Give us the good guns!

I am (like a whole heap of others) really excited about the Avengers film but the trailer left me rather dyspeptic.

It was at the 2 minute point. Things don’t look good for the Avengers: they are standing back to back in a circle – the Hulk roaring, Iron man getting his suit souped up, Hawkeye is drawing his bad-ass bow. Thor is weighing his hammer in  his hand while Captain America is hefting his special shield (and probably pulling the lycra out of his ass).

What is the Black Widow doing? Putting a clip into her ridiculously tiny handgun. Even she looks miffed.

"Give me your pissing hammer."

It made me realise, where are the women’s awesome weapons and gadgetry?

Princesses Leia and Amidala both had to make do with “clumsy and random” blasters while the boys got the elegant Lightsaber.

Elektra has some BBQ forks, Cat woman has an uncomfortable costume and while I would quite like Wonder woman’s lasso (there is a bit of the cowboy in me) awesome gadget weaponry it ain’t.

Turn the sausages over

Modern heroines at least are getting the good stuff. Alice from Resident Evil usually travels with a mobile arsenal and can’t wait to see how Hit Girl can top the bazooka.

What I’m saying is, it is time to write in the big guns.

The uggtimate fail

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I love clothes.

I love the new and transitory right the way through to the one-off fashion classic. Nothing can compete with finding a fantastic dress or pair of shoes from an unusual or untapped source, finding something unique and individual. Sometimes tends come along which don’t suit my body type (I will never plumb the depths of harem pants) but I don’t hate them or deplore others for wearing them: they just know what suits them.

Yuck boots

There is one exception: the Ugg.

When Ugg boots first appeared on the high street (and in all of those Going Up columns in magazines) my inner monologue said, “Yeah yeah, I give them two months before they become fashion pariahs.” To me they looked like part of the pastry outfit from a book I’d read as a child called “In the Night Kitchen”. Even the name sounded wrong – ugly, yucky, uggy.

Ugg boots in their original Pastry style

I saw a few people wearing them, and then a few more. It seemed as if they had successfully made the leap from fashion editors column to the average teenage girl. “Why,” I thought with a flair of my nostrils, “would anyone want to look as though they had the ankles of an obese pregnant woman who had just got off a long-haul flight?” It was beyond me.

Soon demand was outstripping supply by a mile and stockists were finding themselves sold out. “Well,” I thought with a smug shake of my head, “If they all want pastry-crust shoes that is their look out.”

The smugness was to slide off my face like a fat kid on a greasy pole.

Over ten years since they first exploded onto the UK high street and the Ugg’s fleecy spongiform claws are still firmly entrenched in the psyche of wannabe starlets and stage school girls. People are even now taking the ‘boot’ part seriously and wearing what is essentially a giant foot sponge instead of hiking boots or wellies.

Shit boots

The last time I went to Glastonbury the number of young women wearing the mud-caked Ugg was tremendous. Did these silly women not realise they were walking around with giant liquid-poo sponges on their pegs? I am sure we will be seeing signs of a trench foot epidemic amongst young women up and down the UK.

A colleague of mine, who hails from Australia, thought the same thing, “But they are slippers; no one wears them out back home” he said, bemused by the trend. Yes people, that Sunday-night slipper-dash to the corner shop has evolved.

Face obscured to protect the silly

The final straw came last week when I saw the news that Jimmy Choo had collaborated with Ugg boots on a special collection. Seriously? Is this not a complete mockery of sense and reason? The campaign features a biker giving the camera a look that says, “Chase me if you think you can keep up.”To paraphrase Kirsty MacColl, In those shoes? I don’t think so.