Jessie J seemed to have forgotten the bottom layer of her dress given that you could very easily see her underwear through it. I am absolutely not against flashing a bit of skin but given that the, erm, vital parts of her boobs were only covered by discreet embroidery, a more conservative bottom half would have made her look a little less like she’d stepped out in an Ann Summers nightie.

Jessie J at 2012 Brit Awards

The definitive example of how the sheer look works best harks back to 2002 (I didn’t realise when I first thought about it that it was ten years ago) when Halle Berry wore an Elie Saab dress with a sheer embroidered top and voluminous silk skirt to collect her Oscar for Best Actress for her part in the film Monster’s Ball.

Halle Berry at the 2002 Oscars

If you compare photos of the two, one looks classy and the other rather trashy and whilst Jessie J’s make up and hair are amazing, the dress seriously lets the side down.

As for the X factor competitors who have made it as far as being invited to the Brits, Alexandra Burke, Little Mix and Cheryl Lloyd… Oh dear, ladies, the only thing I can say is “why?!”

Little Mix, and, in particular, Jesy, have experienced a certain amount of backlash about how they look and their weight but the issue isn’t with their size. These aren’t big girls; they may be bigger than the average size 2 waif that passes for an actress these days but they are normal girls who just happen to be able to sing quite well. They haven’t been groomed by the industry that weighing more than your average 12-year-old is a fate worse than death and look all the healthier for it. Their problem is not their weight but their styling.

Little Mix at 2012 Brit Awards

Working from left to right, the dress sense goes from ”quite good” to “not too bad” to “oh dear…” to “what on earth were you thinking?!” Snake-skin leggings are only flattering on legs that actually need a bit of visual enhancement and whilst neon may be in, that yellow and black number may be designer but stylish, hell no.

Seriously girls, sack the stylist.

The final offender is Alexandra Burke and the problem with her dress is that whoever designed it (whoever you are, shame on you…) started with a draped, Grecian style dress in cobalt blue which, had it been left alone, would have been gorgeous. But for reasons best known to the designer, they decided to top it off with wooden armour plating over the shoulders. Whilst this is probably wonderful for the posture (not exactly conducive to slouching) it looks, quite simply, weird.

Alexandra Burke at 2012 Brit Awards

Ironically the sartorial highlight for me was Lana Del Rey who wore a simple, off the shoulder red dress which, by the size of her waist, had a pretty good internal corset going on. Looking at it, it could only ever have been designed by one person: Dame Vivienne Westwood. Whilst some of her clothes can be somewhat avant-garde and appear rather unwearable, when it comes to evening wear, she always pulls it out the bag. Beautifully cut and draped, her Gold Label evening dresses are on my list of “things to wear before I die”.

Lana Del Rey at 2012 Brit awards in Vivienne Westwood

I’m not sure whether I would say that Britain is the least fashionable nation in the world but I think the least stylish is definitely up for grabs. People need to think more about whether they look good and whether an outfit actually suits their body type and less about what is hot off the catwalk as just because something is “in”, that doesn’t mean it will look good.

Would you call Britain the land that style forgot? And what do you think is the worst style faux pas?

Average Josephine x

But as I got older and the pressures of life and the prospect of having to get a “real job” loomed, my writing was the one thing that fell by the wayside. A lot of it was due to the fact that as my poor depressed brain got sicker and sicker, my confidence dropped lower and lower until I had so little faith in myself as a person, let alone as a writer, I couldn’t face this thing I loved becoming one more thing I failed at.

And then nearly half a lifetime later, I discovered Twitter and through that the world of blogging. It took a couple of false starts before I started this blog and although it doesn’t have the biggest readership in the world, I am so grateful for each reader and each comment I get. I might never reach my dream of being a professional writer but having an outlet and a way to express myself is invaluable.

So when nearly two weeks ago, someone accused me of stealing copy for having offered to blog for a brand they had already covered (despite the fact that it was for a new and totally different product) and responding to two Twitter-wide tweets for bloggers, the little confidence I had gained was pretty much obliterated.

