Scantily clad and totally rad.

                                                                   Source via

Slut shaming is wrong in whichever context you put it. Whether it be to class a woman as undignified based on sexual history, desires and choices or on the clothing she wears it is an unfair judgement on her way of being that really isn't reversed for the other gender. The sexual revolution has perhaps not come to its conclusion in that rather than being liberated women are merely encouraged to behave and dress provocatively but are then ridiculed and debased for doing so in some bizarre and unjust game of double standards. The media says to wear a mini skirt, and society (whilst perpetuating the content of the media) passes judgement for any woman or girl who decides that they really do like the scantily dressed fashion item. The amount of people a woman sleeps with is becoming less of a cause for discrimination because, like, get over it, but the sexualised fashion making its way down to girls as young as 12 is a little more concerning.

There is a more psychological issue running right along side our slut shaming scandal which brings to light the reasons behind the fashion choices women and girls make. A young girl is the only person making the conscious choice to wear a revealing crop top and hot pants which is totally rad if that makes her comfortable but, when looking at it a different way, a horrible example of the mass insecurity supplied by media and society both to sexualise girls in particular.

For some reason, most boys do not feel it necessary to wear as little as possible to parties where they will find a majority of the girls with skirts riding just below their buttocks. Sexuality for boys, whilst full of its own concerns, is not quite as dramatically enforced as sexuality for girls is shoved into the faces of TV watchers, newspaper readers and internet users every single day. The power of female sexuality may have something to do with femininity and the mystic hold it seems to have over both the possessor and the onlooker and when one is comfortable with said sexuality a short skirt and an attractive demeanour can be totally killer. But the horrible feeling I have when I see a young girl clad in nothing but a bralet and short skirt is that this girl is not really meaning for the whole world to be watching as the skirt rides up, or her cleavage squeezes as the bralet bunches together. Sometimes I worry that this girl has seen one too many popular music videos and suffers from low self esteem because glossy magazines scream at her to lose weight and get a tan and get toned and wax everywhere possible. So this girl wears near to nothing to feel the gaze of men (and women) on her, to know that some men will look at her hungrily and to feel appreciated for the perfectly formed body which each day is devalued and criticised for not looking inhuman, all to fill a hole in her confidence. This girl is probably only 14.

This is not to say that wearing provocative clothing is always a sad thing. Sometimes it's thrilling to wear short shorts, sometimes it feels empowering and pleasant to know that you are attractive to people in the immediate vicinity and sometimes being scantily clad is a choice of a self confident woman who enjoys the attention just for the rush it gives her.

What is desperately important to stress is that in both circumstances a woman cannot be called a slut for wearing revealing clothing. It means nothing in the way of describing who they are, but it is detrimental all the same. There is no need for a public ban on hot pants (I for one would heartily oppose such a thing) but there is definitely a need for a review on how women are portrayed. Sexualisation by itself is not wrong but sexualisation forced onto all members of society, including young children, in a visually violent and often distasteful manner through a vast section of media causing a whole wave of self hate and misplaced respect is almost disgusting.

Flow like water. Dance, dance, dance.

(source: bohemianswift via: humorking)

Life can be exhilarating. Surprisingly, the short bursts of exhilaration in betwixt monotonous and droning existence do not always come from adrenaline inducing activities or momentous occasions but from the buzzing of a brain that has long sat waiting in a kind of stupor as life was passing by.

Like electricity shooting through your veins life can sometimes randomly give you a natural high, a short lived but wonderful whirring experience of cluttered fast thinking and a sharp sting to a heart that has been living untouched and simply beating in hibernation. The sharp sting is not one of pain, but one of exhilarating enthusiasm pulsing energy into limbs and thoughts and senses. Suddenly, from what was seeming a dull reality comes from nowhere a speeding rush of feeling. The art and love around you you were trying desperately to cling to and make something of is now inspiring and fires ideas and passions into your heart and head in a flurry of activity. You want to do, you want to be. You have to use up the energy you can feel humming in your hands, sticky and heavy like clay you have a weighted desire to be busy with life.

But nothing makes sense. No words are actually going to come to your brain yet, it's too excited by this rush, this force. The awful thing about this is that you mustn't grab onto the feeling, for the exhilaration will slip through your fingers like sand and leave you feeling hollow with the effort of making it mean something. And so you have to close your eyes and dance or walk and play your music so loud you'll probably suffer from Tinnitus in years to come because this energy does mean something but you're going to have to let it flow. Let it flow and when it subsides into a glowing, faint smile left on your face then sit down and write or do whatever it was your brain was desperately needing to do. Write about how it felt, write down the ideas that came to you, and start to express what is so vital to your being.

