You ARE Ready!!

This morning, whilst I was browsing Twitter from an account I co-run, I stumbled upon the above tweet.  I stared at it for a while, with a look of confusion on my face.  Granted, it wasn't even six thirty in the morning and confusion is basically the only look you're going to get from me at that kind of hour, but even long after I was up and getting on with my day, the general feeling of "EH?!" remained.

Because you guys, I have a pair of legs.  And Spring has literally never affected them.  Ever. 

The only preparation I have ever done, in the event of warmer weather finally arriving, is to shave my legs if I'm wearing a skirt/dress/shorts and to slap on a bit of sun cream if necessary.  Is that really worthy of an entire magazine article?! 

The short answer to that is no, of course it flipping isn't.  But magazines like Vogue don't make any money out of going "hey, don't forget the Factor 30 on a sunny day."  They make their cash by promoting a particular standard of beauty, which women should all supposedly aspire to, despite it being entirely unrealistic.  They make their money by filling their pages with adverts for expensive products, then printing articles that makes their readers think they desperately need those products.  Hence you'll find some ludicrous piece entitled "Ladies, Make Sure Your Nostrils Are Party Ready, This Season!" nestled close to a full page, glossy ad for some crazily expensive nose-hair trimmers.

And whilst men's magazines do have articles pertaining to a particular standard of attractiveness that guys are supposed to work towards, it's fair to say that this weird cry of "IS YOUR BODY READY FOR EASTER FRIDAY?!" and so on, is a peculiarly female thing.  Ask yourself: have you ever seen an article asking men if their legs are ready for Spring?

I've ranted about this stuff before, but I feel like it's something I will be forced to keep coming back to, as long as this idiocy continues.  Because that's what it is: idiocy.

If you have legs and it's Spring where you are, guess what?  Your legs are Spring-ready.

Do you have a body?  Are you capable of taking it to a beach?  Congratulations, you're beach-body-ready.

And so on and so on for all eternity.

Look, there's nothing wrong with enjoying making yourself look and feel good.  There's nothing wrong with choosing to read make up tips or fashion magazines, if that's what you want to do.  But there is a whole world of wrong when it comes to forcing total nonsense on women and making them feel like they might not be good enough if they're not some airbrushed, perfectly contoured, size zero waif with this season's correct armpit-colour.

You are ready.  

Right now.  

You are good enough.  If you want to lose some weight, go for it.  If you feel like doing some kind of detox or arranging an exercise plan, that's great.  But do those things for you and your own health.  Don't do them because some overpriced, glossy rag is telling you that you need to in order to be valid as a person.  

Take your body to a beach, no matter what your body looks like.  Enjoy Spring, regardless of the state of your flaming legs.  

Whatever you look like, whoever you are, YOU are ready.

Never let a magazine stuffed full of photoshopped models tell you any different.

Let's Talk About Beauty...

 

"I'd date Belle because she saw the beauty within the beast.  She knows it's what's inside that counts." - Phil Lester

I've been thinking a lot about beauty, lately.  And no, not just because my "pictures" file on my laptop is steadily filling up with Phil Lester's face (although also very much because of that).  

What set it off was stumbling across a photo on Facebook, which featured my former real-life crush.  I looked at him and realised that - and bear with me here, because this may sound like one major backhanded compliment - his looks weren't necessarily what mainstream media likes to tell us is stereotypically attractive, but that I found him utterly gorgeous, based on who he was as a person.  

I'm not saying he wasn't physically appealing.  He had (and I'm assuming still has) beautiful, big blue eyes and a very sweet smile.  But his real beauty, as with all of us, came from within.  I thought his smile was cute, but I thought the love he had for his family and friends was beautiful.  I thought his eyes were lovely, but I thought his cheeky sense of humour was even lovelier.

It's become something of a cliche to say that beauty comes from within, but it's absolutely true.  Only the most shallow of people could see a gorgeous person acting cruelly and still prioritise their looks over their behaviour.  The most stunningly beautiful exterior is useless if it's hiding an ugly soul.

So, it stands to reason that the opposite is true.  A person who we might think of as average-looking can quickly become almost perfect in our eyes, if they're kind, funny and caring.  The inside of a person starts to shine out and we see them for them, rather than as merely their face and body.  

