Things to make you think.

Sainbury's, you disappoint me.

I'm feeling too lazy to even bother writing any opinion crap (there's a first for everything), so here are a few things to make you think if any of you are...well, ya know, not thinking...
'Undercover with the young Conservatives' by Laurie Penny
'Graduate Tax: Stop the bullshit'
'Lady Gaga's sexual revolution sees female stars reach for the leather' by Polly Vernon
'Ed Miliband is right…'
'I'm an atheist but this anti-Catholic rhetoric is making me nervous' by Padraig Reidy
Nice bit of variety for you lovelies :)

Being "girly"

If you're male and you're reading this you probably want to stop in case I bore your face off with crappy girly words. You've been warned.

I've always been slightly obsessed with things that are girly. Not in an "omg everything I own should be pink" kind of way, I'm not insane (and I'm not that big a fan of pink). Instead, my way of being obsessed with girly has been, either really avoiding being girly or, really liking being girly. I've wanted to write this blog for quite a while, mainly because I've always had rather a warped idea of femininity and writing about this sort of thing always helps me. I think it's only in the last 6 months that I've actually sorted my idea of femininity out. I think a lot, I've gathered I'm weird. Shush.

When I was 15 I wore baggy jeans, t-shirts, thick black eye-liner, had a massive emo fringe and wore hoodies with stupid badges on. I was pretty sure my parents either thought I was a lesbian, a social reject or both. Everyone I knew was 'quirky' and I was a proper geek. Femininity was so the last thing I wanted to have, mainly because I thought femininity meant all I wanted to do in life was attract guys and be all "let's paint our nails, giggle and watch rom-coms". Basically, I associated femininity with being ditzy.

When I went to college I met some of the best people, people who wore skirts and dresses. Oh how they saved me. I also met quite a few guys who were very in to the whole "women should be good housewives, look after the children and basically have no lives" idea. Seriously, where was my college, the fucking 1950s? Why didn't I just hit them instead of taking this all on-board and ruining my self-esteem and brain for a good(/stupid) 3 years? Anyway, I was easily influenced and I decided that I hated feminism, and that I totally wanted the 2.4 children, loving husband, and the white picket fence (I'm currently feeling a little sick writing this). Mission: Become More Girly was in operation. I was pretty shit at it to be honest, I'm not into looking really groomed all the time. By the time the end of sixth form appeared I was completely different to 15 year old Sophie. Some people had never seen me in trousers, ever. This was now normal. I was totally on the way to the 1950s, except ya know...I was going to university and all that 'having rights' shit. Pretty good shit, really.

Going to uni meant a few things.
- Being lumbered with feminists.
- Being lumbered with people who thought being a housewife would be boring.
- Being lumbered with girls who were smart AND feminine (clearly freaks).

No matter what age you are, being feminine is something women worry about. I know that I still worry about it, and this is me, a girl with long hair, always painted nails, I do the girliest subject at uni and I wear dresses and skirts everyday. I'm a proper girl (don't take that proper as in people who don't do that aren't girls, that would make you an idiot for reading it that way). However, I do wonder, if I just stopped doing all that would I still be girly? Would I even care? It slightly depresses me, because I'd massively care and I've no idea why. Some feminists make out that wearing make-up and spending time on grooming is just ridiculous, it's another way of keeping women 'down'. I don't think that things that are classed as 'girly' should necessarily be a weakness, why can't we just embrace these things rather than accusing them of being harmful to feminism?

Seriously, I'm all for sharing this girly shit, a lot of men could seriously do with some make-up.

Life.

We broke up. We're back together. Everything is fine.

After the election I was extremely pissed off at everything and anything to do with politics. Mainly for the following reasons;

1. People who had no interest in politics were suddenly bombarding me with their opinions that they formed in the space of 5 minutes.
2. I have no ability to tune out of certain things, the election was one of those things. I also have a great love of Twitter, Facebook etc. and therefore couldn't escape hearing (/reading) the same arguments over and over again.
3. The more I read the more I decided I didn't know what I thought. This got really annoying.

Now it is mid-August. The election was literally months ago and I think, now that the coalition has been in charge for nearly a hundred days, I can finally get back in to reading about politics again. All my friends reading this will either be like "yay, we can chat about this" or "oh god no, she's NEVER going to shut up about political shit". I'm sorry for those of you in the latter group. Just tell me to shush, I promise to try. Being quiet has hardly been one of my strong points though, has it?

