We Need To Talk

A reminder popped up on my dad's Outlook last night saying "wedding anniversary". It was 23 hours overdue, and nearly 2 years redundant.

What I've found in the past 2 years since my parents separated, is that on occasion we feel the need to abbreviate the truth, or at least only relate parts of the truth because we feel it is important to protect others.  And that actually we should talk more honestly and openly.

My mother hid the truth about her trips to Cambridge for months. She wasn't escaping our house to see a friend. She was escaping our house to see her new boyfriend.

When my sister and I learned the truth, we then had to keep this from our father. We'd say mum was gone away for the weekend but we weren't sure where.

It turns out my father knew before we did. A bit more honesty could have saved us all a bit of aggravation and guilt.

The way my sister talks about her depression and ongoing struggle on her blog is very inspirational to me. Talking about mental health is hard enough, even in general terms. Talking about overdoses is something I never would have thought possible in our family. My mental health issues when I was younger were only really talked about inside therapy sessions. I don't remember sitting down with my family and talking to them about it, about what had happened.

But the day after my sister's overdose was Mother's Day, and though my mother was out of the country, we went to my grandparents house and had lunch with them and my uncle. And throughout the day we all discussed my sister's action, with her, without her, and I learnt a great deal more about my family's mental health history. We were more honest and open with each other. We communicated.

Sometimes we find it very hard to communicate. Sometimes we can't find the words, sometimes we hold back in fear of the reaction our words will invoke. I read in this week's Big Issue that a vendor who had been featured in an issue had seen sales decrease, and a potential reason was that readers (and therefore buyers) had learned he had a criminal record. This man deserves to be praised for his honesty, not punished for it.

Sometimes we just think our communication will be futile. And no one wants to do something that's futile.

Perhaps we should all be a bit more honest, a bit more open, perhaps if we communicated more like this then we would learn so much.

Though sometimes the best way to communicate something is by saying nothing.

Pink, and the choice to choose

"Is pink your favourite colour?"

"No, that was just the only colour available."

When I went to buy replacement earphones this week, I was sorely disappointed at the lack of choice. There were only two options for in-ear earphones, and of those, only one choice of colour: pink.

Every fibre of my being cried "noooooooooo not the PINK" as if it were some awful disease. But as I didn't want the other type of earphone, the round flat ones, I had no choice but to choose: £7 pink earphones or £10 pink earphones.

And obviously, because I'm a cheapskate, it was the £7 pair that won.

It's not that I have anything against the colour pink (besides the fact that I don't really suit it). I just want to avoid the stereotypes that come with it. The Barbie, girly-girl stereotypes.

Can you imagine a world where colours didn't have connotations? Where red doesn't mean confident, and black doesn't mean goth?

The connotations of colour are nowhere as sharp and as pointed as with children's toys. Toys marketed for gender. Where pink means princess means girl. Where blue means train engine means boy.

The Let Toys Be Toys campaign is marvellous for its simple message, which is let toys be, er, toys. Let a truck be a truck that can be used by a child to drive around the room. Let a tea set be a tea set that a child can use to cater to their friends (real or not).

Toys, and the marketing of them, rely so much these days on the gender of its audience. Surely they would actually see better sales if they weren't purposely excluding one half of the child population? Both boys and girls could own a Barbie. And a gun*.  Imagine the revenue!

But no. When Lego decided they wanted in on the girls market, instead of including girls in their ad campaigns and making it clear Lego wasn't just for boys, they developed the Friends range. And I'm sure you can imagine how I feel about this collection of Lego sets.

If you can't, watch this and maybe you'll understand.

Whether it be earphones, or toys for your 3, 5 or 8 yearold, there should be a choice. Parents, kids, people should feel as though they have a choice to choose what appeals to them most. And whilst they all do technically have the physical choice, many parents and many kids do not mentally feel they have a choice. Many parents don't want their kids to be different from the norm, because they might then feel they have failed as a parent. No kid wants to be made fun of because she plays with train sets and not tea sets. And vice versa. (the stigmatism for a guy acting like a girl is hella greater than a girl acting like a guy. - this article helps explain why. And you only have to look at Richard Branson dressing up as a woman after losing a bet to see this stigmatism continues today).

If there were more parents that allowed their kids to choose their toys no matter what convention says they should play with, then those kids will grow up to allow their kids to choose their toys no matter what convention says. In just a few generations, toys will be toys again.

Sometimes I consider having a child just to make sure they don't grow up restricted by such pathetic conventions.

And then of course, I facepalm, and realise that that's just a terrible reason for having a child.

In the mean time, I've discovered that pink earphones work perfectly fine.

Colour doesn't affect sound quality. Who knew?

