Friday 28 June 2013

On not-so-funbags.


This is a topic close to my heart because I have something many women want. Some even go under the knife to achieve what I have been "blessed" with naturally. That's right, big boobs. I can hear all the "yeah that's really something to complain about isn't it”? Well here are some fun facts about big breasts.


·         They're heavy, really fucking heavy.

·         I have been measured for bras countless times and the straps still dig into my shoulders.

·         My back hurts.

·         They hurt!

·         I cannot wear off the rack fitted shirts.

·         Buying bras is quite literally the worst thing ever.

·         Pretty bras are not quite so pretty in that size, they are scary.

·         Big booby bras are much more expensive than small booby bras.

·         Wearing a bikini becomes a hazard for everyone around you.

·         Running.  All the pain.

·         Some people do struggle to look you in the eyes.

·         You will inevitably smack yourself or someone else in the face when dancing.

I bought my first bra with my Grandmother when I was 9. Nope, you did not read that wrong, I was in fact 9 years old. I was a C cup by the time I was 12. That's a lot of boob when you're not even a teenager yet. Nobody prepares you for the day that you're body decides that you're no longer a child when you still very much feel like one.

I would say that I have become used to being a large breasted woman. After many fittings I finally wear the right size bra and therefore get the proper support that I need. I find shirts in certain materials fit better than others; I wear a 50's swimming costume at the beach instead of a bikini and have accepted that some people will just find them nicer to look at than my face.

Still, I wish I could see my bloody feet when I look down!

Thursday 27 June 2013

On being told to shut the hell up (a poem)

You say that I am angry and that I should shut the hell up
That I should sit down and take it as if I were not grown up.

You go around calling me just another feminist
Thinking that I go home and burn my bra but let me insist.

That I am sick of the fear, the leers, the creepy sneers from men
who profess to have my best interests clear.

Telling me I'm so curvy, sexy and not a model size
newsflash I wasn't born to attract you fucking guys.

Now I'm sure you're offended by my use of profanity
like I'm offended by your warped sense of entitled reality.

When you get off the night bus and walk me to my door
saying "hey baby it's not as if I'm actually breaking the law".

I'm sick of the patronising darling's, love's, sweetheart's and more.
No, I will not be fucking quiet anymore.

On what to do with your body hair.

Shave it, wax it, epilate it, hair removal cream, electrolysis, leave it, trim it, don't trim it, put it in a plastic bag and swing it around your head for all I care.

There is of course pressure on women to remove all body hair and we should all stay strong and not give into patriarchal standards of beauty. Or perhaps we should just let people do whatever the fuck they want to do, I mean at least when it comes to something as trivial as body hair.

There should be no shame in keeping your hair just like there should be no shame if you choose to remove it. As long as you are doing it because you honestly want to. If you're doing it for someone else and you find it tiresome then do yourself a favour and stop. It will save you a considerable amount of money and time.

My personal preference is to remove and I find it patronising when people tell me I'm doing it for someone other than me. I'm really not, I find it a lot more comfortable, I really genuinely do. However in the winter I will let my leg hair grow because I struggle to be bothered when I'm going to be wearing tights ALL OF THE TIME!!! I especially like it when little hairs stick out of the tights, gives me a right old giggle on the train into work.

Please, I beg of you, be selfish, do what YOU want to do!

Wednesday 26 June 2013

On attempting to find humour in my disordered eating.


This is a subject I am somewhat struggling to write about. I want to be sensitive yet still let my sense of humour shine through. Because that's partly what has got me through many of the things that life has thrown at me, my sense of humour. Not because I don't take these things seriously but because I have finally learnt the importance of laughing at myself. Now I do it all the time! I've just started a series of photos on Instagram where I will pull a funny face every day with the tag #faceoftheday. At no point would I ever laugh at anyone else or their situation this is simply what I have done for me, only me.

