Tag: women

Standing Up for What I Believe

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Sometimes I open my mouth and people don’t agree with what comes out. This morning that happened in my Writing Women class and to be fair I’m surprised it took this long to get a few stony glances by way during a class. I knew there would be some contrasting opinions today we were talking about a few texts that I really didn’t agree with.

We started with some literary theory, this was safe I love theory and agreed with most of the ideas that were put forward as well as having an idea of what to do for my final essay (thank god). Then we got onto a few of the set texts and videos this week, one being Rachel Cusk’s Aftermath and the other being the film of Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. Now, personal feelings aside I don’t like Rachel Cusk’s work from a literary perspective it seems incredibly over dramatised as well as, at points, simply odd in my opinion. As for We Need to Talk About Kevin we discussed the ideas of mothers and I felt like everyone was worshipping these portrays so I had to say something, I felt like they were fearmongering and took the absolute worst.

I talked about the mothers that surround me, about the fact that my best friend had a beautiful baby girl and I’d be horrified for her to read these as a new Mum. The clear resentment and disregard for others in the works, if you’re struggling is not something positive and as I said before I felt was incredibly over dramatised. Most of the others disagreed and felt that these kinds of literature were truthful and that we were getting somewhere by banishing this idea of the perfect mother. That said I was arguing that we rarely know about the normal day to day mother experience either and the ways children enrich their lives not make them hate it. Or hell how about writing about why some women don’t want children at all and the way they feel.

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There was also the option of talking about feminism in general in relation to our critical reading. I put forward that, after discussing how women are marketed, that we cannot forget that we are getting places, after all Playboy are now stopping the naked centrefold, we have to take that as something to be happy about. We’re denormalizing it, right? I pointed out that we can’t make these women feel bad though, the women who want to model and I said that when I was younger if I was taller I would have looked into underwear and topless modelling, which shocked a lot of people. I’m not going to hide it and I feel differently now but I don’t know if that’s because of my own body image or if it’s how other people make me feel about it.

It wasn’t all bad news, I felt pretty crappy after the class because people seemed to be opposed to it. After I got out I got quite a few people come up to me and say, ‘You said what you needed to say, good on you!’ or ‘I think it was really brave of you to say what you said because no one else was going to do it, carry on doing it!’. This positivity kind of relit this spark in me, you know I am allowed to have an opinion, I’m allowed to have my own kind of feminism and my feelings are if someone wants to present their body and they are not being pressured or forced to do so then so they should.

So it might be hard and it might not always make me popular but I’m going to keep going.

We need to value female education

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We must value education. I more than most hated school as a teenager, it was dull repetitive and a source of daily hell for me. There is a lot of work that needs to be done in the British school system but at least we have it. Each child can go to school and get the opportunity to learn. I may have had to teach myself a lot while I was at home struggling with mental illness but I could still take the exams for free.

I watched the above Ted talk last week and it struck me how lucky I am as a woman to be in education and attempting to go into the world of education as a career. I think that this is one of the few accounts that don’t demonise all men, it educates us that some places in the world still need help with gender equality. It shows us that things are changing and compromise is the way forward, finding a way to educate and reason with age old traditions and hopefully end FGM along the way.

I find that now in my darkest times my love for academia can help me so much, it gives me something else to focus on and something that is so much bigger than me. My other love of course is music but my hope is that if we work on all young women receiving an education they can be exposed to the arts and find their own passions and loves. I hope that in 50 years we can go a long way in making education equal for girls and women no matter where they are in the world.

I have a crush on Amy Schumer

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A few weeks ago I went to see the incredible Trainwreck and it was my first time watching Amy Schumer doing her thing. I’ve spent the evening watching her stand up and I think I definitely have a crush on Amy, she’s funny, she’s real and she’s frank about sex and being a woman. Is she offensive? Yes. But she likes to make people feel uncomfortable with comedy, it gets them talking and thinking and if they’re outraged then that’s fine, because I dare you to find a comedian who’s never offended anybody ever. That’s right, you can’t.

Now I can’t claim that I relate to Amy on the whole single girl, slutty, partying thing but on most other things I can laugh along and understand. It also pisses me off when people say she’s ‘funny for a woman’ I mean really? I didn’t know that having a penis was a requirement to be funny. I love funny women Amy, Sarah Millican, Miranda Hart (although I don’t like her routine she’s made me laugh occasionally), Emma Blackerry. I also love that they swear (uh oh, you’re all thinking here goes Chloe’s rant).

Now, here’s the thing. Imagine me, on stage, playing a show which has mostly guys performing and there’s me all short and cute and shit. I go on stage after guys and I can hold my own, I can say fuck too! But because I’m a girl I still get told to ‘be more ladylike on stage’, in fact a few people I used to hang around with came to a show recently and got all high and mighty because I occasionally swear on stage. It’s not like every other word is swearing but they were all ‘ woaaaaah act like a girl’, to which I replied fuck off.

