That's Why Her Hair's So Big...

I have always been a firm believer that a good hair do is pretty much paramount to maintaining personal happiness levels. Partly because of the fact that I went to an all girls school, but mostly because of the fact that my mum is a hairdresser- hair is important.

I've always had a lot of hair. When I was little it was a curse. My hair was think and wavy and knotty and for some reason I spent most of primary school with it in a low ponytail which only further highlighted that my face is was round it was practically a planet. As a grew up it became the thing I loved most about myself. At one point my mum also cut it into a bob, so short she may as well have just sheered it all off and no, she still isn't entirely forgiven (who lets a five year old decide what's good for them?! I'm 21 and I still don't know what's good for me!)

Something about me was braver when it came to my hair- I didn't care what other people thought. I started colouring it at 10 (my mum had brightly coloured hair throughout most of my childhood so she really couldn't have said no) and it went on from there. In Year 9, I was threaten with suspension because the block of red running through my mane did not stick to the 'natural hair colour only' rule my all girls school enforced. Then, at 16, I went from brunette to redhead and never looked back.
It's been blue and yellow and purple, and orange and red and brown and it never scared me. Whilst other parts of my appearance have always seems like an uphill struggle (my skin, my stomach, my inability to have at high gap), I've always been at one with my hair- even if I have been ripping a brush through it and praying I'd wake up with it naturally pin straight (still no such luck).

Now my hair is pink. After a year of doing nothing but excruciatingly question each tiny decision I have made and not knowing myself from one day to the next- I finally feel like I'm being to regain control of me.

Between graduating, booking my trip, starting my internship, and the new hair; I guess I'm starting to see bits of myself I thought I'd lost forever.

So fuck it. Maybe this is narcissistic and shallow as hell, but I don't care. This is an appreciation post for my hair. It makes me feel good about myself and it reminds me to always be a bit braver and a bit bolder. Who knows, maybe if we all started appreciating the parts of ourselves we truly love a little more- loving all the slightly less great bits will become less of a battle.

-xo

Oh Dear, Ms Greer

Disappointment, we all know that feeling. Whether it's the shop being all out of your fave chocolate bar, being let down last minute  or someone doing something that totally shocks you, disappointment is rubbish.

But what happens when someone, a public figure, says something that so largely contradicts everything you thought they stood for?

If you don’t know who Germaine Greer is, you’ve either never really been that into feminism, never studied ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ or have just generally been under a rock for the past few decades. Writer of ‘The Female Eunuch’, Germaine Greer is one of the world’s ‘super feminists’. So when she wrote back in 2010 that Page 3 of The Sun wasn’t all that harmful, you couldn’t help but feel that a mother of the feminist movement had kicked you in the proverbial balls.

Last Tuesday, 4^th February 2014, at ‘An Audience with Germaine Greer’, 16 year old Kathryn (who hasn’t even taken her GCSEs) sat and listened to a lecture Greer was giving on breast cancer, cosmetic surgery and image issues faced by women. At the end of the lecture, Greer opened the room up to questions, and a journalist asked Greer if she had heard of NMP3 and what her thoughts were on it. Greer (the swine) replied that she thought Page 3 was totally innocent and that it was only bought by old men (lies, I think Greer lives in some sort of bubble, anyway…) and that it was nothing in comparison to the porn that’s available online anyway.

Firstly, Ms Greer, I think you’re a traitor to the cause here. I studied you at 16 after reading Atwood and thought you were this fabulous voice of reason and now, now I just think you’re a hypocrite.

And it would appear that I’m not alone. Following Greer’s response, Kathryn got given the mic, stood up and quite calmly stated,

'I am a full supporter of no more page 3. Page three is part of mainstream culture and sexualises and objectifies women shamelessly, and is essentially a gate way into hardcore pornography. If this 'soft porn' is openly available in mainstream culture, then it makes it seem like looking at the more hardcore porn is acceptable. How can you not support a campaign that is trying to shut that down, and how can you call it innocent?'

The whole room applauded.

And it says a lot.

SHE IS 16! 16!
A 16 year old girl stood up in front of Germaine BLOODY Greer and a room full of A2 Sociology students (I repeat, she hasn’t even sat her GCSEs yet) and spoke her mind. Not only did she speak her mind, but she said the words on the lips of thousands of young women up and down this country and across the world who are BORED of being objectified on a day to day basis and being told it’s all ‘harmless’.

I wish I’d been that brave at 16. I wish I’d had the guts to stand up and shout back when told that I was over reacting about the boys who branded my friends ‘sluts’ because they’d kissed someone at a party… Hell, I wish I’d had that much courage 9 months ago when I was bartending and customers felt it perfectly ok to comment on my chest when making their cocktails as if I wasn’t even there at all.

Germaine Greer is meant to be a feminist figure head. She should be at the forefront of a campaign that is trying to end the daily objectification of young women. Porn and Page 3, simply cannot be compared in my books. You go looking for porn, you know what you are doing, you’ve made the conscious decision to watch it. Same goes for when you buy a ‘lad mag’. You know what you’re looking at. People buy The Sun because it is a newspaper, Ms Greer, they buy it because, presumably, they want to know what is going in the world. Therefore, please, please, PLEASE tell me how this image of a young woman, boobs akimbo, on the third page of a NEWSPAPER is in anyway innocent, because I’m obviously missing the point here.

