Love Yourself

I spent a very large part of my life hating myself- in fact to this day, I still have days where I can’t stand to look in the mirror. It’s not even solely about my appearance, to an extent that would be easier to deal with; it’s also about me as a person; I have always found myself annoying, vain, selfish and simply an unlikeable/ undesirable person.

However one of my main goals to accomplish while I’m seventeen is to learn to love myself- considerably the most important lesson a girl needs to learn before she grows up. I am aware that there is still a far way to go before I truly reach self- assurance, however I have noticed a massive change in myself due to the changes I’ve made and hope maybe they will help you to begin this same journey. So here we go...

1.      1)  Eat right- and by this I don’t mean live on kale and cook everything in coconut oil, although both of those things are a part of it. Take care of yourself and eat healthily and sensibly, don’t eat right before going to bed and choose a salad over pasta every now and then. But then also let yourself eat a bowl of ice-cream with the X-Factor or eat a pizza at a sleepover. The key is to neither restrict or over indulge; you don’t have to deny yourself what you enjoy, because that’s just as bad as eating it all the time. Just listen to what your body needs and then on the occasions it wants a treat, let it have one- just don’t take the treat too far.

2.       2) Exercise- you don’t have to run a marathon but just choosing to walk to school once or twice a week will ultimately make you feel better. The exercise will release endorphins which are the happy chemicals- just look at Mo Farah, he’s always smiling.

3.      3) Date yourself. This may sound sad at first but dating myself is the best idea I’ve ever had. You don’t necessarily have to take yourself on a candlelit dinner to achieve this; just have lunch alone every once in a while or take half an hour a day to really think and get to know yourself without any distractions. I especially like to go shopping alone and then grab lunch at a coffee shop- there’s something therapeutic about reading a book to the smell of freshly ground coffee.

4.     4) Give yourself credit. This is one I’m still trying to master but so far I have learned that there is a massive difference between humility and self-depreciation however it is a line easily crossed. Be proud of your accomplishments and relish in the praise, just give credit where it’s due.

5.      5) Treat yourself. Slightly different to food but in the same vein. One of my best investments is pretty underwear- it just makes me feel good about myself even though no-one can see it. Whether your thing is makeup, clothes or even something completely unrelated- just find something that makes you feel confident and invest in it.

6.      6) Be honest with yourself. If that means admitting your favourite jeans are too small now or that you could have tried harder on the test- being honest with yourself just allows you to create goals for you to achieve that will be rewarded with a feeling of pride and general happiness.

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            7) Surround yourself with good people. Remove negative energy and surround yourself with love and eventually the love they have for you will catch on to you. Friends and family are a priceless resource that will change your whole perspective, choose wisely and they will cause you to forget all of your unhealthy inhibitions and insecurities.

8.      8) Capture the good memories. Whether you keep a diary, take endless photos or make a playlist for every occasion, just find something that allows you to revisit the happier times on your bad days.

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       9) Find a hobby- having something productive to occupy your time when you feel like shit will always help to pull you out of a bad mood. How can you feel insignificant, talentless or worthless  when you just crocheted an Eeyore?

And finally, the most important lesson of all- embrace the bad days. You’re stuck with them so use them to your advantage; find what makes you feel bad and fix the problem, whether that means changing your lifestyle, job or bad relationship and if the bad feelings don’t change, use them to your advantage until they do, some of the world’s greatest creations were born from the worst of experiences.

Lipstick and Feminism

I am sick of being underestimated. People assume that because I love high heels and doing my make-up is my favourite part of the day, that I am somehow lesser than them. I am tired of having people think I’m stupid or ignorant to the world around me just because I enjoy classically feminine pastimes. Time and time again I have been told to “not talk about things I don’t understand” or to “stop pretending to be smart” all because I take genuine pleasure from shopping as well as having an interest in activism for equal rights. 

