Over the last few weeks while travelling around this giant country of mine, I have had the opportunity to observe a large number of females in their different natural environments. I have found that women of all shapes, sizes, climates and cities all have one thing in common:

THEY DON'T WEAR PANTS!

Leggings are not pants. They should definitely never be substituted for sturdy outerwear, particularly when wearing a whimsical piece of fabric across your torso that can't make it's mind up if it's a shirt or a dress.

Here are some facts about leggings that I have observed:

1) Despite what you may think, they are not cutting edge fashion. Maybe they were in the 80's, but that was 20-odd years ago and no fashion that emerged in the 80's should ever be revived.

2) They make your arse look fat, regardless of whether your legs are the size of spagetti strands, tree trunks or barns.

3) They aren't warm. Women in colder climates should pay particular attention to this point because this takes suffering for fashion to ridiculous heights. Sure, if you're forced by patriarchal mandate to wear a skirt to the office, I see a reason for leggings and tights to exist. Beyond that, no.

4) You look like a hobo who can't afford a pair of real pants.

5) Older women wearing leggings in place of pants to capitalise on the fact that they 'have still got it' just look desperate, not hip.

6) In all likelihood I can actually see your arse, particulary if you wedge yourself into a tight pair, forcing the threads to separate, like that chick I saw in Adelaide. This is why your mother always insists you wear underwear.

7) Ratty and tattered leggings don't scream 'boho chick', but rather scream out 'crack whore'.

8) If you can't be trusted to dress yourself with any amount of skill, how can you reasonably be expected to make it through life at all? You certainly won't be getting that promotion you so desperately want if your boss thinks you're too retarded to dress yourself.

However, that said, there are only two legitimate reasons for leggings to exist:

1) To wear under our jeans/snowpants when the temperature is subzero and you're likely to get hypothermia and die.

2) In the case of being pregnant when either nothing else fits or is comfortable.

Therefore, if you wear leggings and you are not an eskimo or up the duff, you are stupid.

I don't smoke. I dislike smokers and I especially dislike smoke pushers, the people who think that unless you are slowly filling your lungs up with enough smoke to spend the last 5 years of your life hacking and wheezing and breathing via oxygen tanks that you aren't cool or worth knowing. I think that those of us who can breathe unassisted are actually the cooler, smarter ones. Sure, we might miss you when you're dead but I've got no desire to jump into the grave with you. The worst kind of smokers however, are those that smoke and drive. There is nothing more revolting. I see someone puffing away on a death stick and driving and my reaction is visceral.

Yesterday I saw a woman in a sports car, with an expensive hairdo and super long nails puffing away as she was driving. She might have thought she was hot shit, but to me she looked like the worst kind of white trash. You could be the hottest, sexiest, most popular woman on the face of the planet, but the second you get into a car and start on the fags you become the lowest common denominator.

And let's face it, you are. You can't even get from A to B without succumbing to your addictions. That's pretty damn pathetic. Not only do you not have friends because you smell like a rubbish dump and if you're a coffee drinker as well then you smell like the newly risen dead, but you're also alienating people you've never even met who see you sucking down a ciggie as they drive past and think "Jeez, how trailer trash is that?"

Men are just as bad as women, although I suffer the urge to punch their teeth in far less than women because most of the men already look like bogans, usually driving utes and wearing wife beaters, so there's not much lower in the social scale they can really fall to. Women at least, are clean about their disgusting habits. I've known men to drive cars where the entire floor of the car is so covered in cigarette butts that you can't tell what colour the floor is (obviously it's brown since it's covered in dirt, ash and scum grime, but if you wanted to see what colour it was you couldn't). Seriously dudes, your car is a crack den. That's gross.

The moral of this story is that smoking is revolting. It makes women look like trailer trash and men look like dirty bogans. Zombies smell better than you. You are gross.

DISCLAIMER:

This is my opinion of ALL smokers, including those in my family and every single one of my friends.

The word that has been getting up my nose the most as of late has to be the word fiance. I'm hearing it every day now and I want to scratch my eyes out every single time I do.

It may or may not have something to do with the fact that most of my friends and family have now hit their mid 20s or are pushing 30 and mad panic buttons are being switched on inside their brains as they all rush down the aisle with their parter of the moment. This is not necessarily a good thing and I can see several marriages being formed that are set to fail right from the outset. I don't have any particular issue with any of my friends or partners getting married, I just don't think some of them should marry each other just because they're suddenly of the age where it is expected and failure to aquire a permanent partner by a certain age seems to signify that there's something wrong with you and you are subsequently shunned from civilised society like a leper.

It may also have something to do with the fact that it looks too much like the word finance which is a doom and gloom word all on it's own. When you consider it in conjunction with the word fiance, it's a sure sign that the apocalypse is near, your life is over and you will be thus relegated to domesticity for the rest of your existence. If you're a man that means you have to work to supply your woman with all the pointless riches she desires and cave in to all of her insane demands to eventually go completely mental and have an early onset mid-life crisis complete with Ferrari and young mistress and then the cycle repeats. If you're a woman it means having to quit your job to clean toilets for a pig who can't do anything for himself and be turned into a glorified brood mare until you're too old and haggard to be anything more than a piece of the furniture that everyone shits all over.