What does all this have to do with eating disorders then? Well since I was very young I have had disordered eating. It has verged from today's occasional "oh I'm hungry, I'll have a black coffee as that's only 2 calories" to my younger days where I would starve myself and then purge. My fingers became well acquainted with the back of my throat as did my head with the ground whenever I fainted. I also successfully managed to stop my periods. Today I also don't have periods but that's down to the marvel of birth control, not starving myself. Right now that I've informed the Internet about my lack of monthly bleeding I think it's time to move on. 

Did I do these things purely because I wanted to be thin? There were many things around me that I couldn't control so you could argue that I controlled food instead, lovingly holding onto that painful feeling of a truly empty stomach. Of course this is partially true but I did and still do to this day long to be thin. Intellectually I know that I'm not fat, I have big breasts and an ever expanding bottom but no I am not strictly speaking fat. Thinking about it rationally I see myself as ridiculous for craving to be a size that I can't easily adhere to. Especially as I do now love food, earnestly revelling in its deliciousness. Watching me eat must be an absolute delight. You're welcome!

Of course when I was younger and in the full grips of an eating disorder it was not funny, not even in the slightest. The lasting effect it may have left on my body is also not funny, neither is the sense of shame I still feel after eating. Actually that's a little funny, shame? After eating? Think about it. Although as a woman I do have to ask myself if the desperation to be thin was something that was in part imposed on me. I remember seeing my tiny mother staring into the mirror and calling herself fat. I, the ever pudgy child with what to this day still looks like a small pregnancy belly kept wondering "well then, what am I?" Do I blame her for my dysmorphic view of myself?  No, of course not. But I do partially blame a society and its media for the pressure it has put on us to be thin. As it still doesn't seem to matter to my emotional self what my logical self knows, that I do not need to change.

Tuesday 25 June 2013

On discovering that I am in fact a narcissist.

I'm not sure when it finally hit me, that I am in fact a narcissist. Maybe it was when I gave in and started a blog, a blog which is essentially about me. Or when I realised that I have Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter also all dedicated to me and my interests. My Instagram is of course filled with pictures of MY shoes, MY cat, the food I eat and MY pouty face. I mean if I'm going to do it I should at least do it right, right?! Perhaps it was something that should have hit me while spending endless hours with a therapist talking about me and my problems? Did I ever ask him about his problems? No, I'm so rude!! Or it could have been the fact that I just spent about an hour pondering whether or not I'm actually self-obsessed. Spoiler alert! I think I might be. Shit!

In this day and age of social networking have we all just come to accept our self-obsession? Are we more obsessed with others? Are others more obsessed with us? Are we in fact all burgeoning narcissists? Do I still have a pot of chilli in the freezer? Wait...what??

Perhaps some of us have always been this way and the Internet just finally gave us a way to let it out? Some people even you know like it, Facebook like it even. Some people have become immensely famous because of just who they are not just what they've done. It's an excellent platform for modern day feminism and LGBTQ campaigns, it's also an excellent platform for people to spew hatred and bile all over well pretty much anything they can find to do it on. Just please don't spew any bile my way, my shoes are far too pretty!


Now, where DID I leave that chilli?

Monday 24 June 2013

When I was a boy - Dar Williams





I won't forget when Peter Pan came to my house, took my hand
I said I was a boy; I'm glad he didn't check.
I learned to fly, I learned to fight
I lived a whole life in one night
We saved each other's lives out on the pirate's deck.

And I remember that night
When I'm leaving a late night with some friends
And I hear somebody tell me it's not safe,
someone should help me
I need to find a nice man to walk me home.

When I was a boy, I scared the pants off of my mom,
Climbed what I could climb upon
And I don't know how I survived,
I guess I knew the tricks that all boys knew.

And you can walk me home, but I was a boy, too.

I was a kid that you would like, just a small boy on her bike
Riding topless, yeah, I never cared who saw.
My neighbor come outside to say, "Get your shirt,"
I said "No way, it's the last time I'm not breaking any law."

And now I'm in this clothing store, and the signs say less is more
More that's tight means more to see, more for them, not more for me
That can't help me climb a tree in ten seconds flat

When I was a boy, See that picture? That was me
Grass-stained shirt and dusty knees
And I know things have gotta change,
They got pills to sell, they've got implants to put in,
they've got implants to remove

But I am not forgetting...that I was a boy too

And like the woods where I would creep, it's a secret I can keep
Except when I'm tired, 'cept when I'm being caught off guard
And I've had a lonesome awful day, the conversation finds its way
To catching fire-flies out in the backyard.

