Who Is Mag Flash – And Why Are They Saying All Those Awful Things About Her?

About to leave to meet up with her four sisters in town for the youngest one’s latest birthday bash of the week, my wife had a last-minute fashion quandary: 

“Which coat should I wear?” she asked me, sitting as I was at the kitchen table with a coffee.

Just call me Jean Paul (Gaultier) in moments such as these, such is A’s trust in my expertise on delicate matters of style, colour and impact. Well, she does ask me to back up her own opinion sometimes.

Now I also value my continued harmonious co-existence with this woman, so I usually aim to be diplomatic. Even if I have to balance this with honesty.

When someone has been living with you for well over a quarter-century they know when you’re reaching for tactful obfuscation. Otherwise known as lying for reasons of self-preservation

On A’s left arm she balanced a dazzling, multi-coloured Joanne Hynes coat; across her right was draped a beautifully cut, elegant but quite formal navy outer garment, it’s only dash towards flamboyance the cute glittery silver buttons.

The dress A was wearing already had a lot going on, colour and detail wise, so the question was: would the Joanne Hynes number be too much, the other, more subtle outer garment better to bring out the dress’s detail, completing the package, as it were.

We were both leaning towards Joanne, and then A voiced the eternal killer question: “But is it a bit Mag Flash?”

Ah, our old friend Mag Flash. First introduced to A by her mother back when A was a vivacious teenager, well known in her family for her desire to strike a pose or two. The parade up to do the reading at Mass was an opportunity grabbed to unveil her latest show-stopper, while it was look out boys, here I come, as A hit the dancefloor in Banna, after she and her older sister had furtively changed into proper going out out gear beyond the house, their high-heels sparking up the boreen as they shrieked and skipped between the cowpats all the way to the party bus.

Mag Flash was the fictitious personage her mother had introduced early enough, a character whose purpose was to warn against sartorial excess, compounded by a reckless disregard for co-ordination or subtlety. I don’t know if A’s mum actually invented Mag Flash, but she lives on in A’s imagination. 

Now in fairness, Mag is more of a yardstick now, and a built in curb on possible fashion faux pas. Besides, she has never stopped my A from wearing what she wants, or feeling that precious joy she exudes when she examines her latest capture, either in the shop, or when it arrives by eagerly shredded postal package. 

Just who is Mag Flash anyway?

And who got to decide if what she wore was over the top anyway? 

I’m thinking now of the little girl who clops across the bedroom floor in her mother’s high heels and breaks open her mother’s make-up box. She preens and pouts in wide-eyed, illicit abandon into the dressing-table mirror as she applies as much glorious blusher, eye shadow and cosmetic enhancers as her tiny face will allow.

Her mother comes in, and if the child is five or under, maybe, mama might interrupt the ensuing tirade to gush at this vision of innocent cuteness. If the miscreant is older, she will likely endure the full Irish mommy scolding, as she is marched into the bathroom to have the experimental composition removed and her face scrubbed into pink-faced propriety.

Is this yet another of Eve’s trials with guilt guaranteed: the child’s desire to be as pretty as can be and revel in the process of enhancement by lotion, cream and lipstick is smiled at when she is considered cute, and then frowned at when the dauber has crossed beyond a threshold determined by others? 

And now I’m thinking of Lyra, the wonderfully over the top and exuberant singer who was on our Late Late talkshow at the weekend. Nothing seemed real or day to day in what she was wearing, and hair and make-up must have taken an age to prepare and complete, as she belted out her co-ordinated tune before the interview with host Patrick Kielty, watched with wonder by the delightful Marian Keyes, novelist and national treasure.

Lyra sat down and she opened her mouth and out came this wonderfully unpretentious exuberant Cork lilt, as she revelled in the attention and blushed in girlish delight at Keyes’ awe-struck compliments and exhortations to stay true to herself, her unabashed presentation positively ignoring the admonitions or judgments of others. Please yourself, and only then will you please others seemed to be the message. 

She sat perkily upright as she talked, looking for all the world like a grown-up version of that girl who loved to raid her mother’s make-up box.

The singer acknowledged that a number of the tracks on her debut album were about her ex-boyfriend, who she hadn’t spoken to since he dumped her over the phone: 

“There is a good few [songs] about him,” she giggled in her impossibly strong rural accent. “I haven’t got the phone call. 

“The last time that fella rang me was to dump me over the phone so he’s been blocked since that.”

There was a serious side to it too, as she told Kielty about record company pressure to lose weight and look a certain way — and how these days she’s thrilled to reject any attempt at body shaming her: 

“I’m going to put these thigh-high boots on, I’m taking the long road. I’m going to have a good old bacon sandwich and I’m going to go hell for leather.”

“I just wish I was you,” gushed Keyes.

“It’s hard work getting into [the outfits],” Lyra continued. “I’d be bate into them. There’s about three sucky-in knickers underneath there and literally the boob tape doesn’t work anymore. It is sore, it is so sore, you’d have scrapes and marks all down you, it’s not for the fainthearted. But it’s so much fun.”

Kielty just howled with admiring laughter. 

As I did too

Mag Flash’s revenge, or what?

And, I am delighted to add, Joanne Hynes proudly exited our house to hit the town.