But the thing that really gets me about the word fiance, is the way in which people say it. Go on. Ask some bint with a big whopping sparkler on her digit something really innocuous like "Where did you say your partner worked again?" and she will tilt her head upwards, place her left hand upon her breast so you can't miss the diamonds twinkling in the light and say "Oh well my feee-on-say" like she's suddenly the Queen talking down to the masses of peasants huddled underneath her balcony hoping for a glimpse of their benevolent leader. Every single time, no matter what manner of woman you speak to, she always puts on airs when she says the word fiance. I hate it. It's cultural snobbity, like it's some sort of status symbol to have managed to snag someone who wants to put up with your shit for the rest of ever. I'm not sure what guys do, most of my guy friends are all either metalheads or supernerds and they collectively refer to their women as exactly that, "me woman".

I have a fiance. Just writing that made me want to slit my wrists so that I don't inadvertently let my brains dribble out of my ears when I tilt my head and start babbling about wedding plans.  It's embarrassing watching people fall all over themselves getting all giggly and gushy and I hate it when people start asking stupid questions about venues, themes, reception menus and what colour the fucking colour scheme is. I cannot stress enough how much I do not care about any of that bullshit. Which is why, I refrain from naming my significant other as anything other than "my man" (my male friends have a point) and nor did I tell anyone when we decided we would eventually get married, and that's what it was, a decision that we would maybe eventually one day get married, none of that stupid proposal bollocks. Ugh. Romance is lame and incredibly embarrassing if you are the recipient.

Anyway, the point is, I can't even say the word fiance without wanting to vomit in my mouth. It's a stupid word and it turns rational women into insane Bridezillas.

I need to eat dinner now. Goodbye.

So I had occasion to walk through the city this afternoon and observed a rather large portion of the population while I was at it.

As I was walking through City Place a group of young girls walked past us, probably aged very early 20's, if that. Definitely not any older. They were all decked out like a christmas tree; hair done in ridiculous upstyles or flat ironed so straight it could cut you, enough makeup to shame Kiss, jewellery enough to sink the Titanic and heels that would make even the most hardcore dominatrix pale in fear. Their clothes looked incredibly hot and uncomfortable given that it was more than likely at least 37 degrees (that's celcius by way non-Australian peoples). As they tottered past one of them tripped up and naturally I pointed and laughed and said "What kind of dickead wears shit like that walking around the city?". Of course that didn't win me any friends, but it did elicit a snigger from the guy I was with.

Women do some seriously weird shit all in the name of vanity. I saw a girl on Friday who had huge long nails, the kind that you look at and wonder how they manage to do anything without ripping themselves apart (use your imagination). She had little rings on the ends of them and diamontes glued to them. WHY??? Why would anybody want to do that?

Why would you spend hours perfecting your hair and makeup and then spend the day walking around the city in sweltering, melt your face off kind of heat? You're going to look like Alice Cooper's little sister by the end of the day. Why not just wear something cool and comfortable? Oh yeah, that wouldn't be, like, cool, to be seen like au naturel. Because we all know that breaking your ankle from teetering about in sky high heels is something to brag about. And wearing clothes tight enough that I can count the change in your pocket as well as see the outline of what you had for breakfast snaking it's way down your digestive tract is sooooo attractive.

You know why women do these stupid things? Women's magazines. Seriously. If you are A: a man; or B: a woman who has never read one, purely as a social experiment go and have a look at one. "Ten ways to a slimmer new you! - Top tips to make your tummy toned for summer! - What does your clothing style say about you? - Boost your self confidence! (after we tear it down)" the headlines all read.

Reading a women's magazine is tantamount to having hot bamboo rods shoved underneath my nails. They are filled with articles talking about empowerment and self confidence and on the very next page show this years 'must have' jeans with a size chart... if you are above a size 10 you get the message "Sorry these jeans don't come in this size because you are a fat arse". Way to build a girl up and then tear her down again. We're constantly made to feel bad about ourselves because we don't look like the anorexic hos on the catwalk who are being hailed as the image women should strive to be, never mind the fact that for 99.99% of women, unless they have their ribs removed and all their bones shaved in half, being that thin is absolutely impossible. We're expected to look at pictures that have been photoshopped beyond recognition and think to ourselves "Golly gee, I should look like that too" and subsequently spend our entire life savings on overpriced beauty products, ugly clothes, tasteless accessories and then be driven to spend all of our time slaving away at the gym or over the toilet bowl with our fingers down our throat trying to acheive a look that will kill us in the end. Women's magazines are there to capitalise on your insecurities by ingenious product placement and hypocritical editorials. Get a clue idiots, it's not cool.

So with that in mind, I have accepted the fact that I will never be cool. I don't want to look like a trussed up peacock or an acid rainbow. I don't want to wear bubble skirts that look like lampshades or wear baby doll tops that make me look pregnant. I don't want to spend hours painting my face or doing my hair.  I'm too lazy to be a 'real woman'.