And so I tell the man I'm with about the other life I lived
And I say, "Now you're top gun, I have lost and you have won"
And he says, "Oh no, no, can't you see

When I was a girl, my mom and I we always talked
And I picked flowers everywhere that I walked.
And I could always cry, now even when I'm alone I seldom do
And I have lost some kindness
But I was a girl too.
And you were just like me, and I was just like you

Where to start, my first ramble.

I was born in Finland (yes I got one of them bad boy boxes BBC News was on about recently) and subsequently grew up in Sweden to a Swedish father and English mother. I have two passports which basically just makes it easier for me to lose passports.

After a rather traumatic divorce I was shipped off to Newcastle at the tender age of 15 to live with my mother. The culture shock between Gothenburg and Newcastle could not get any bigger. On top of which I couldn't understand a word anyone was saying. This led to many confusions, for at least a month I thought people were saying "I can't be asked" instead of "I can't be arsed". To be fair, neither makes much sense.

I suppose I should have seen my parents divorce coming, I mean, they barely spoke to each other and when they did it was louder than other parents seemed to speak to each other. Yet as a child I was still blindsided by it all. My father immediately engaged in a whirlwind romance with his future wife which left us all a touch wounded. I desperately wanted my mother around but she was studying for her MA in London. At the time I didn't realise quite how much she was doing it for me, without it she wouldn't have been able to provide for me when I moved over to live with her. She always did most things for me, I didn't deserve it, I was a bloody nightmare (still am probably).

So back to the story, new beginning in Newcastle. This meant a new school and that was hella different from going to school in Sweden. Gone was the mutual respect between students and teachers, gone was wearing whatever I wanted to school, gone was being treated as an adult. Everything I knew or thought I knew was completely turned upside down and it was utterly terrifying. They assumed I couldn't speak English so I found myself in the bottom sets for everything. This was swiftly altered but I still had to stay in the lower set classrooms. I've never seen a group of young minds be treated which quite such contempt before. Then again, I'd never seen a teacher treated with such contempt before either. It was a chicken/egg thing I guess, still for me it was disheartening. I began my school journey by telling off the History teacher who's version of teaching World War II was more than a little skewed. I of course thought I knew everything at the time and gave him a piece of my mind, never have been good at keeping my mouth closed when others do. When he told me that he believed that history should be taught from a persons point of view I swiftly retorted with "I'm pretty sure that's against the law". I did not know whether it was or not but it felt like it ought to be, I still feel that history should be taught the way it happened not the way you personally believe it happened. This did seem to garner me some respect and I was never again asked to take my piercings out so that felt like a small personal victory for me.

In the end I learnt to understand what people were saying and slowly fit in to my surroundings. That was until I fucked it up by kissing a boy my friend liked. She eventually forgave me, I think, she won't let me add her on Facebook.

A shitty introduction by a confused individual.

Well hello there!

So this is my blog. MY blog with all things about ME. I feel a little narcissistic now. I've also just spent 3 minutes staring at the word "narcissistic" and wondering whether I've spelled it correctly. Yes I've heard of spell-check before.

So, how does one start one of these things? I guess you're supposed to say what you're blog will be about. I'm not really sure what my blog will be about.

I like street fashion a lot and have what can be described as an unhealthy obsession with Japan..It might have some photos of me in it, some pretty clothes that I own, some cool shoes etc. I might put pictures of friends on here if they let me. I will probably write about feminism and LGBT rights as well as re-post/link to stuff that other people have written (probably a lot better than I) about the above topics. I'm quite partial to certain kinds of art and have a fondness for the V&A. I love music rather a lot so there might be some of that in there. I particularly like punk music and enjoy going to gigs where I inevitably get covered in someone else's beer. I usually drink mine, sometimes I miss my mouth though.

So well here goes......