But the thing I have come to realise is that when faced with such baseless accusations, it shows much more about the person making the accusation than it does about you. Whether this blogger was worried that she’d lifted some copy or just generally insecure and worried that another blogger might produce a better post than her on a similar subject, I don’t know but unless someone has lifted copy directly from your blog, my vote would be to not accuse people, especially when you’re not aware of all the facts. It creates a lot of bad feeling and could do long-term damage to your credibility as a blogger.

As for me, I’m still very hurt, angry and upset. I’m even more upset that the issue has caused some serious damage to a long-term friendship which may well be irreparable. I’m not the sort of person to have a million and one friends so to have one take our friendship so lightly is something that hurts immensely. And the blogger? Well, time will tell what happens but it’s one time I really hope that Lady Gaga was right:

Average Josephine x

The competition I’d won was The Beauty Shortlist’s 7 days of beauty, which closed on Valentine’s day (less said about that date the better) and I’d won the first day’s prize, a candle from Jonathan Ward London in their most romantic of fragrances, Josephine’s Rose. If I was going to try one of their candles, this is the one I would have bought, being an avid rose fan, frequently wearing Jo Malone’s Red Roses perfume, using Ren’s Moroccan Rose Otto bath oil and body scrub, so I was especially thrilled when I won.

Josephine's Rose, available from www.jonathanwardlondon.com

The candle duly arrived the next day and from the moment I opened the parcel, I knew I was in for a treat. Scented candles can sometimes be insufficiently scented to actually fragrance a room when burnt but this would never be a problem with this candle; it scents the room when unlit, the fragrance is so powerful.

The wax is made from organic soy and beeswax and so burns very cleanly with no black smoke and despite the fact that the candle isn’t larger than most of the glass housed candles on the market, it has two wicks to help ensure that all of the wax is burnt and you don’t end up with that annoying rim around the edge which just gets wasted once the candle burns down.

The glass the candle is housed in is hand blown Italian crystal glass and from the box to the care label on the bottom of the candle itself, everything is beautifully presented. And as for the scent, oh my word, it is amazing! A blend of four different roses plus cassis, it is an intensely heady scent  which is able to fragrance most of the house, let alone a single room.

If you read Jonathan’s blog, you can see how someone can develop such intensely powerful fragrances. For so many companies, scented candles are an “add-on”  product to enhance a range but whilst Jonathan is developing a range of fragrance diffusers, the candles are clearly the main event. His fragrances are developed in a similar way to perfumes, with top, middle and base notes, and if you read the issues he has had getting the diffusers exactly how he wants them, you know that hours of love, care and attention have been poured into every single one of his candles.

So I would like to say a massive thank you to Beauty Shortlist, Jonathan Ward and Wizard PR as I am loving my candle and am looking forward to trying some of the other fragrances soon.

Average Josephine x

I have no shame in admitting that I am a devoted bookworm and have been ever since I learnt to read. When other children were reading a book a week, I was racing through one a night.

We have a standing joke in our house that when it comes to children being born whilst most women are early because they are nosy (oddly enough, this was my Dad’s perspective…), I was ten days late because I was too busy reading. If my parents ever lost me at home, they’d eventually find me tucked into a corner with a copy of Mallory Towers, the Pony Club books, Roald Dahl or just whatever my hand had landed on first in the bookcase.

Little has changed as I have got older. I’m now most likely to be found with my Kindle rather than a physical book although that doesn’t mean my shelves have got any emptier. My flat has one double and one single tall Billy bookcases from Ikea and both are full. This fact is unlikely to ever change.

I have never understood people who say “oh, I’ve read that already”. I read books over and over and over and over… Part of this is necessity, I don’t have enough money to buy a new book every time I want something to read! I speed read, I always have so books, even Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which came in at a whopping 766 pages, only took me a few hours.

But to not read a book again seems like sacrilege to me. Would you say to your friends “Oh I’ve spoken to you already”? Because books may never change but my interpretation of them changes depending on the mood I am when I read them and also the age I am. I have a box full of books in the garage which I haven’t read since I was maybe fifteen and were on loan to various family members with young girls in the family and I’m looking forward to a day reading them, seeing how they make me feel now as opposed to then.