* I am not condoning the purchase of fake weapons for children. Whilst we don't have a gun problem in the UK on the same scale as many other countries, toy guns normalise the use of violence, and that in itself should be viewed with caution.

Personally Alarming

The issue of rape alarms, pepper spray, and generally arming yourself as a woman against attack troubles me.

I have, buried in my cupboard, a personal alarm and a packet of anti-spiking drink protectors. These latter are stuck in the neck of bottles, and a straw goes through the small hole, in order to prevent someone slipping something into your drink. 

My mother bought my these, and I have no doubt that she had good intentions. She was not saying that I'm an irresponsible person who needed extra help. 
She wanted, and still wants, me to remain safe. 

But I'm not going to use them. Nor do I carry the alarm. And the reason for that is if I get attacked, just because I wasn't carrying these does not make it my fault. 

These anti-spiking devices and personal alarms can be hailed as a way to prevent assaults and rapes. 
But the only true way to prevent these things is to educate people against them. 

Surely instead of advocating arming ourselves and making sure we are protecting ourselves, we should spend more on educating people to respect one another and understand that assaulting someone, or raping someone, is not acceptable. 

But advocating women arming themselves with all manner of devices or tactics (Don't walk alone down dark alleys) we are saying that we accept these violent crimes. We become complacent about them, we think "well there's nothing we can do to stop the person doing it, so we should stop people getting into situations that could potentially leave them open to attack."

What craziness is this?! Everybody, men AND women should be able to walk down any manner of path or street, at ANY time of day, and -in case you weren't sure- wearing what they like. 

Telling women (because it is predominantly said to women) to "be careful" allows a culture of blame if that woman does not obey. 
And this blame culture does not belong. This rape culture does not belong. It has to end. 

And the end starts with you. 
If you hear someone make a rape joke, call them out. It's not funny.
If you hear someone use victim-blaming language, call them out. No one EVER deserves it or had it coming to them. 

And, hardest of all, challenge your own thinking. I've kept that alarm and those anti-spike things because I know they came from good intentions. But today I'm throwing them away.
Because even if I walk home drunk, late at night, in a skirt and high heels, the only thing I will be responsible for is trying to walk in a straight line and 
get my key in the door. And the hangover the next day.

Shaving, and the grand scheme of things (Part II)

I still haven't shaved my legs. I actually went on public transport this morning dressed to go to straight to the gym, which meant two trains and and a tube with my hairy pins on show. I'm struck by the pressure and obligation I feel to minimise offending hairs on my legs, and under my arms (and even my bikini line).

When did it become normal for women to strive for fuzz free figures? When did the first glimmer of summer sun become the onset of depilatory season? (Not to mention bronzing season, and -of course- bikini body diet season).

I can recall when I went with my sister to take a tour of one of the Oxford colleges and I thought the girl who was taking us round was wearing leggings. She wasn't. A mixture of admiration and disgust sat inside me when I realised what I was seeing were her unshaved, unwaxed legs.

I have been thinking about this hair situation for the last week because I've been mulling over what life in shorts will be like in Australia, and because Boots have launched a new hair minimising product called Inhibitif.

I've read the instructions and essentially twice a day you spray your legs with this stuff whilst continuing to shave or wax when necessary. And after a month or two you can reduce your spray sessions to once every other day.

The billboard adverts for Inhibitif that adorn the walls outside Westfield ask the viewer if they are a shave slave.

Offering Inhibitif as an alternative to being a shave slave only makes you a slave to Inhibitif surely?

Who seriously has the time to ensure they reach these insanely high beauty standards set by the media, by society, and by women and men alike? A colleague of mine said he could never date a woman who didn't shave. But why don't women say they would only date a man who shaves? Why is hair the norm for men, and the enemy for women? These are the kinds of things we see as standard, a traditional for men and women. These traditions haven't always been the norm. These are learned behaviours. These are the traditions that we need to be questioning.

Seriously who has the time to spray their legs twice a day? I can just about fit in (and remember) to wash my face. I am learning how to fit in gym sessions and yoga workouts around a 6-day 50-hour working week. I am still yet to build in time for meditation and relaxation. I certainly don't need yet another standard to reach towards that I don't have time for.

In the 10 (optimistic) minutes that it takes to shave, I could learn how to buy my groceries in French. I could read an article on politics. Hell I could even clean the bath and the toilet. Our time is precious, our lives are short, and we should not be wasting them being a slave not to shaving, not to even Inhibitif, but being a slave to unhelpful, sometimes hurtful, and just downright impractical beauty standards.

So despite every fibre of my being screaming at me to shave my fuzzy pins before it's declared a national forest, I'm not going to. Because I want to learn French and read about politics. And my bathroom really needs a clean.