So yes, tonight I spent a good three hours reading blogs and catching up on everything (okay, not everything, as that would require more than three hours and probably a lot more tea breaks), but now I'm back in my bubble. My nice safe bubble of political awareness. Which will probably be popped soon enough, there's a copy of Saturday's Daily Mail in the front room, I might just go pop my bubble myself.

Grr.

Surprises and Spontaneity.

I love going places, it doesn't even have to be far, I just like wandering around and soaking up that general "I'm not in my house, woo, I'm so adventurous" feeling. This weekend I travelled down to Oxford for my Gran's 75th Birthday party. It was a complete surprise, as she hates people making a fuss about her, but we did it anyway, clearly we don't care about her hatred of surprise. She seemed happy enough :).

After spending a day and a night in the little place of Fyfield I ventured in to Oxford to get the Oxford Tube to London. £11 for a student single ticket, bargain! I only decided I was going to go to London a couple of days before, I just fancied a mini-trip somewhere. I started reading my new book the day before, it's so funny. Definitely recommend, it's like Horrible History for adults. I went to Lawrence's and saw The Karate Kid, which was surprisingly really good! Had a 1940s-esque dinner and played lots of games on Sporcle before getting a relatively early night, I was so shattered after my millions (/2) early mornings.

Left Lawrence's early afternoon on Monday to meet Hannah at Euston. We planned to get a light lunch and meet Mark in a park, Regent's Park to be exact. I got this sparkling grape & elderflower drink from Pret and it was actually too amazing. I could just drink it forever. Blackpool, why do you not have a Pret?!?! Ridiculous town. You don't have a Wagamama either, I'm basically living in the Stone Age. We chatted and ate in Regent's Park with Mark before he had to bugger off back to North London. Hannah and I ended up walking to Covent Garden, purely to avoid the tube as it was 5.30 and we didn't have a death wish. Had dinner in Wagamama, both Hannah and I ordered all of the same things, EXACTLY, which is slightly embarrassing, but makes it rather easy when it comes to splitting the bill.

Lovely sunny day in Regent's Park <3

I love spontaneous trips.

Inventions.

Sometimes I do things and think "Why has no one ever done this before, it's pure genius?!" I have these moments on a regular basis, only to find out that everybody does them and apparently I'm just way behind. One example that sticks in my head is when I discovered you could use a cotton bud dipped in nail polish remover to get rid of any polish you accidentally got on your skin. I told my friends (I was really excited at my amazing discovery) and I received a look like I'd just told them I went to the toilet all my grown-up self. Turns out everyone does that with their cotton buds.

I will be on Dragons' Den. I WILL.

Even if it's just to hear Duncan Bannatyne say my idea is "ludicrous".

I still think Bannatyne is looking smokin' for his age. Yep, I just said smokin'.

(Has anyone else been watching the new series of Dragon's Den? Is it just me is James Caan being really really weird? I know he had that whole non-dom debate with Duncan Bannatyne, but that can't be the reason for his quietness. Weird man. Look out for his weirdness when you watch it next.)

Mitchell and Webb

Recently I've been watching a lot of British comedy; varying from the '90s classic of Gimme Gimme Gimme to the more recent joy of The Inbetweeners.
Basically, every so often, I'm going to post a few videos from a British comedian (/comedy duo) that I like. I expect most people to know of the people I post about, I'm hardly raving about any obscure comedians. I accept my mainstream-ness. I just want to build up a collection of blog posts full of things that make me, and hopefully you, laugh :). If you don't know about whoever it is I'm chatting about then that's all good, I could've introduced your face to something you may enjoy. Wahoo, winners all round. I'm obviously not going to go over their whole life's work in any of the blog posts by the way. You have wikipedia, use it.

Mitchell & Webb

Both of these videos are from That Mitchell and Webb Look. The first one is of the Green Clarinet Man (from series 1, episode 3), the second is a Sunday Afternoon (from series 3, episode 6). I can't explain how much I love Robert Webb in the first sketch. It's brilliant. (They've done a lot of "That Mitchell and Webb..." stuff by the way. I'm not going to list it all, I'm sure you can use Google...you're smart people.)





Here's a couple from Peep Show (YouTube won't allow me to have this embedded). Also, brilliant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XveT0dAznSk&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkrGOhLJuhY&feature=related

David Mitchell's Soapbox



David Mitchell also does a Radio 4 show called The Unbelievable Truth and a show that was on BBC television called The Bubble. Both Mitchell and Webb have newspaper columns too, both of which are usually quite funny. David Mitchell's column & Robert Webb's column.

Series 4 of That Mitchell & Webb Look is currently on the BBC.
Robert Webb is currently narrating Young, Dumb and Living Off Mum, which is joyous for many reasons.