One of the things I love most about the written word is that it will never let you down. I go back to certain books over and over because I know the ending, I know the characters and I can get lost in the escapism that they provide. They are never going to hurt me, they are never going to let me down, they will never be too busy, they are the perfect companion.

In many ways, books are better friends than people can ever be. They may not be able to give me a hug but they can provide an escape from a real world that can sometimes be too cruel to bear.

Average Josephine x

There are so many things wrong with this situation that I almost don’t know where to start. This is the Chris Brown that she pressed charges against for an assault that left her battered and bruised. If anyone thinks that it wasn’t that serious then please read this police report and see whether you think it’s serious enough to warrant prosecution.

Many people have said that Brown should be forgiven for his actions and allowed to live his life as he wishes and that if Rihanna has forgiven him then why can’t the rest of the world? But it isn’t that simple, for so many reasons.

If Brown had been truly remorseful then that would be one thing although I don’t think anyone should have been having perform at a major music event (yes, Grammys, I would be referring to you) until he had fulfilled the terms of his sentence and his probation was completed in August 2014. He still has a long way to go. But when you consider that he doesn’t appear to have changed, why should he be forgiven? To be forgiven in my world, you need to have shown true remorse, to have changed the things that caused you to react that way in the first place. Brown doesn’t appear to have changed at all. When asked on “Good Morning, America” about the incident with Rihanna he commented that it wasn’t really a big deal anymore but followed it up by smashing the window of his dressing room and storming, shirtless, out of the building. When some singers and actors tweeted their distaste that Brown had been asked to perform at the Grammys, Brown retaliated by tweeting “HATE ALL U WANT BECUZ I GOT A GRAMMY Now! That’s the ultimate FUCK OFF!“. Whilst the tweet was later deleted (I suspect his management threw a tantrum about his image or similar) it does demonstrate that this is still a highly volatile individual.

Chris Brown's 'celebratory' tweet after his Grammy win

As for Rihanna, I am worried about the effect of her actions. One of the problems with domestic violence is that as well as being physically damaging, the abuser often emotionally abuses their partner to the extent that they believe that they are completely unloveable and no-one other than this person who beats them could ever love them. Rihanna, as much as she may not want to be, has become an example to women of how to deal with a man who beats them. She went straight to the police and pressed charges even though that meant this highly personal and probably highly embarassing incident being dragged into the spotlight. She did the thing that so many women cannot do: she left.

So for her to go back, to allow someone who did this to her back into her life, Rihanna is sending out the wrong message: that it is safe to let these men back into your life. For so many women, it turns out to be the last thing they do.

I understand that one incident, even one so appalling as what Chris Brown put Rihanna through cannot necessarily destroy the love between two people. I understand that she may have forgiven him and considering they work in the same industry, it must be nigh on impossible for her to avoid him. But no matter how much she may love him or want to forgive him, she owes it to herself, and every other woman in the same position, to stay away.

Could you ever forgive a man who beat you up how Chris Brown did? And do you think he deserves forgiveness?

Average Josephine x

My skin is being a bit temperamental at the moment, patches of eczema around my eyes are flaring up randomly so when I started looking for brightening products, I started looking within brands I already use. I figured there was probably less risk of my skin having a total tantrum…

I’m currently using (and loving) the Elemental Herbology Purify and Soothe cleanser and when I was looking around their website I found that they did a Weekend Facial kit which included their Facial Glow, Facial Detox and Facial Soufflé. The Facial Glow is a biological and mechanical exfoliator containing fruit enzymes to loosen dead skin cells and spherical jojoba beads to gently remove them. The Facial Detox is a clay based mask to help reduce any blemishes and the Facial Soufflé is an intensive, overnight hydrating treatment.

Elemental Herbology Weekend Facial kit

None of these treatments are particularly cheap on their own and being the obsessive person that I am I did calculate the value of the kit compared to the price of the individual products. Suffice it to say that the kit costs £25 and the value, based on the price of the full-size products, is £59.40. Not bad.