That's actually what happened in the case of my number one celebrity crush (Phil Lester; come on guys, where have you been the last few months?!).  At first, he was just "the darker haired one" from Dan & Phil.  Then, he was the "funny, really sweet one."  Then he was the "funny, really sweet and incredibly thoughtful one."  Only after I discovered more about him and learned what sort of a person he is (or at least, what his Internet persona is), did he go from being "the darker haired one," to being "the most gorgeous human being on the planet."  Don't get me wrong, Phil was gorgeous to begin with, but I didn't see it properly until I realised that he was also a sensitive soul, a creative force and a total and utter weirdo (I say that with love and as a fellow weirdo, so it's cool).

MOOSE HAT.  Your argument is invalid.

Of course, I say all of this as someone whose own looks have never been anything close to being stereotypically beautiful.  My nose is too big, my chin is too pointy, I have ridiculously curly hair, I'm incredibly short and my belly sticks out at the moment, because I recently discovered "Golden Oreos."

And I do awkward rock-horns in photos with alarming regularity.

The thing is, the older I get, the more I'm starting to realise that literally none of that matters.  Would I like my hair to be manageable and for all the Oreos I consume to be entirely fat-free?  Yes.  But would I change who I actually am inside?  No.  Because, without getting all Christina Aguilera on your asses, I am beautiful, no matter what they say.  

It's absolutely fine to worry about things like doing our hair and make up nicely, or wearing a really good outfit if we're going somewhere special.  But it's also absolutely fine to not care a jot about any of that stuff, if you don't want to.  Equally, it's fine to acknowledge someone's good looks and find yourself attracted to a person based on their physical appearance.  We just all need to be better at remembering that the outer shell is just that; the outside packaging.  And the packaging only goes so far.  Eventually, we have to realise that a person isn't just their eye colour, hair style or bra size.  It's about their humour, their warmth, their empathy and their ideas.  Looks fade over time, but a beautiful soul will stay that way forever.

And if you're sitting there, thinking "this is all well and good, but I'm ugly, so nobody's going to bother getting to know my beautiful soul," then let me stop you right there. 

You might think you're ugly, but I can absolutely guarantee you that there are plenty of people in the world who don't.  How do I know?  Because for years (and I mean years), I thought I was the ugliest girl on the planet.  Nowadays, whilst I don't look in the mirror and see a total stunner, I don't see someone hideous, either.  I see someone who tries to be kind to others.  I see a weirdo with a strange sense of humour (and I like that about myself!).  I see someone who will always be there for her loved ones.  Those are the things that make me beautiful, regardless of whether anyone else can see it.

SELF CONFIDENCE CONFETTI PARADE!

It makes sense to me to end this blog with a quote that is often attributed to Audrey Hepburn, but which I think I'm right in saying she actually borrowed from a poem/letter and used in a speech, hence everyone thinking it was hers in the first place.  Regardless of whoever came up with it, this pretty much perfectly sums up my belief that real beauty will always come from within, no matter what we look like on the outside:

"For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others.

For beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness.

And for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone."

Beauty is more than just skin deep.  

Beauty comes from the soul.

Why "The World's Ugliest Woman" Should Be A Lesson To Us All.

Screenshot of the original BBC blog.

Last weekend, my dad sent me a BBC blog he knew I would be interested in.  The blog, which formed part of the BBC's "Ouch" - an exploration of the disability world -  was about a lady called Lizzie Velasquez.  Lizzie was was born with two very rare medical conditions - Marfan and lipodystrophy.  It means that no matter how much she eats, she is unable to gain weight and at the age of 26, she weighs just 60lbs (just under 4st 3lbs).  She is visually impaired and has suffered a number of health complaints as a result of her condition.

At the age of seventeen, Lizzie stumbled upon a video on YouTube, purporting to show "The World's Ugliest Woman."  She was horrified to discover that the unwitting subject of the eight-second video was her.  The clip had over 4 million views and the comments were, frankly, despicable.

They say "never read the comments" and with good reason.  But, having found herself the subject of such a cruel piece of public shaming, Lizzie read every single one - and there were thousands.  They ranged from people telling her to kill herself, to others wondering why her parents would possibly have kept her.

Reading Lizzie's story was profoundly moving but, sadly, not shocking.  The words that kept her awake at night are words I am all too familiar with, myself.  