If you know of any comedians similar to Mitchell and Webb that I may like then drop me a comment. I'm always hunting for new material (not in a Keith Chegwin way).
(God I hope people get that Keith Chegwin reference, googlenews it if you didn't)

Summer Reading

The first book I've read for summer was 'Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism' by Natasha Walter.

I think this book is one of my favourites of all time. It's so eye-opening. The book is really recent too (it was only published this year), so it has lots of recent events in it. The book is divided in to two parts; The New Sexism and The New Determinism. The first half discusses the rise of the 'glamour' model, the porn industry, sexual partners, expectations and choices. The second half discusses the rise of the princess (oh Disney...), gender myths and the stereotypes that our society accepts and promotes.

"in order to challenge this culture in which feminine stereotypes remain so restrictive for women, there is no need to deny the pleasures of femininity, no need to retreat into a caricatured feminism of drab clothes, sexless pursuits and dour political correctness. All women can enjoy the positive aspects of our femininity, whether those pleasures are physical or emotional, but we do need much greater vigilance and much greater solidarity to ensure these pleasures do not become a trap for us. [...] If we move away from biological determinism we enter a world with more freedom, not less, because then those behaviours traditionally associated with masculinity and femininity could become real choices for each individual." (Walter, 230: 2010)

Childhood.

Today I was going through lots of pictures from my childhood. I don't do this often, as I'm a rather emotional person and my childhood was quite an emotion filled thing.

(The bottom right pictures are photo gold [click to enlarge]).

I still make collages and then show them to my Dad. I'm 20 now. I don't think I'll ever grow-up, not really.

Stop tarring people with that brush, jeeeez.

'Their gayness is being shoved in my face"

I never really get what people mean when they say 'I don't mind it, just don't shove it in my face', when they're referring to gay couples on television. What does that even mean? Okay, so I understand that not everybody has settled in to the idea that gay people are JUST people, I understand that, the whole 'it's a different generation' thing. However, it annoys me when a gay couple are mentioned or appear on TV and people assume they're literally having all this gayness shoved in their face (seriously, I'm not even joking, I hear comments like this far too often). I mean, what, really? Gayness? I don't even get how someone's 'gayness' could offend you. Especially when they're just chatting, just like friends, no mention of their sexuality (but obviously because they're gay then everything they're doing is in a 'gay way' *rolls eyes*), their gayness is clearly being shoved right in your face, yeah and when straight couples kiss or chat then straightness is being shoved in your face, yeah sure...that's how it works. Urgh. No. Please hesitate to speak again under you realise what a double-standard lover of a fool you are :).

I'm not racist, but...

I'm not even bothering to have many a sentence for this one (maybe...you know I get carried away in thought). Blackpool is a white town (and by white I mean Caucasian, not cocaine, although it depends, if you thought cocaine you can have a point anyway), it has a lot less ethnic minorities than its residents would like to think. However, my gosh is it full of racists. All I really have to say to the dear residents of Blackpool and the surrounding area is, please stop hating people you never come in to contact with, also stop treating them as if they're all some kind of mega cultural robotic force here to tear down your pretty white empire. Stop wanking off to your own hatred and get a hobby (or just read a book, a good book, the sort without pictures).

You go to uni? Urgh.

This is driving me INSANE. If another person looks down on me because I go to uni then I may just hit them with my Giddens' (chunkiest book, ever). I really do not understand the thought process behind not-going-to-uni-snobbery. I know I'm not the only one who has had to listen to this shitty snobbery, quite a few of my friends have had it too, not just from the odd randomer, but from family members *shocked gasp*. I know, ridiculous right? The people who are meant to be supportive, end up jumping on their 'I'm fine and I didn't go to uni" bandwagon. I am so over hearing that sentence. I'm not implying you're not fine, I never doubted for a second that you're not fine, jeez, calm down. It's not like I'm going to uni so I can be like HA, I HAVE A DEGREE, FUCK YOU EVERYONE ELSE. I mean yeah, that part is pretty cool, but I'm doing it because it's the only way I can do the job I want to do (which is be a teacher, and quite frankly, is a nice job. I'd quite like to be thanked for doing this degree. Okay, maybe not thanked, but ya know, not called a snob for doing something that's going to help others). Just because you're fine without your degree, doesn't mean I would be. Would people stop tarring everyone with the same brush, jeeez.

In fact, I think that line goes for this whole blog.

WOULD PEOPLE STOP TARRING EVERYONE WITH THE SAME BRUSH, PLEASE.