You can lose what it is that beats in your heart every day in a small moment, but if you wait long enough it will come to you like some bizarre dream that imprints faintly onto your memory for the rest of the day. Life is exhilarating, so flow like water and dance your way through it towards the something brilliant that has been pulling you along the path.

You Can't Sit With Us: Art is exclusive.

                                                    Image via

I could write you a very long list of recently made films about young, privileged but artistically challenged women finding their feet in the Big City and in Life as well as dipping into a romantic escapade or two along the way. Truthfully, I adore these films. They are beautiful depictions of what it feels like to be young and female in our new world and like a cup of tea for the soul they console me when the path ahead is foggy (which is more often than not). Films like Frances Ha and Obvious Child are non-pretentious explorations of the current trials and tribulations young women face; timeless in sentiment yet with an urgency to their topics. Funny, profound and artistic these films inspire my own creativity. I feel deeply connected to their characters and any existential concerns they happen to come across. But, whilst I feel this generation of women is well represented and documented both in the indie film scene and by female comedians in sitcoms, stand up routines, autobiographies and twitter accounts I feel, perhaps, that somebody has been left out.

The one thing all these women, fiction and non fiction,  have in common is their social class. They either sit comfortably in the educated middle, or teeter at the top amongst the rich and almost famous. Correct me if I may be wrong, but wherever this subculture of female coming of age and glorious depiction of womanhood there seems to be a very great lack of women who do not fall into the middle of the social construct but below it completely.

I can see little art, little film, little literature on what it means to be a woman living on a council estate or having to live mainly off benefits. Because whilst womanhood is essentially universal, it will vary widely depending on where you have come from and where you are now. And so an entire class of women have been underrepresented in culture as it is once again dominated by the middle class to the satisfaction of the pretentious and the smug, even if the content is not itself pretentious or smug. As someone who finds great comfort in films, books and art I find it impossible that not one working class woman feels lost or uncertain in a world where all other women depicted lead totally different lives to the one they actually experience.

Caitlin Moran has written a novel in a memoir like fashion of her childhood in a working class and has made a TV show along similar themes. But, so far, that's all I can find in terms of allowing girls who didn't go to grammar school, or have ambition and confidence spoon fed to them by society as a child to feel heard and understood by film and literature.

Of course it is easy for everyone to relate to teen movies like Mean Girls because they give the general gist of what it is like to be in school, and 99% of us go/went to school, but there lacks specificity to each walk of life and the only specifics given are for those living somewhat privileged lifestyles.

Music may be the only place not utterly dominated by pretentious ideals of perfect living for those who can afford it, but music is simply not enough.

I may be naive, in fact, I am extremely naive because I subconsciously surround myself with a culture that relates to my life and everything in it and so cannot find the representation of working class women and girls as I get as a middle class girl but if I am right I feel deeply concerned. The comfort and joy I get from watching good films and reading good books that reflect entirely the happenings of my life is something I would not wish to deprive of anyone. For me this culture of modern femininity and womanhood is essential to my growing up, and so for those lost without an anchor of likeminded content to relieve teen angst I hope you have something, something unique and relevant to your daily existence. For otherwise I feel there has been a great injustice and, if this clumsy post has not fully expressed what I mean, I'll endeavour to change whatever might be stopping anyone from being truly represented in art in my own tiny way.

Where is the anarchy in the UK?

Source via

There is something stunningly passive about this generation. For me, at least, in a home county in the UK I can feel a certain lack of something. A lack of passion, perhaps. An unfair statement for me to make on behalf of a few hundred thousand people but bring forth the evidence and I will swiftly dispute my own belief.

In the last decade or so there have been violent attacks on innocent, western civilians in the blasphemous name of religion that have now been seen to be an affront on freedom of speech. We were all Charlie Hebdo, but two months on some of us have forgotten the need to care. We have fought a war in two countries we were scarcely drip fed information about so that, even now, why or how or what are still hazy questions to ask. Groups like Stop the War Coalition tried to tell us what was about to happen at the time, but the rise of a hippie movement and the propagation of love failed to repeat after its boom in the 70s. The banking crisis 2008 happened because politicians allowed the banks to assume an enormous amount of power and no one has officially called them out on this or forced them to pay back and fix what they broke. Occupy tried. Occupy failed. We're still in a recession. We are all asleep.

