Alma Cogan; what a waist......

October 26^th – You gotta reckon on us being the strangest creatures on the planet, haven’t you?

Here we are a highly complex organism with bits and pieces that have taken eons to develop to their present, sometime suited to their purpose/not quite adequate state and where the balance between being well and being ill is hung on a complex chain of events that can be triggered by the merest alteration in our habits; and what do we do with it? We fill our only breathing apparatus with smoke that contains sufficient chemicals to fumigate a greenhouse, douse our liver with a liquid that can pickle and preserve a body indefinitely, stuff foreign bodies into various areas of our carcass to make them bigger, more round, more pert…just more. We take medications for keeping us happy, keep us awake, medications for making us sleep and medications to make us slimmer or fatter, we soak our hair in chemicals and dyes and attach false outer body parts to some of our most delicate organs…and then get a monk-on when illness calls and puts our life on hold. It’s in our nature to never be satisfied, I think, to always want something we haven’t got and then, when we’ve got it, be dissatisfied with the result because we don’t look like we thought we’d look like.

Interesting that early on colour was the dominant advertiser for what we wanted to be seen as.

White = Purity

Green = Faith

Red = Strength/Passion

Blue = Truth/Love

Gold = Honour

And then designs of crosses or bars or animals were used to accentuate certain traits contained in the wearer, hence the eagle was seen as someone holding imperial power, a stag’s head as someone in the higher echelons of the Company of Verderer’s. These sorts of external tattoos, like the football strips we see now, are all fairly harmless in their intent and exhibition. Not so the penis extensions of the Dani Tribe in the Papua Islands; the extension resembles a carrot over the end of the head. Or the use of Chinese finger-traps attached to the penises of some Polynesian tribe members (see what I did there?) and also, allegedly, the Karamojong Tribe of Uganda, which have a large rock attached to their cock (for years) by twine so as to elongate it. Now that sort of behaviour is beginning to stretch the bounds of credulity (see what I did there?) but it’s when things start to get out of kilter and reasoning goes awry that all can go drastically wrong.

Alma Cogan: anyone? Those not as old as me (and let’s face it, there aren’t many) may not have heard of her. She was a 50’s/60’s singing star in true Hollywood style. Vivacious, bubbly, sexy, great sense of humour, super voice for the material she sang and styled to within an inch of her life, she was marketed as the girl with the giggle by her record company (these shysters will use any and every method to shift stock). She had a string of singles released (80+) and many of them were big hits. Her trademark stage outfits were huge hooped skirts with tight bodices and nipped-in waists, and with these dresses she made several statements.

The huge hooped skirts took the be-bop look that girls were wearing at the time, but added extra flounce and diameter and then some. This meant she was one of the kids but more so. Accentuating her breasts by the use of either plunging necklines or highly pert cupping (or both) advertised her mothering/feminine/sexual characteristics and the tight waistline (the famous hour-glass look) accentuated her fecundity and her libido. But despite all these signs and signals, funny thing was her sexuality was never quite discovered. She was rumoured to be having a long-standing affair with John Lennon, was also rumoured to be engaged to Lionel Bart yet she preferred the company of gay men, was rumoured to be lesbian and never married thereby following one of the first maxims in showbiz - remain a mystery. What can be said, however, was that, at one time and another she had it all.

On this day in 1966 at the age of 34, Ms. Cogan died of ovarian cancer. Back in the day there was little by way of treatment for cancer, not like now and I’d think that, as much then as now, the chances of developing illnesses like ovarian cancer, of developing any cancer in fact, is still a lottery. Time will sort this. The new gene techniques will soon (50 years?) identify any predisposition to such diseases and remedial, pre-treatment will be available.

But even with the levels of diagnosis and treatment being in their infancy and Ms. Cogan’s arresting figure, my guess is what couldn’t have helped her health and well-being was the series of untried and untested injections she underwent in order to control her weight (?) just a few years before she became severely ill.

It was said she was never quite the same after undergoing the course…never enough, is it?