As for the products themselves, when I opened the box they were sent in, I was greeted with a gorgeous, slightly fruity, slightly herbal smell as well as mini sizes of the cleanser, facial glow and a sachet of the cell food serum which was a bit of a bonus. I decided that as my skin is fairly dry at the moment I would skip the clay mask this time round and went straight from the exfoliator to the moisturising mask.

Unlike a lot of biological exfoliators, the facial glow doesn’t sting going on which is a good sign that it isn’t going to irritate any eczema patches. It smells quite citrusy and fresh which is always nice. It rinsed off cleanly without any problems and definitely left my skin looking perkier.

The facial soufflé is designed to be left on overnight although I was a bit confused about the application. Did you rub it in like a moisturiser or apply a layer like a mask?I went for the mask-esque option and applied a decent layer and then settled into bed with my kindle. After half an hour most of the product had sunk into my skin but at this point I had some serious reservations as my skin felt a bit tight. Come the next morning, I got a real surprise in that my skin felt softer and more moisturised than it had in a while.

This is a weekend facial I will happily keep performing for as long as the kit lasts and I would say it’s probably good for at least another five or six weekends. Given that works out at about £4 per facial, it is 10% of the cost of a high-street facial and actually, I prefer the results.

The Weekend Facial kit is available from elementalherbology.com and priced at a reasonable £25.

So, will you be giving it a go or do you have your own weekend facial ritual?

Average Josephine x

But there is a type of cake which I don’t like and despite it being the it cake of the moment, I don’t really see the point of.

Red velvet cake.

Red Velvet Cake. Source: www.joyofbaking.com

I have only had it once and that was a cupcake from none other than the Hummingbird Bakery so it should have been the best going but it was a bit dry (which might have been the baking) and tasted like food colouring. Yep, you could taste the colouring in there. Not pleasant. And this is the big reason I don’t do red velvet cake. Because the modern recipe has corrupted what was a traditional recipe from America’s deep South where the red the name refers to came from a reaction between the cocoa and the buttermilk the cake contained. Whilst even the most authentic recipes contained colouring it wasn’t in the quantities that are used now. Whilst this is partly due to a change in the processing of cocoa (I’m not going to get into the science of it) which makes the red tinge more pronounced, as time has gone by people have got more and more fixated on the ‘red’ part of red velvet cake rather than the cake itself.

We do not need red velvet pancakes, brownies, cheesecake or anything else and we certainly don’t need blue velvet cake (the idea makes my head hurt). And if you really want red velvet cake, then do the best thing for your body and make chocolate beetroot cake. At least that way you can claim to have had a vegetable portion with your pudding.

Are you a red velvet cake fan? Or do you prefer your cake minus the massive amounts of colouring?

Average Josephine x

I’m redecorating my whole flat.

This project is going to take me a while as when there’s only one of you there is a limit as to how much you can get done in a weekend and also, I can’t quite afford to do the whole lot all in one go! So month by month I’m going to do bits and pieces and you will be able to see how it is going.

One of the most fun bits about redcorating is the hours you can spend, poring over paint charts and wallpaper samples. There is so much out there from the weird (do you want holographic pin up girls greeting you first thing in the morning?) to the fun and the frankly rather fabulous. I often think I should be locked in a padded room and with this wallpaper I can be, what more do you want?!

But I will confess to falling in love with a Farrow and Ball wallpaper called Lotus but unfortunately as F&B print to order, they have a minimum order quantity of 3 rolls of paper. As I think I’m only going to need one roll and this paper does cost a whopping £88 per roll, I might have to give it a pass on this occasion!

So in its place I have managed to find a couple of other wallpapers which I do love but are slightly less ruinously expensive! None of them are from anywhere exciting (Laura Ashley and John Lewis) but they go with the furniture and curtains and would do just enough to perk up my office.

