Product Description

It's the real thing. It's about getting your life together. It's about looking damn fine. It's about man handling. It's about the casa question. About solitude. About stain removal. Whether you're a young woman just out of school and starting a career or a harriedly successful thirty-something, if you're still wasting time looking for stockings that match or struggling to keep on top of credit card bills, you need help. And not a glossy monthly's unattainable idea of help, but the stuff that works-the nuts and bolts.

Anna Johnson's THREE BLACK SKIRTS is the book that delivers. In a voice that's knowing, smart, hip and funny-and with the author's own retro illustrations to match-Ms. Johnson cuts right to the core of the chaos that passes for life today and shows how to find order, balance, fulfillment. She covers it all: health, dating, career moves, finances, entertaining, body image, sex, and, of course, the indispensability of owning three black skirts. She offers the twenty basics for money management, and three keys for shopaholics to gain control over their passion. A workshop to build better food habits. Ten ways to get to sleep. Dress codes to the major cities. A Schmoozer's Guide to Compliments. Principles of Modern Courtship. And everything in between, from an extensive stain removal chart to eleven ideas for reawakening your spiritual life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #125310 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780761119395
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From the Back Cover
Balance, Strength, Well-Being –and a Killer Wardrobe FEATURING: THE MAXIMS OF CHIC 16 MONEY RULES GRACE – UNDER – PRESSURE ENTERTAINING MOOK MANAGEMENT LOVE – THE 15 MYTHS BODY IMAGE BOOSTERS MEDITATION, YOGA, RETREATS, AND FINDING THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

It's about solitude. It's about stain removal. It's about beauty, and what to do when feeling blue. It's about attitude and atomizers, stock funds and stockings that match. It's about life – your life – and how to get it together.

In a smart, funny, and refreshingly down – to – earth survival guide, Anna Johnson covers it all: health, dating money, career moves, style, sex, nutrition, responsibility, home décor, body image, friendship. And, of course, the indispensability of owning three black skirts – one to seduce, one to succeed, one to slob out in. What else is there?

About the Author
Anna Johnson has written for Elle, Vanity Fair, Vogue UK and Australia, Conde Nast Traveler, and Marie Claire Lifestyle. She's a correspondent for Foxtel's program By Design. Born in London, she currently divides her time between New York City and Sydney, Australia.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION Self-help books tell you how to live. I can't do that. I've got a diet built on raw watercress, strawberry ice cream, oolong tea, and Chinese noodle-bar soups of ambiguous stock. I don't own three black skirts, only two. I can't drive a car. By the time this book is published, I will buy an ironing board, stop using a blue straw beach bag as an attaché case, and finally cut my credit card in two. Let me be the first to admit that we teach what we need to learn. I wrote this book not because I'm spiffingly together and pregnant with worldly wisdom, but because I want to be more relaxed, organized, and socially useful. Actually, I just want to get to yoga once a week and remember to floss.

The nagging feeling of always being a little behind becomes a life state. It's often the petty details that clog the wheels of your chariot: a broken sandal strap, an old debt you can't shift, a receipt you can't find the night before filing your taxes, the belief that you look hideous in jeans, or a forgotten birthday. Gradually little glitches start to sculpt your world and, more insidiously still, your delicate sense of self.

When your life is messy it's easy to feel that the hand of destiny is shuffling you to the back of the class, doomed to the dunce's corner with the pencil suckers and the self-tattooed delinquents. And the frenzied pace of the way we live does nothing to allay our own (perceived) inadequacies. How does any woman get ahead when the stakes are so high? Beating beneath the skin of our lives is an unwritten, but very blatant, timetable. It is a timetable for study, for work, for shopping, for saving and planning and love and babies and gym and e-mails and housework and loans and eye-wrinkle creams and relatives and divorce and patching up and affairs and vitamin supplements and car registration and Christmas dinners and all the damn rest. Given what's expected of us, life starts to feel like a succession of high jumps with new aspirations slapped down in front of us before we've cleared the first.

As a result, most of us are just coping, barely scraping by with enough time to commune with ourselves let alone make a deep connection with other people. No wonder we "forget" to have kids or learn a language or join an organization we admire; we also "forget" to take pride in small victories or take proper stock of our milestones or even just to breathe. Hopefully this book can help you regain a sense of balance and give you the strength and spark to repair and replenish the parts of your life that are so often overlooked-your spirit, your self-esteem, your secret life and hidden talents, your dreams, your financial independence, your creative soul.