There is, of course, an infinite number of problems humanity faces and will face. The Man will always exist. But the monopoly of banks and corporations is mindlessly growing and rising prices without looking back into history to think, go figure, something has got to collapse. We are literally allowing the planet to dissolve and burn and die at our feet and we call those who care time wasters who should be focusing on "bigger" things. The Man is getting stronger.

We are facing the same stories of discrimination, violence, financial crisis, and war. The platform on which we stand as a society is even shakier than it was before, technology and the internet have shifted us and we are struggling to find our feet. We could fall if we're not careful. And yet, where are the Punks? Where are the Hippies? Where is the passion? Where is the solidarity? Where is the activity?   In reference to our recent news in Baltimore: at least someone is doing something.

I know people who care. I know people who are angry. But... Now what?

So to end my cliché teen angst with another cliché: If not us, then who? If not now, then when?

Relativity

What right have I to complain, cry or moan about anything in my life? I live in a beautiful, safe home where there are flowers growing in the back garden and farms and fields fully surrounding me. I have both my parents' full and loving support at the drop of a hat. I have grown up in an area of outstanding natural beauty. I have been to excellent schools for free all my life. I have a large number of people in my world who love me, understand me, and encourage me. Each year my parents have managed to pay for my sister and I to have glorious summer holidays in wonderful countries around the world, and each Christmas we receive gifts, food and warmth.

I do not live in a country plagued with war. I have not watched my family die of a preventable disease, nor seen my village wiped out by an epidemic. I have never had to fight for my education, nor been utterly stripped of any other fundamental human rights. My parents don't have to pay for my health care. I can speak my mind against bodies of power and authority without being beaten senseless in front of a crowd of onlookers or imprisoned or tortured. I can vote in elections. I can wear what I wish, and marry whomever I please. My rights and thoughts and way of life can be oppressed and discriminated against but by society and not by a government with the aim of "keeping me safe". I live in the West, where the general attitude is to uphold democracy and protect all rights wherever possible, and so in most cases I will be protected or supported simply by a general consensus. 

I still complain about the electoral system in the UK, moan about the inaccuracy and unfairness of the education system and cry about most of my personal hurdles and dissatisfaction with life. They say everything is relative but where, exactly, is the truth in this? 

I am still a feminist.

This is a short one but it is in response to the "Why I'm Not a Feminist" video by Lauren Southern that recently went viral.

Men's issues are entirely included in my view of feminism and the same goes for every feminist I know. In fact, I have not met one feminist who has not defended complete equality which concerns the problems created by sexism for both sexes.

Men's issues are not the fault of women, but the fault of a perpetuating patriarchal society and attitude towards genders. This does not mean that all men are to blame, and that all men do not suffer as a result of this. There is little to dispute, however, the scale or impact of one over the other. I believe in the equality of both men and women, but only one of them has been severely oppressed for hundreds of years and only recently emancipated.

I am still a feminist. Feminism means the belief in equality, for both man and woman, and it always will.

How free are you?

Some people would argue that none of us are free. We are controlled by a state that uses the media to perpetuate fearfulness of everything. Fear of death, illness, homelessness, poverty, the Terror. This fear is then counteracted by some ineffective solution, which normally involves buying stuff to make it all better so we then become constant consumers as well as victims of fear mongering.

The only thing we can't buy to make better is terrorism. So instead we assume the omnipotent state will do what is best and what is right for our safety. We stop asking them questions about it because they are literally the only solution to this terrible enemy, and so then they start to look at our private lives on our private online profiles which we were promised would be totally safe and private. This, of course, is how we will stop the Terrorists. By reading everyone's emails sans permission. Forget all other forms of communication like letter writing, phone calling and plain old speaking, emailing is the one way we will destroy the enemy. Your human rights might just be infringed a little along the way... Sorry. 

Okay so it's supposedly over now, GCHQ were wrong and exploitative and that is official as of 2015.  However, I know a surprisingly large amount of people who were completely fine about the government violating their privacy without their knowledge. This, they assure me, is for the greater good. Also, they say, our lives aren't even that interesting. 

This is a fantastic revelation. 

My life just isn't interesting enough for me to actually care about its privacy. I am so petrified of the Terror that I will literally give up my rights so that a futile attempt can be made to oust any vaguely suspicious looking men whilst villages are burned and innocent citizens are beheaded in a far off land that is confusing and alien to us. I don't mind if my small little life is intruded upon and my private conversations are read by some strange man in Cheltenham to basically no avail. The enemy must be defeated somehow, whoever that enemy might be. Fear the enemy. Fear, fear, terror, fear, war, fight, terror, fear. 

If you are constantly exposed to fear mongering news stories then you start to believe everything you are told. And once this happens, how free are you?