I mean, Page 3 has become so damn normalised that even one of the world’s leading feminists thinks it’s ok!

We live in a society where, when the lights get dimmed and music goes up, it is ok to see women as objects. Where girls are taught that if they go out alone in the dark they risk being attacked and where the media has no issues using the bodies of women to sell whatever product the latest big cooperation has invented.

We need more Kathryn’s. We need more young women (and men) who see the things that need to changed and aren’t afraid to challenge those who stand in their way.

Young girls are starting to find their voices. The idea that Page 3 out dated is no longer the fight of middle aged, middle class women with little more to do. We’re finding our voices, and we’re using them.

So society should be prepared that we won’t be silenced until it’s an equal playing field out there…
Greer, I’m talking to you.

Pro-Life? Gravestones Are More Pro-Life Than You

Abortion

There we go, I've said it and if you're wondering why it's there in big red letters, all singing and all dancing, it's so that we can just get over the word and move on.

Manchester is a pretty liberal place, given that it's home to more that 80,000+ students and one of the biggest gay communities in the country, that is hardly a surprise. So you can imagine my disgust when, as I walked towards the bus stop this morning I saw a small sandwich board with the words 'Warning: Graphic Abortion Images Ahead'. Instantly, my Obama led good mood burst into a million tiny pieces. I was furious, especially when, as I grew closer to the cluster of fairly bloody images I noticed that, low and behold, the majority of the protesters were men. Enraged, and with 10 minutes until my class and 20 minute bus journey ahead, I got on the bus and tweeted until my fingers bled (alright, that may be an exaggeration). What the hell do men have to protest on what women do with their bodies? Why is it that they were the ones holding up the posters and handing out the leaflets? And why was it that yet again, women were allowing men to tell us how we can and cannot be seen and what we can and cannot do?

Then I realized something; yeah the blokes were protesting against a woman's right to an abortion, but more importantly there were two women there, protesting their own right to an abortion. It's like cutting off your nose in spite of your face. Not every women will require an abortion, not every women will chose to have one, even if she does fall unexpectedly pregnant, but the important part is that the choice is there and that it is ours. 

Last night saw President Obama be voted back into the White House for another 4 years and here in the UK it appeared to most that he was the only candidate worth considering. Romney had, on more than one occasion, come across as ignorant, racist, sexist homophobe, leading many of us to question how anyone that wasn't a straight, white man could bring themselves to vote for him. Yet, it was one of the closest elections in US history and even now, not all the states have been counted for, despite the President having been re-elected. The speech Romney and his senators gave about women's healthcare, their plans to cut planned parenthood and their want to make abortions illegal again sent shivers down the spine of near every woman I know. 

Could it be that the UK is going the same way? Not so long ago, I read that there is movement growing within Parliament to review abortion and women's rights and we've seen a massive increase in Pro-Life/Anti-Abortion protests taking place outside various Abortion Clinics in the UK in the same way they do in the US. These people line up outside and heckle the women going in and out of the clinic, as if the choice to terminate a pregnancy isn't arguably the most difficult choice a women will ever have to face. These people make the whole ordeal far more horrific than it need be. Just two weeks ago the opening of the new abortion clinic in Belfast was met on the head of thousands of protesters carrying graphic posters and sayings.

Here in the UK, the cut off point for an abortion is 24 weeks, which, in my opinion may be too far into the pregnancy as, premature babies born at around this stage have been known to survive. Even still, it is no excuse for people to dictate whether or not we are allowed the choice to one. It angers me that these people feel they have the moral high ground to tell us what a women should and shouldn't be allowed to do with her body on such a grand and important scale...

Yes, I am fully aware that as a part of the No More Page 3 Campaign, it could be said that I too am telling women what they can and cannot do. I am not. The Campaign is to get boobs taken out of a newspaper (are naked boobs news? No.) The campaign is not trying to stop the girls who model on Page 3 from being in the Glamour industry, we are not stopping them from taking off their clothes for money, we aren't against porn, or strip clubs or pretty young women (hello, most of them are my age ffs, why would I try and STOP them being successful?!). Our campaign is about making sure the beauty and nakedness of the girls reaches those who are looking for it, those who understand it and know what it is. Not those who don't understand or don't want to see boobs with their cereal and kids around the breakfast table first thing in the morning. So if I could please be spared the chorus 'YOU HYPOCRITICAL SLAG', I would be most grateful.

Maybe if these extremist protest groups spent more time fighting for better sex education within UK Secondary Schools, so that young people grow up being better informed about sex, contraception, the way contraception works and the different options available  there wouldn't be the need for such horrendous protests in the first place.

Because, in a nation that has the highest teen pregnancy and STI rate in Europe, our sex ed is a joke, and when you think that 13 years olds are becoming increasingly more sexually active it is irresponsible to keep sweeping the issue under the carpet. Perhaps when MPs vow to put more effort into educating Key Stage 3 and GCSE students, rather than just making sure they 'pass their exams', I'll be as excited about UK politics as I am about US politics.