'Coco' wallpaper from Laura Ashley

'Gardenia' wallpaper by Harlequin

Andrej Pejic walking for Jean Paul Gaultier

If, like me, you were a teenager in the 90s it is highly unlikely that you won’t recognise these lyrics as they come from one of Blur’s early hits, Girls and Boys from their ‘Parklife’ album. As a true Britpop girl, I had to pick a side; was I a Blur girl or Oasis? And there was only one answer as far as I was concerned. Blur, all the way. I mean, did you see Alex James?! Now, not so much but then?

What I don’t think Damon Albarn foresaw whe he wrote was the current situation where we have a male model being used, quite extensively, to model women’s clothes. The model is of course Andrej Pejic, who, when you look at his face, you’d never know he wasn’t female. This man is beautiful. He has slightly hooded blue eyes, high cheekbones, full lips… If you look at his face, surrounded by long, blonde hair, you wouldn’t guess he was male. His features are incredibly feminine.

Andrej Pejic. Source: www.browsebiography.com

And if he was being used to advertise beauty products, I wouldn’t have a problem. And I should make it clear that my problem isn’t with Pejic per se, he is simply taking advantage of the opportunities being offered to him. But when a man, who despite the work he has evidently put in to reduce his waist size, still has the broad shoulders and flat chest of a man, is being hired to advertise bras and bikinis, you have to wonder what exactly designers think women look like?

andrej pejic bra advert for Hema. Source: www.mirror.co.uk

As a woman who has boobs and hips in abundance, I find it really kind of offensive that a designer thinks that his designs, aimed at women, will look best on a man. An oustandingly beautiful man, no doubt, but he still has a man’s figure. It’s bad enough that the majority of models have the bodies of pre-pubescent girls but to actually put a bloke on the catwalk? In addition, to have a man advertising bras is blatantly ridiculous. By writing about it, I have further achieved the company’s aims but I really feel strongly about this.

Women are under a ridiculous amount of pressure to look a certain way. Even before you take the body fat issue into account (because of the lack of boobs and hips their body fat is far lower than women’s) clothes will look different on a man than on a woman. The broader shoulders and smaller hips will make things hang differently and I think a lot of women are likely to consider how they hang on them as compared to Pejic, to be worse.

So to the designers out there, for the love of God, if you’re designing for women then use women in your catwalk shows and adverts. Why put clothes on someone who was never intended to wear them?

Would you buy clothes that you have seen advertised by a man?

Average Josephine x

Whilst it might not contain toast, there was only one thing that would solve Bangs’ problem: the ultimate Rice Krispie cake.

The recipe for this is something that I have been making for years, in fact my Mum used to make it to sell it at school fêtes and bake sales. I believe it originally came from a copy of Family Circle (although any paper copy of the recipe has long since disappeared) although when I have no idea and we now make it from memory as luckily the quantities and ingredients are ridiculously easy to remember.

All you need is:

• 100g butter
• 100g toffee
• 100g marshmallows
• 200g rice krispies

See, ridiculously easy to remember and also incredibly easy to increase or decrease as you need although I wouldn’t recommend making it in batches with more than 400g rice krispies as the volume becomes a little problematic!

All you need to do is put the butter, toffee and marshmallows into a big (and I mean big, you need to be able to fit the rice kripsies in there as well) saucepan and place over a low heat and let everything melt. It seems like it will never melt and come together but just be patient. Don’t be tempted to turn the heat up, the toffee and marshmallows are essentially pure sugar and they will burn. Stir periodically to make sure nothing sticks to the base of the pan and burns as well.

Once everything has melted you should have this slightly fluffy, pale toffee coloured mixture. Take this off the heat and pour in the rice krispies. Stir the rice krispies into the melted goo (it really is goo, there’s no other way to describe it) and don’t worry about the fact you can hear some of them go snap, crackle and pop. Enough will remain whole and the goo really will cover all the krispies, even though it might not seem like it when you first start mixing.

Once everything is mixed in, pour into a greaseproof paper lined tin. The size of the tin depends on how thick you want your rice krispie cake, it really doesn’t matter that much! Now try and wait for it to cool and set before you eat it… And if you can wait, you are a much, much stronger person than me!

Enjoy….

Average Josephine x