First off: Happy New Year everyone!! (I know that was late but better late, than never!!)
Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and enjoyed yourselves with tons of indulgent food - Lol is it back to the gym time or not? For moi, it is and is working successfully!
So today I did the unthinkable and joined Twitter. After everything I'd said about it, after all the bad mouthing, I jumped on the bandwagon. And actually...it's not that bad! It's just getting the hang of "tweeting" I still have to master...somehow ;)
This is a big thing for me; Queen of Technophobes and general technology accident-waiting-to-happen sort of person! If you, yourself reading this, have Twitter go and add me @c_syal
I've called this "Getting with the times: Buy Confidence from a branded bottle" because of my Twitter awakening and other things too.
Over the festive period, The Clan aka the extended family, descended upon the house and with them came all my younger girl cousins. I've not seen these girlies for ages, so when I saw them I got a bit of a shock.
I'm the shortest in my family. Everyone else is 5 ft 7+ whilst I stand a mere 5 ft 5 - a good average height for a girl but nope, not in the family!
So..they've all grown up a little bit and well they've definitely changed! All are under 10 years old and quite sweet adorable things.
Until the topic of dieting, make-up, beauty and how women should look came up.....this is how the conversation went:
Cousin 1: "Yes my mummy's on another diet"
Me: "What do you think dieting is?"
Cousin 2: "It makes you thin and become beautiful."
I sat there non-plussed. How can girls under 10 seriously think like this?! When I was 10, I didn't even know what a computer was, let alone the Atkins Diet, Mac Make-up and other rubbish.
Me: "So if someone's not thin, does it mean they're ugly?" NB: I'm not a skinny gal haha
Cousin 1: "Erm.."
Cousin 2: "Well fat people are really ugly. And they don't wear nice clothes."
I was so shocked that I didn't even know what to say in answer to them. They're all quite thin and I think they're pretty as they are. Then..
Cousin 2: "Can you put on make-up for me? Mummy doesn't do hers right!"
Me: "No wait til you're a bit older. You really don't need it."
Cousin 1: "So why do you wear make-up?"
Ah man...
Me: "Well it's something girls do when they are my age. So just wait, I promise you both, you really don't need diets or make-up right now."
After that conversation with two 8 year old girls I had seen from bundles in soft blankets to young girls questioning their looks and physical appearance when they'd barely hit puberty put things into perspective. Things and times have changed. Wearing make-up was once a sign of adulthood and something married women wore. Yeah sure, young girls play dressing-up to try look like mummy or the pretty lady from mummy's fashion magazines - I mean we've all done it.
However, has this moved from just an innocent childhood phase to something more serious?
The cosmetics industry is huge globally, worth well into billions in terms of economies around the world and the effect it manages to have upon everyone is astonishing.
The fact that one industry wields power to say: "I am going to influence you in how you see yourself" and successfully achieves this through glossy adverts, air-brushed images and well shot TV commercials.
The sad thing is, an awful lot of young girls fall for these touched-up pictures and think they're real.
Of course now, there's more awareness of photo shopped images and air-brushing coming out into the public eye and some companies face sanctions etc if they are caught with unrealistic images.
The problem is: nearly all cosmetic companies do this and surely they can't sanction every single one of them?
It led me to think of a few questions:
1. When is the right age to start wearing make-up? Definitely not under 10 - the skin is too young and still developing. So are young girls just moving with the times, maturing quicker and looking up to older girls?
2. Do we put too much pressure on girls (regardless of age) to look a certain way, so that they start to get "confidence from a branded bottle" that it's now affecting girls under 10?
3. Is this trend going to continue growing or can we somehow stunt it? If so, how? Should parents, older sisters, aunts etc sit down and talk to the young girls about health, beauty, weight and other sensitive issues in the same way that they give us "The Talk" (you know what I mean by this haha)
Various companies have started in their backlash against the fake plasticy mannequins. Dove has their "Real Beauty" campaign and so far it's been successful. More and more is being done to show these young girls what natural beauty is and what a healthy weight should - though from my view, this is still a taboo and needs much more work to be done.
All I can say is that I hope such campaigns are successful in what they hope to achieve.
