adjustments by shooting her reflection in a mirror.


Ecstasy


Pretty frock for a pretty gal, posing under a sunlight spotlight


The Mirror of Naracissus


Exhibitionism, that's what it all amounts to


Thirty-something year-old pretty gal who is almost middle-aged

The fact that her hsuband allows his wife to parade herself says a lot about modern men. He could rein her in, tell her to get a hobby like cooking, or decorating their house. Or, he could insist that they start a family.

But, perhaps it is for the best that children don't have a mother such as this. She would turn up to be one of those "artist" moms who photograph their children naked for all to see.