Reluctant Agony Aunt’s Grumpy Advice (3)

Wicked Stepmother

Dear Marietjie

My stepmother is making my life Hell. She expects me to have a limited allowance instead of unlimited spending which my father was quite happy with – until SHE came along.  She has even suggested to my father that he stops my allowance when I get married. My father used to give me whatever I wanted, but now he is beginning to side with her, especially since they found out that I had not been attending classes and will probably not graduate from university.  I don’t see why I have to worry about a career when all I want to do is get married and have babies.  Anyway, I am going to inherit enough not to have to concern myself with earning a living.  But in the meantime, I am battling financially and have to rely on other family members to pay for the things I can’t afford because of my stepmother’s meanness.

Dear Outraged Octavia

You are quite right. Your stepmother is making your life miserable.  Somebody has to.

Since money matters so much to you, why don’t you poison her so that your father can return to his old self and let you spend mindlessly until he dies enabling you to spend what is left. With law enforcement being as lax as it is, you will probably get away with it too.

But, wait! Poisoning takes effort. And that does not seem to be something you are at all familiar with.

Hell, it looks like you will just have to wait for everybody to die.

But, wait! With life expectancy what it is these days  – even deducting a decade or so from the life of each benefactor to accommodate the criminal classes – you may just grow quite old yourself before your finances are topped up to your satisfaction.

Gosh, what can I say? What is the world coming too when the idle rich have to beg from their own relatives?

Your story will certainly inspire countless less privileged people to study and work as hard as they can to avoid such indignity.

Reluctant Agony Aunt Spews More Advice (2)

Snobbish Neighbours

Dear Marietjie

I am writing to you from a very prestigious facility for wealthy people in need of psychological pampering.  I am here following a number of failed efforts to impress my snooty neighbours.  I gave lavish dinner party after super-lavish dinner party.  All I have to show for it is liver damage. I Botoxed myself until I looked like a wax work in Madame Tussaud’s. I subdued my grating personality with a cocktail of medicines that will make Michael Jackson squeal in his grave.  I ordered my car from England, my horse from Germany and my children from Malawi.   My evening dresses were from Italy and my jewellery custom-made in Switzerland. I even doled out Harrods gift baskets to people who just popped around to decline invitations.  Why do my neighbours still treat me like I am from the wrong side of town?

Dear Sad Suzy

I really hope that the very prestigious facility in which you currently dwell is also highly secure and that its staff will not contemplate letting you out without a court order, a lengthy legal wrangle or…a Presidential Decree… In fact, I hope they keep you there forever.  That really would be for the best. Trust me.

Since this is an advice column, however, I suppose I should probably explain the rationale behind what you may perceive as yet another unwarranted and inexplicable social rejection. 

The reason, Sad Suzy, that your shameless social climbing failed was because you sucked up so desperately to other shallow, superficial beings that they could not help but feel vastly superior to you.

I am not a qualified psychiatrist, but I detect in you all the symptoms of Social Climbing Fatigue. And I am fairly confident that you can’t be cured in this lifetime.

Reluctant Agony Aunt Unleashes Advice (1)

OMG, as certain Other People like to exclaim repeatedly, I have been totally inundated with letters from readers wanting advice on their personal lives.

What makes these people think that I can tell them how to run their lives when I have made it patently clear in posting after posting that I have no clue how to run my own?

Moreover, I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for anybody else’s problems.  I have social aspirations, a social calendar, a social circle, but NOT a social conscience!

Anyway, to put an eventual, if not swift, end to the notion that I, Marietjie Botha-Buthelezi, should become an Agony Aunt, I decided to become an Agony Temp.

I shall therefore post a selection of the most pitiful pleas for help.  Because of the obscene volume of correspondence, this may take a few days.

Meanwhile, I trust that my very honest answers will ensure that people will stop asking me for advice forthwith and that they will in future write to people who will tell them what they want to hear.  Not to me who will tell them what they need to hear.

                                                  Unfaithful Husband

Dear Marietjie

I think my husband is having an affair.

I am completely devastated.

I can’t sleep.

I can’t eat. 

I can’t imagine life without him. 