Given a limited time frame and very limited experience in some areas (I'm not a mother, a runner, or much of a saver), I've done my best to address some basic life skills and employed several "experts" on the subjects I wasn't fit to tackle. My role models were girlfriends with guts. Kristyna, who would rather hand-cement a driveway than watch daytime TV. Emma, who taught herself how to replace a car engine, in heels. Kate, who drove across the United States alone (without a radio!). Karen, who commutes two hours a day to teach the kids of immigrant families. Tina, who sings her sons to sleep with a ukelele. Jessica, who donated the royalties from her bestseller to a charity she loves. Margaret, who thinks nothing of organizing major environmental rallies at age seventy plus. I'm moved by women who approach life with that rare mix of independent thought, constructive action, common sense, and madness. The spirit that animates this outlook is more a matter of discipline than magic. It takes a lot of willpower to make changes to your life, to stick to a goal and be true to your ideals. Sometimes it even feels a little boring. I know, because I'm a lazy dreamer. This book was born, essentially, out of sloth. Inertia drove me to act. An inability to stick to a relaxation program, manage money, or even keep simple promises led to incredible frustration. To escape from the valley of the flakes I found simple answers to complex life problems. I stopped saying yes when I meant no, I tried to get up earlier, I established routines, and, even if I broke them, I attempted to make every day count-be it shifting debt or shaking my rump.

Living with a flaming sense of purpose doesn't apply to everything, of course. Hair, bosses, and love remain unpredictable. Especially love. Applying a five-year plan to relationships or trying to force romance like a bulb out of hard earth is a waste of precious energy. And there's so much misinformation out there when it comes to relationships. Most of it is thinly disguised propaganda urging women to be decorative, toe the line, and marry (rich). Most of it tells us to put our passion and sacred fire into looking happier, younger, and dumber than we are to attract the love who will make us whole. Sheesh! That's precisely the reason why marriage and weddings have been omitted from this book. I hate to burst the bubble, but the aim of getting order into your life isn't to snare a husband. The aim is to be fulfilled and focused, to be enough in your own right, and to learn when to get out of your own way in order to get on with it. If this book can rouse you to sew on a loose button, paint your kitchen violet, open a savings account, call up a long-lost friend, help start a community garden, or even just clean your room-I'll be happy.

Customer Reviews

Smart, funny, usually practical
Let's face it, girls: no amount of book-reading is going to magically transform the person that you naturally are into a cool and collected bombshell who looks like a million dollars in classy heels at all times and says the right thing in every situation, whether she's volunteering at a soup kitchen, breaking up with her partner, or whipping up something truly magnificent for dessert.

That said, it's easy enough to make simple changes to help yourself become more organized, take control of your life, feel more beautiful, improve your skills, and find joy in the simple things.

Anna Johnson's smart and sassy little pink guide is perfect for helping women everywhere do just that. She covers finances, entertaining, spirituality, happiness, tools, wardrobe, friendships, dating, jobs, careers, homes, depression, body image, love, and the responsibility to give back to our world. She's funny, her retro drawings are irresistably cute, and her savvy advice pulls no punches. Read it, think about how it works with who YOU are, and see how much fun you can have.

The fourth "black skirt"
I was given "Three Black Skirts" as a Christmas prez at the end of 1998 - I'm amazed that it's taking this long to get to the American public as, from what I've read of this print, it is the same book. I loved it. Fantastic and realistic, I read this book three times in a row across several less-than-fab evenings when my other mid-week single person options were either the ironing or ( ) telly. I then didn't sight it for the next 4 or so months as it made it's way steadily through a bunch of similarly impressed friends. This book didn't patronise me, it made me laugh. It also gave me my favourite bruschetta recipe as well as practical info about money, relaxing, clothes, compliments and sex. It made my 21-year old self feel good about my body and have a little more of an idea about reasonably scary adult stuff like money management. I know exactly where it is in my bookcase. A great buy.

Realistic advice for improving your life.
This is a book designed for those of us who don't usually read self-help books. Anna Johnson has compiled lots of good, sound advice for getting your life in shape. Among other things, she covers finances, makeup, clothes, home decor, love life, physical health in this one engaging book. For me, the best part of the book was her introduction. Her philosophy is a good one - you're never going to have it all together in all parts of your life so don't feel like a failure every time your house isn't cleaned, you have a junkfood attack or run your hose. Try to do a little better where you can, but don't think you can do it all. This isn't anything new, but Johnson gives it to us with a fresh and modern perspective.

Johnson has relied upon experts for many of the specific topics with generally good results. Each topic is pared down to its bare essentials. Sometimes it's easy to forget that these are just tips, not a must-do list. Don't consider all of her advice to be dogma; many of them are just a reflection of her personal taste and lifestyle. For example, she pooh-poohs waterproof mascara, but for those of us who were contacts and put in a lot of eyedrops, it's essential. Similarly, ignore the rules on clothes and decor if they don't work for you. Everyone has a different figure and no one style of dressing or article of clothing works for everyone. Nevertheless, Johnson's taste is simple and classic, and you can generally feel safe following Johnson's advice to the letter.