Long live natural beauty, good health and being content with yourself!
Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and enjoyed yourselves with tons of indulgent food - Lol is it back to the gym time or not? For moi, it is and is working successfully!
So today I did the unthinkable and joined Twitter. After everything I'd said about it, after all the bad mouthing, I jumped on the bandwagon. And actually...it's not that bad! It's just getting the hang of "tweeting" I still have to master...somehow ;)
This is a big thing for me; Queen of Technophobes and general technology accident-waiting-to-happen sort of person! If you, yourself reading this, have Twitter go and add me @c_syal
I've called this "Getting with the times: Buy Confidence from a branded bottle" because of my Twitter awakening and other things too.Over the festive period, The Clan aka the extended family, descended upon the house and with them came all my younger girl cousins. I've not seen these girlies for ages, so when I saw them I got a bit of a shock.
I'm the shortest in my family. Everyone else is 5 ft 7+ whilst I stand a mere 5 ft 5 - a good average height for a girl but nope, not in the family!
So..they've all grown up a little bit and well they've definitely changed! All are under 10 years old and quite sweet adorable things.
Until the topic of dieting, make-up, beauty and how women should look came up.....this is how the conversation went:
Cousin 1: "Yes my mummy's on another diet"
Me: "What do you think dieting is?"
Cousin 2: "It makes you thin and become beautiful."
I sat there non-plussed. How can girls under 10 seriously think like this?! When I was 10, I didn't even know what a computer was, let alone the Atkins Diet, Mac Make-up and other rubbish.Me: "So if someone's not thin, does it mean they're ugly?" NB: I'm not a skinny gal haha
Cousin 1: "Erm.."
Cousin 2: "Well fat people are really ugly. And they don't wear nice clothes."
I was so shocked that I didn't even know what to say in answer to them. They're all quite thin and I think they're pretty as they are. Then..
Cousin 2: "Can you put on make-up for me? Mummy doesn't do hers right!"
Me: "No wait til you're a bit older. You really don't need it."
Cousin 1: "So why do you wear make-up?"
Ah man...
Me: "Well it's something girls do when they are my age. So just wait, I promise you both, you really don't need diets or make-up right now."
After that conversation with two 8 year old girls I had seen from bundles in soft blankets to young girls questioning their looks and physical appearance when they'd barely hit puberty put things into perspective. Things and times have changed. Wearing make-up was once a sign of adulthood and something married women wore. Yeah sure, young girls play dressing-up to try look like mummy or the pretty lady from mummy's fashion magazines - I mean we've all done it.
However, has this moved from just an innocent childhood phase to something more serious?
The cosmetics industry is huge globally, worth well into billions in terms of economies around the world and the effect it manages to have upon everyone is astonishing.
The fact that one industry wields power to say: "I am going to influence you in how you see yourself" and successfully achieves this through glossy adverts, air-brushed images and well shot TV commercials.
The sad thing is, an awful lot of young girls fall for these touched-up pictures and think they're real.
Of course now, there's more awareness of photo shopped images and air-brushing coming out into the public eye and some companies face sanctions etc if they are caught with unrealistic images.
The problem is: nearly all cosmetic companies do this and surely they can't sanction every single one of them?
It led me to think of a few questions:
1. When is the right age to start wearing make-up? Definitely not under 10 - the skin is too young and still developing. So are young girls just moving with the times, maturing quicker and looking up to older girls?
2. Do we put too much pressure on girls (regardless of age) to look a certain way, so that they start to get "confidence from a branded bottle" that it's now affecting girls under 10?
3. Is this trend going to continue growing or can we somehow stunt it? If so, how? Should parents, older sisters, aunts etc sit down and talk to the young girls about health, beauty, weight and other sensitive issues in the same way that they give us "The Talk" (you know what I mean by this haha)
Various companies have started in their backlash against the fake plasticy mannequins. Dove has their "Real Beauty" campaign and so far it's been successful. More and more is being done to show these young girls what natural beauty is and what a healthy weight should - though from my view, this is still a taboo and needs much more work to be done.
All I can say is that I hope such campaigns are successful in what they hope to achieve.
Long live natural beauty, good health and being content with yourself!