"Go home and kill yourself, you ugly freak."

"You're so disgusting, nobody is ever going to love you."

"Your parents must be ashamed to have created something so hideous."

These were words I heard on a daily basis.  Spoken to my face, by the same people who spent their daily bus journeys to and from school, playing games where they'd spit in my general direction and see who got the most phlegm on me.  People who'd sit at the back of the bus and scream vile insults at me, in the hope that I'd turn around, so they could see whether I was crying or not.  The ringleader - Stephen - would come and sit next to me, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and speaking his cruel words in a soft, gentle tone, which somehow made them all the more damaging.  "I'm saying this to be kind.  Killing yourself is the kindest thing to do.  Your parents won't have the shame of such an ugly freak of a daughter, then.  And you'll be free from all of this.  Because it'll only ever get worse.  Nobody's going to stop, because you'll always be disgusting."

And that was how I ended up with a school tie around my neck, attached to the shower rail, hoping that when I stepped off the edge of the bath, everything would go black and it would all be over. 

I was thirteen years old.

It didn't all go black.  It wasn't all over.  And at the time, I was mortified.  I took a handful of Paracetamol tablets - probably no more than four or five - before I realised that I didn't want to die.  I just wanted it to stop.  I wanted to be referred to by my name, rather than a succession of insults.  I wanted to be seen and treated as a person, rather than as an "it."

"It's crying!  Look at it!"

Lizzie Velasquez says that her parents love and support enabled her to think positively and hold her head up high, despite the daily bullying she endured at school.  Incredibly, she even says that she "happily forgives" the person who made the YouTube video, which makes her a better, stronger woman than I could ever hope to be, because I don't forgive Stephen and his friends.  I can't.  They killed the confident, happy, bright young girl I was and replaced her with a woman who still - nearly twenty years later - looks in the mirror and all too often sees someone ugly.  Lizzie has an incredible strength that I can only dream of possessing.

Lizzie decided to channel her efforts into making a difference.  She set up her own YouTube channel, to explain who the person behind the "World's Ugliest Woman" title really was.  She began trying to teach others to be confident in who they are, regardless of what they look like.  Her channel makes for some truly inspirational viewing and I recommend it to you all.  She is, along with the mother of Megan Meier (a teenager who took her own life after enduring bullying online) campaigning for an Anti-Bullying Bill, which would allow all schools funds with which to form anti-bullying programmes and which would mean that all instances of bullying would have to be officially recorded.  Her life and work were recently celebrated in a documentary.

Think about that, for a moment.  A woman who could have been broken by society's obsession with looking a certain way, has instead channelled her energy into helping others.  That makes her more beautiful than any bully could ever hope to be.  It's a cliche, but it's true to say that real beauty shines from within.  It's not just skin-deep.  Lizzie Velasquez, with her tireless efforts to support those experiencing bullying, is an absolutely beautiful person.

We could all learn a lot from her.  We should all be standing up to bullying, because picking on others because they don't look the way we want them to is an appalling way to behave.  Picking on someone for any reason is deplorable.  We don't have the right to break down a person's spirit.  We don't have the right to enforce our values on anyone else.  Everyone has the right to live their lives happily and freely, without being harassed, spat on or called names.

I am incredibly grateful that the Internet didn't exist when I was being bullied.  It meant that I was able to go home to a safe place, where I could try to push the cruel words out of my head.  Had YouTube or Facebook, Twitter etc existed back then, I'm certain I'd have been found online and my safe place would have been destroyed.

Now, it does exist.  And whilst the Internet is an amazing place, it also means that the bullying that many young people encounter is no longer restricted to school buses or classrooms.  It's in their homes.  It's on their phones.  It's inescapable.

But whilst that makes bullying harder to tackle, it shouldn't mean that we don't try.  We need to speak with one voice and say that enough is enough.  That we don't stand for people being bullied and put down, for any reason.  That we want to encourage young people to be accepting of others, regardless of whether or not they meet societal standards of so-called "beauty."  We need to be teaching those young people to love themselves just the way they are, regardless of the ridiculous (usually photoshopped) images of "perfection" the media bombards them with.

Or, to put it another way: We all need to learn to be a little more like Lizzie.