Jealousy deficit

Jealousy is something I don't understand. I've never resented other people's achievements or skills or possessions or advantages in life. I've never been suspicious of what my spouse might be doing behind my back. I'm quite happy with my own life and don't need to behave like a neurotic child.

Some people get so irrationally jealous they resort to absurd acts of destruction and violence. A man shreds all his girlfriend's clothes or vandalises her car. Or he goes to her supposed lover's house and throws paint over all the windows.

My father was the jealous type. He was always suspicious of my mother's friends and wanted to know exactly what she was doing if she was out somewhere. He even imagined she was having lesbian affairs with her female friends. She never showed the slightest hint of lesbianism but that didn't put him off.

I don't take after him at all. I know lots of people who're more intelligent, more talented, better educated, wealthier, with beautiful houses, with fewer hang-ups, but I'm not jealous of them or even mildly envious. I just think, well, good for them, they're luckier than me in all sorts of ways, they seem to have great lives, but I don't need to resent them because my own life has worked out very well and why spend my time hankering after what someone else has got?

What bothers me isn't other people's achievements but their need to make sure everyone knows about them. They have to casually mention that little Benjamin attends the best school in the neighbourhood. Or that they got their house for £20,000 less than the asking price. Or that they flew business class to somewhere or other. Such relentless boasting gets rather tedious.

"The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves." - William Penn

Like for like

Should a character in a play or movie with a defining trait be played by an actor with the same trait? Should a disabled person always be played by a disabled actor, or a transgender woman by a transgender woman, or a lesbian by a lesbian?

There's been a lot of controversy over this question recently. Activists objected strongly to transgender roles being taken by non-transgender actors. Flynn in "Breaking Bad", however, who has cerebral palsy, was played by Roy Frank Mitte, who himself has cerebral palsy. Yet nobody thought it strange that the two lesbians in "Carol" were portrayed by heterosexual women.

On the one hand, it's argued that the whole point of acting is to depict someone different from yourself, and it's your acting ability that makes the person convincing. The opposing view says that however good an actor you are, you can never be as convincing or as natural as the real thing - someone who is actually disabled, lesbian, or whatever.

My thinking is that you should use actors with the same trait as the character, as they do tend to be more authentic. But how far do you take it? You could apply the principle so widely it becomes not only absurd but impractical. Should you insist on a an actor who's a genuine anorexic, or alcoholic, or rapist, or hit-and-run driver? The casting process would be a nightmare. And suppose you wanted someone who was anorexic and a hit-and-run driver? The mind boggles.

On second thoughts, maybe you should just ask actors to do what they're supposed to do - act. Why spoil their fun?

Pic: transgender actor Rebecca Root

A bit of lippy

It's funny how lipstick has fallen in and out of fashion over the centuries. Nowadays it's so normal that most women wear it regularly and around 25% of women wouldn't leave the house without it. But it wasn't always that popular.

Lipstick was common in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, but as Christianity took hold in Europe in the 4th century it was seen as irreligious and rapidly banished. The Catholic Church condemned cosmetics, linking red lipstick with Satanic worship.

Then it returned in the 16th century when Queen Elizabeth I ignored religious scruples and inspired the fashion of a white face and garishly painted lips.

But lipstick fell out of favour again in the 18th century, increasingly seen as gawdy and vulgar and relegated to lower-status women like actresses and prostitutes. The obvious use of cosmetics was frowned upon by respectable women.

It was only in the late 19th century that lipstick made another comeback when it was marketed commercially during the industrial revolution and American actress Sarah Bernhardt started putting on lipstick in public.

By the early 1920s American and British women regarded lipstick as an essential daily requirement. Lipstick became so popular that by the 1960s it was women without lipstick who attracted criticism, often dismissed as lesbians or oddballs.

And of course lipstick has seldom been used by men, unless they're gay or actors - or both. It's seen as a classic indicator of femininity and woe betide any male who gets in on the act. He'll either be scorned or laughed at for such emasculating behaviour.

Well, just imagine if men always wore lipstick and heels. You simply couldn't take them seriously, could you?