Worst of all, many of these comments come from other women. To an extent I can forgive a man who may subconsciously feel better informed or superior to me- that is down to the subliminal sexist messages and gender roles society has educated them in since birth. It’s not right but it is understandable. However, what I cannot understand is the messages I receive from women who are of equal age, if not older, telling me to not play ‘feminist’ just because Taylor Swift made it cool- they try to tell me that by conforming to certain elements of gender norms, that I am not worthy of the title ‘feminist’. 

Was it not Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who wrote a whole article on this very argument? That a woman can be interested in fashion and her appearance without it at all affecting her intelligence or of her part in the movement of gender equality? We no longer live in a work where the only way to take on the patriarchy is to defy it completely. We fight so that we can make our own choices based on our own interests and beliefs- how can we expect to be given the rights to this freedom by men when we are still refusing to give each other this right? 

Women did not die for you to tell me that I am oppressed my MAC palette. They died for me to have the choice to vote, to get an education and to have my own job. Because of them I am going to university and travelling the world instead of starting a family and running a household. Because of the suffragettes I am able to write a novel without needing a pseudonym, because of them another woman can be a stay at home mother and because of them a woman can be prime-minister and still love her red lipstick.

Slut. Whore. Vain. Self-absorbed. Narcissistic. Bitchy. We give each other these labels then expect men to stop labelling us in the same way- the only way we can win this fight against the patriarchy is if we stop enforcing it ourselves. Until women- hating is dead in the water, the patriarchy will continue as it always has. 

So for future notice- I will carry on winging my eyeliner and wearing dresses while I continue to fight for equality of the genders. And I will crush the patriarchy under every step of my Louboutin heels.

We Need Feminism

“Why do we even need feminism?”

There’s only one way to answer a question like that.

We need feminism because the bra strap of a 13 year-old makes her 45 year old maths teacher uncomfortable. We need feminism because when my 7 year old cousin came home with a black eye, the school excused it by saying “boys will be boys”. We need feminism because there are countries where young girls are mutilated for the crime of being born a woman. We need feminism because women are still objectified by men and treated as prizes in order to demonstrate dominance. We need feminism because people still believe that a woman’s appearance is more important than any other of her qualities. We need feminism because young girls are shot for trying to obtain an education. We need feminism because trans-women are still being told that they aren't “really women”. We need feminism because the most offensive thing you could tell a child is that they are “like a girl”. We need feminism because gender roles are still forced upon us. We need feminism because every day young girls are being married to men three times their age. We need feminism because girls are constantly forced into competition with one another. We need feminism because young girls are still being solved into the sex and slavery trade. We need feminism because women are judged for the same activities that men are praised for.

I am aware of how privileged I am. I am a white, cis-gendered; heterosexual from a middle class background in a first world country- I am extremely lucky. I have never been abused for my skin colour, or the people I love- I have never gone hungry- I have never been threatened by societies expectations of me. However I am a woman, which means that I am at a disadvantage in the world’s patriarchal society. However because of all of the other attributes I have on my side, I am not faced with the worse end of the bargain and because of these advantages in the first world many other people are convinced that “we don’t need feminism”. And to some extent they’re right, in the society I live in I am not worse off- I can get an education, I am not forced into marrying an older man and I am not threatened with FGM daily.

However there are women who are threatened with these things. There are women who are killed for defending their basic rights as human beings. There are trans-gendered women who can’t even use the bathroom designated to women. Girls are turned into sex objects and forced into industries that promote their sexualisation. But these women don’t have a position to voice their problems; they aren't at as high an advantage as women like myself and many of you. Why would you waste that advantage by not fighting for you fellow females and their rights to the benefits that we have? These women don’t have the platform that we have. By fighting the problems we are faced with like the objectification, health and rape of women we are able to slowly raise awareness to the sexism of our society and the patriarchy we live under and once that has been accomplished we can apply this on a much wider, more revolutionary way. We need to fix the immediate problems in order to gain the power to fix the global problem.

We must follow in the footsteps of Maya Angelou, of Virginia Woolf, of Malala Yousafzai. These incredible women have given us a spark, a starting point, a platform for change and now we must use it.