I think I would be better off dead

Dear Crying Chantelle

If you think your husband is having an affair, he probably is. However, you are quite wrong about the rest:  You can sleep. You can eat. You can even live without him. And you certainly would not be better of dead. In fact, you would be better off with HIM dead.  But since murder is still a crime in South Africa, I suggest you visit a sangoma (witch doctor) and pay him to either cast a nasty spell on your husband and his mistress or to give you some muti (traditional medicine) guaranteed to return this faithless piece of trash to you.

If such quaint traditional means do not appeal to you or do not have the desired effect, you can choose the moral low ground and have an affair yourself or the moral high ground and depart with dignity.

                                                  Lesbian Stalker

Dear Marietjie

I am being stalked by a lesbian friend.  Need I say more?

Dear Put-Out Patsy

Indeed you need to say more.  Are you bi-curious?  If not, get a court order.  

13 Ways to Spot a Skunkess

There are lamentably few places a Skunkess cannot gain entry to when she decides to shoo a few people out of the way with the lethally sharp tips of her Jimmy Choo stilettos. Scamper, Poppie…(Afrikaans Bimbo).

Thus it should go without saying that Skunkesses are more likely to be found amongst the esteemed Queens of Beautification and Dames of Commerce on South Africa’s top Security Estate than in a backstreet bar or amongst professional hustlers pulling a Long Con.

Of course, if life were fair, good girls would dress like Mother Theresa and bad girls would have snakes for hair like Medusa. But, alas, it is practically impossible to tell a Saint from a Witch until you either have been saved or savaged.

In my experience, female treachery lurks in the most unlikely bodies: those with treacle sweet voices, dainty gestures, tiptoeing, mincing little walks, girly giggles and touchy-feely demonstrations of apparent concern…Oh boy, my skin is crawling already.

It is a simple fact that Skunkesses can fake just about anything: a look, a smile, a laugh, giving a damn and…we all know what else…

In my short time on the Estate, I, Mariejtie Botha-Buthelezi, have come across quite a number of Skunkesses already. One over-familiar type smiles so hard you can hear her teeth grind, but her smile can disappear faster than Hilary Clinton’s when she spots Barack Obama. Then there is the drama diva who has teardrops on tap and can shed exactly the right number to obtain sympathy but not so many that her make-up needs retouching.  Another Skunkess is a professional victim who has perfected the art of imparting her entire life story within the first few minutes of meeting new people, often to induce them to advance  “small amounts” for the experimental treatment of a mysterious, but “incurable” disease, “just until” money can be squeezed out of a “dastardly” husband who has evicted her from their business and run off with one of her friends.

These women all have a degree of – and in – malevolence. But they have one very important thing in common: Everybody trusts them. Nobody suspects them. Not until the damage is already done.

That is why I like to hold up a woman – any woman – to my Mental Skunkess Meter before I let her come close to me, my nearest and dearest, the dog and the garbage men.

But, not everybody suffers from an excess of cynicality, as my pastor cousin-in-law, Skumbuzo Shabalala, so aptly puts it, and the average person’s pure-hearted faith in basic human decency often leaves him/her vulnerable to the not inconsiderable prowess and determination of Skunkesses.

As a woman who has experience of Skunkesses of the highest order, I can but try and leave my readers who have not yet fallen victim to such an anti-sweetheart with some basic instruction in spotting the usually well-disguised Skunkess, who like her human male counterpart, also doesn’t advertise her presence with a thoroughly unpleasant odour:

Here are some tell-tale signs that you may be dealing with a Skunkess:

• A Skunkess looks – but only at her a prospective victim.
• A Skunkess smiles – but only with her lips.
• A Skunkess talks – but only to the next victim in her life.
• A Skunkess gives – but only to herself.
• A Skunkess works – but only when she has to.
• A Skunkess reads – but only pre-nups (and wills).
• A Skunkess studies – but only the competition.
• A Skunkess breeds – but only with very wealthy men.
• A Skunkess cries – but only for herself.
• A Skunkess has friends – but only in-between husbands.
• A Skunkess is honest – but only to people who are not important.
• A Skunkess likes women – but only if they are uglier than her.
• A Skunkess does charity work – but only when she is guaranteed front-page publicity.

