Feeling Empowered With Not Much To Say

I am spending my Saturday morning rather uncharacteristically being awake and watching awesome things on the Internets. I have just finished watching Cherry Healey's How To Get a Life programme on looks, Can Your Looks Change Your Life? (found here until 18/7*). I then watched about half a dozen of the latest videos by one of the groups featured in the programme, Those Pesky Dames who vlog on Youtube daily about issues affecting women today and are quite frankly amazing and inspirational women. So now I feel really empowered and great but don't really have much to actually talk about myself. I think the issues raised in the programme as well as in the Dames' videos are awesome, because more people need to challenge society's "normalised" ideas of beauty and start to love the way their bodies look and accept the fact that everyone is beautiful in a million different ways. Yet it seems like more and more women in today's society feel pressured to look a certain way, slap on make-up as a barrier against the world and choke down diet pills in a bid to remove every last inch of wobbliness on their bodies. It saddens me that the image of perfection women strive to achieve is so unobtainable that all that happens with each generation is increasing levels of women who are not happy with their looks, and feel helpless to do anything about it. Sometimes I feel incredibly lucky about how I grew up because it's landed me in a place that means I don't have too many hang ups about my body. For most of my life I was a bit of a tomboy which means that I have never really learned how to apply make-up properly or do anything more to my hair than put it in a ponytail. This means I have never bothered to spend a large amount of time doing my hair and perfecting my make-up unless it's for a special occasion. Certainly, I don't do it every day because I just can't be bothered, which means I've never relied upon it to make me feel like myself. I know who I am, and 90% of the time you will meet that person without any make up on because she didn't even remember to think about it that morning. I'm also a big girl-I'm a size 18 (20 in dresses) and I am happy with that. Sure, not 100% happy 100% percent of the time, but for the most part I am comfortable in my skin and generally love myself. As a lot of the Dames say in their videos, you can't rely on someone else to make you feel beautiful but I know that a large part of my confidence in myself has come from a grounding in that. Once you know someone doesn't care about the bit you're stressing over, it's a lot easier to stop caring yourself and just get on with life. Yeah I've got a big belly, and yeah it's covered in stretch marks and a little bit pregnant looking, but I've also got fantastic boobs and legs (as far as I am concerned) to balance it out.
So if this is the start of the beauty revolution, of women claiming back the word 'beauty' from the glossy mags and the make-up companies then you can count me in. I just want more people to be happy with what they look like, and happy with what other people look like too, so that there is less of a focus on what you look like and more on how amazing you are.
Let me finish with a particularly wonderful quote from one of Those Pesky Dames' vlogs:

"It is easy to be beautiful. In fact, you're doing it right now, even if you don't believe me."

and also with this. If you're still feeling bad about yourself, or, like me, you feel rather good about your looks, remember that you have to be able to laugh at the bad times. So, for your enjoyment, here is a rather fetching photograph of myself:

Yep, I'm a fitty.

Until next time,
-Jenni-

*Foreign readers might not be able to access Iplayer, but this site should help you see it