So put your graphic banners away, get your heads out of your own hot air, wake up and smell the coffee. Sex is not the problem, it's the attitude towards it that holds us back. 

Boobs at Dawn

Being part of a campaign like No More Page 3 was always going to come with it's hurdles because nothing worth having comes easy. Especially being the age I am and living the lifestyle I lead (unfortch, it's a quite drunk student lifestyle and not a particularly glamorous one), I feel I have to fight even harder to be heard and understood than the adults involved with campaign. Maybe it's because people within my age group are the most sexually active, the biggest watchers of porn and the largest readers of lads mags but whatever the case, I feel the need to set the story straight from the word go so that no one can turn around and call me something I'm not.

I am not pretentious or uptight. I am not insecure (Well alright, I am a little bit buy hey, we all have our hang-ups), I am not some nerdy virgin, a strangely religious being or bra burning feminist.
I am a student, a drinker, a fashion magazine obsessed, X Factor loving, boy crazy 19 year old girl. I don't like spiders, can't lift anything that's very heavy and yes, sometimes I am still scared of the dark.

None of that should matter though. I support the No More Page 3 campaign for a few very simple reasons, and not one of them is because I am a self-loathing prude.

I support this campaign because:

• I am bored of being unable to wear a low cut top without the conversation being directed at my chest all night.
• I genuinely do believe it conditions us all to think it's ok to see another human being as a half naked commodity.
• I am a DD and actually, finding underwear in my size is a nightmare. Don't put out the idea that with boobs 'bigger is better' when actually, bigger tends to mean more expensive and harder to find.
• When I have a picture of a topless male as my screensave it makes me look 'sad', 'pathetic' and 'obsessed' but when a guy can oogle over the Page 3 everyday that's alright.
• I am worth more than my chest.
• When David Beckham was poised in his Armani' it was like 'Here you go ladies, have a treat', like it was something special that we don't get very often but blokes get a beautiful half naked lady everyday and it's seen as normal.
• But mostly, because in 15-20 years time, when I have a daughter or a son, I want them to have a grown up in a world where you aren't conditioned to viewing anyone in a certain light. Where there are no pre-judgements of a person because of some way they are 'supposed' to be seen.

I just think that now, enough is enough. Page 3 is uncalled for, no one's lively hood depends on it, Google will kill it off sooner or later but I want us to get there first.

Sign here: http://www.change.org/nomorepage3

Oh...Tits!

Ah, the daily papers. Filled with news from around the globe, celebrity gossip, the weather forecasts, important political views and boobs.

Wait, what?!

Ah yes, if you are British, female and a regular reader of the paper then you probably already know what I'm talking about. In fact, you don't even have to be a female, you could be male, cat, dog or mouse and you've probably already picked up on what I'm chatting about. That's right, Page 3.

Now, before I go any further I am just going to state right here and right now that I LIKE BOOBS. No, this isn't me coming out of the closest, I'm just saying that glamour modelling itself isn't something I disagree with. Nor am I against sex, people that have sex, people that watch porn. people that buy lads mags, sexy underwear or newspapers. For crying out loud, I'm 19 years old! Of course I like sex and underwear and my first year flat was famous for our kitchen wall quite loving decorated with Nuts magazine cut outs. I just don't feel it necessary to have boobs in a newspaper. 

Boobs aren't news, they're just not.  They didn't just appear on planet earth, they've been around for awhile now and well, they're just not news!

That is why I was over the moon when a fantastic writer and friend of mine, invited me to be part of the No More Page 3 Campaign, started when during the Olympics she noticed that even though Jessica Ennis had just secured the hopes of the nation in winning gold in her Heptathlon event, the largest image of any female in The Sun was still the day's Page 3 girl. 

I mean, it's almost laughable, a women who has put her heart and soul into 4 years of training for ONE event, who was made the face of the London 2012 games which have, arguably, been the most successful games to date, still isn't worth as much page space as a girl who has her boobs out. Brilliant. The Suffragettes are probably turning in their graves, spitting feathers and thinking to themselves 'Well, what was the bloody point?!'

And it's true, what was the point? I'm not going to start burning my bra or join some strong Feminist rebellion, but let's be honest here, isn't it just a little bit rubbish that women are still being portrayed as items of sexual desire in a FAMILY newspaper? At least Nuts and Zoo and Maxim and Playboy dedicate entire magazines to us. At least with them it really is an industry, a career. Page 3 just seems out dated, sexist and more than anything, silly. We don't need boobs in The Sun. Honestly, we really don't. I can almost promise it won't affect the paper's sales and that it won't affect the way people take in the news. 

Getting rid of Page 3 will help promote women in a far healthier light and at the end of the day it's not like we get the torso of Dave, 21, from South Shields on Page 5 do we? IT'S A SHEER LACK EQUALITY HERE PEOPLE!

So, let's be equal and let's change the papers of tomorrow. Please sign the petition and spread the word because actually, I really believe in this campaign and it's ability to change the tabloids for the better.

Sign here: http://www.change.org/nomorepage3

- Hayley xx