For a skunkess it is all about smelling like roses until she decides to move on with the mink and leave you in the manure.

7 Ways Not to Wear a Designer Label

Now it is certainly not unusual to find a high percentage of designer-label addicts amongst the apparently wealthy residents on a Security Estate.

What is unusual, however, is to find one that was actually christened in Baby Dior.  Or who went to playschool in Baby Gap.

In fact, there was a time when many of them did not know a Prada from a Prado.  On pain of death, they would not have been able to tell you which one you wore and which one you hijacked.

Now I, Marietjie Botha-Buthelezi, am, of course, an exception to that rule.  With daddy having been a WEE (White Economic Empowerment) beneficiary in the Eighties, my wardrobe was a veritable evidence room of sanctions busting.  Pappa, as a top National Party banking official, regularly had to travel abroad to deposit very, very large sums of money into accounts with many, many numbers for certain members of the Cabinet Class. Thus, I was able to amass quite a collection of duty-free designer outfits from labels that would have shut shop in disgust had they known their creations hung on the scrawny body of an Afrikaner child.

Anyway, that is a long story for another posting.  The bottom line is that my father’s shameful past gave me a knowledge of designer labels that goes a little beyond buying what one sees in the adverts.

That is why I am now very much sought after as a style consultant amongst my acquaintances, some of whom have staggering designer spending power and just enough brains enough to know there is no point in spending a fortune on a garment if it is not going to make you look wealthier than you actually are.

With them all, I share the same secrets…the absolute truths on how not to wear that much sought-after status symbol: the designer label.

In a gesture of magnanimity, I will impart some of those wisdoms to my dear readers.

When shopping for and, especially, when wearing designer clothes, do try to keep in mind the following:

• It is entirely possible to look very cheap in a R 25 000 designer dress – so, unless it is a professional necessity to appear Kommin (Common), it is best to pick garments that are not overdone to the point that they make others feel dizzy or disoriented or nauseous every time they dare to glance in your direction. And, of course, one does not want to frighten small children, the household staff or the horses;
• It is quite easy to wear too many designer labels at once: Face it, anybody wearing a Versace top, Dolce & Gabbana jeans, an Armani belt, a Diesel jacket, Louboutin shoes, a Fendi bag, Chanel sunglasses, and a Guess watch before they even pile on the rhinestone jewels, WILL look like a mobile ransom note;
• It so totally deflates the airs you are trying to put on if you mispronounce the name of the designer you are trying to brag about and impress lesser-clothed beings with. So, pleeze Doll, don’t wear a label if you can’t enunciate properly. It will most certainly diminish your intended glamour if you are overheard talking about your Gukkie (Gucci) sunglasses.  I advise that prior to venturing out, you stand in front of the mirror and you practice to say Goetshie, Goetshie, Goetshie, before you try to wear your Gucci;
• It is a sad truth that many outrageously priced outfits are simply too ugly to be worn. Just because a garment has a designer label sewn onto it in a very conspicuous spot, does not mean it is suitable to be displayed in public – by anybody or on anybody. So just because the designers allowed it out for a walk on a human skeleton on the catwalk does not mean he EVER intended for it to be worn by a human being on a public street;
• It is also dreadfully true that a designer label is not necessarily a synonym for style. And stylish you will NEVER be if your have somehow manoeuvred yourself into a dress that covers less flesh than a Band Aid plaster or jeans that you can’t ever sit down in without having someone call the paramedics or shoes that you can’t walk around in for fear of being breathalysed;
• Like human beings, not all designer labels are made equally: Some are classy. Some are brassy. And if you don’t already know the difference, you won’t be able to tell by looking at the price. At the risk of maligning a multi-trillion designer conglomerate, let me just say overstated inelegance = brassy; and
• Then the last, but not least, reality check: A designer garment, even one that costs R300 000, and yes, even a classy one, cannot EVER compensate for an unattractive personality or unfortunate manner. Not even a fabulous Yves St Laurent gown can seriously redeem its wearer if the wearer obviously wears it only to be seen wearing it…

Eish, I hope this helps.