It’s one of the best things about Amy, she does swear and talk about sex in her routines. She’s not all prim, proper and ladylike. The thing with women like her is people think they’re incapable of being polite and not swearing, people assume the same about me, but guess what? This whole persona is one part of a person and generally when it’s appropriate. I don’t go and drop an f-bomb when I’m with my grandparents or when I’m giving a mental health speech? I don’t make sex jokes or call people dicks at work. There’s a difference between funny and stupid…most of the time anyway.

Who’s that girl?

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Who’s that girl I see looking at me from a magazine? She’s perfect, she has flawless skin, bright eyes and not a hair out of place, she’s thin, there are no hips, no cellulite, although despite her skinny frame her breasts are fantastic. She’s not real. Tonight I spent a good amount of time watching the above and this afternoon I was reading my normal monthly set of women’s magazines.

Now I’m not going to use this article to bash women’s magazines because I know some who really do support women, although I can’t claim to understand some of the articles. I do have a problem with advertising, because it promotes an image that none of us can achieve. I’ve said many times on this blog that I’m not always happy with my body, especially as of late. I fractured my spine, I put on some weight and I wish I could say so what but I’m surrounded by images of thin and beautiful women.

I’m not saying we ban an idea of beauty, I mean who hasn’t used a good filter on Instagram? Or been happy with a little touch up here and there? Of course we do. I also want you to think about any time you’ve felt a little bit sad looking at pictures or thought I wish I looked like that, because I know that as an impressionable teenager I had these fleeting thoughts but they wouldn’t damage me right? Wrong. In part these images added to my feelings of self consciousness and comparing myself to other women.

In the video about I heard about young women who took on teen magazines to limit the use of photoshop. This gives me so much joy and hope. At that age you don’t always know that these images aren’t real, that you can’t look like that. I remember posing like Paris Hilton (I was a young teenager, and it was the early 2000s, give me a break) in a holiday snap to try and look thinner…I wasn’t fat to begin with. Children and young people are very impressionable, especially as you hit the teenage years your body is doing things you have no control over, your spotty or greasy or whatever.

Now for most of us who are bullied and teased we grow up and shed that awkwardness, even just a little, but at the same time we didn’t have the glare of social media. I just want to educate young girls that this isn’t real and at the same time. I want the media to stop sexualising everything they can, to not cut a model like a pumpkin, carving what they want out of you.

Just preparing for a project I’m going to do and looking at the words used in women’s magazines and they’re almost as responsible as the pictures. I want to do something positive. I want to shout it for the roof tops as I remind my little sister that she is the most naturally beautiful person I know and my little cousin that just because we’re a different shape to my sister doesn’t mean were not beautiful too. I want to make people not feel ashamed to wear makeup or want to get fitter but to know that there are so many different types of perfect and not just the models in a magazine.

My Big Mouth: If it’s not your body, it’s not your decision.

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After watching the BBC3 Documentary on abortion in Ireland this week I decided that it was right to write this post. Despite abortion becoming legal in the 1960s in Britain, Northern Ireland decided that they did not want to partake in this. Getting an abortion in Northern Ireland is illegal, meaning many women resort to either trying to induce an abortion themselves or paying out to travel to England for the procedure.

When I was younger I didn’t understand why anyone would get an abortion, who didn’t want a baby? The older I got, however, I realised that the issue wasn’t as black and white as it seemed. For any woman getting pregnant brings anxieties, for someone who was desperately trying not to get pregnant it can be heart breaking because no matter how careful people are there is always a chance, which some people seem to forget. More often than not there is a stigma of an accidental pregnancy even though we’re all aware that condoms split, pills fail and there can be defective implants and yet women are still judged and in some parts of the world treated like criminals.

I’ve never had an abortion, I hope that I never have to. I do, however, have friends who have gone through a lot I’ve had friends who felt the only option they had was to have an abortion: I have friends who have had miscarriages and have to deal with that heart break, I have friends who continued with the pregnancy and others who can’t get pregnant at all. My point is that each woman is individual, they have their own thoughts, plans and having a child should not be forced upon them. I did research into the idea that it is ‘killing’ a child, apart from the foetus cannot feel pain at this point.

Do I think the limit should be lowered? Yes. I think that 20 weeks is too late for an abortion in my personal opinion, just because of the rate in which we can premature babies alive, this is one of the grey areas. That said, the majority of abortions happen way before this point when there is no change a foetus could have life as for a long time it is not a ‘baby’ as we see it, but cells. As harsh as I know that sounds it is the image of this perfect baby from conception which can lead women to reacting in a way they otherwise wouldn’t. This needs to be handled from a medical perspective, not one of emotions.

Which is why when I see protestors outside of abortion clinics or standing in the street yelling abuse and holding horrific pictures to women ,who frankly have enough going on without it, I get angry. Who are THEY to impose their beliefs on another persons body? I doubt there are any women who are happy to go through an abortion, it’s not pleasant and it’s nothing someone sets out to do. I don’t care what your religion says, it is that woman’s choice and often they are thinking of the implications of the sort of life a child would have at that time.

So yes, I am pro choice. I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business quite frankly and we do not need to shame a woman but let her live her life without shame, embarrassment and stigma.