In terms of my strongest affirmation, I guess I'd say realising how much work my mum put in to bringing up me and Beth. Sounds a little cheesy, but I took her for granted growing up as a kid, and after a point I began to recognise single mumhood was significant, and she'd had to deal with a lot to give us opportunities. Looking at how she did it all with a smile and without ever doubting herself kinda gave me my first insight into what feminism looks like. Funny, because she never talked of herself as a feminist. That and reading How To Be a Woman- gave me a definition I identified with. Beforehand I thought if you hadn't read Germaine Greer you didn't count.
My biggest challenge has been EITHER coming to university and discovering that people think I'm the wrong kind of feminist, finding out that other women, especially ones close to me, fundamentally disagree with what I see as basic feminism, and accepting mistakes I've made in certain life choices that I saw as reducing my credibility as a "real" feminist.
Good question (Y).
Maybe CatMo. Maybe Beyonce. Farrah Fawcett. I used to have a burning admiration for suffragette Marion Wallace-Dunlop, the first woman to go on hunger strike for the vote.
I'm aware this is a joke, but genuinely, Northern. Being English is fab and all, but being Northern means proper gravy and walking past Roy Cropper in a train station and having an accent and hills and being able to call complete strangers "love" and "pet" and if you're feeling daring "duck". Being English is having Pimms and being quietly disgruntled and meeting the queen.
I am a sucker for Youtubers. DailyGrace, Zoella, Sam Pepper, Jenna Marbles, It's Kingsley Bitch, LLYMLRS, My Drunk Kitchen, Laci Green. I can't help watching them.
Also "failbook" and "facebook fails" etc. And Buzzfeed.
I read "Walking Naked" so many times growing up. I will read and treasure anything by Bill Bryson but if I had to pick one of his I'd say... Neither Here Nor There. How To Be A Woman, To Kill a Mockingbird, HP series, A Clockwork Orange, We Need To Talk About Kevin, There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom, White Teeth.
True story, I wanted to be a student.
My mum likes the notion of "show me the girl at seven and I'll show you the woman", so if we're going off that, I was the kid who made and wrote up magazines, forced my sister and friends to buy them. I've always been into forcing people into reading my stuff, apparently.
Emma Bennett used to proof read them for me, Jonathan Frost designed it for me, my mum gave me ideas for it. There's a few other names who really gave me confidence in embarrassing myself online, be it giving me the idea in the first place, staying up late to talk about post ideas, forcing all their mates to read it and nominating me for awards. (That's you; Laura Reynolds, Dan Williams, Sam Dumigan, Ian Lau)
(P.S Thank you all)
I used to stay up every night reading past bedtime using a light from a glowpen. It's totally ruined my eyes and now I can't look into the middle distance without squinting/glasses. Harry Potter would have been there in the morning, I should've just waited.
Do I come off as confident? Oh my, I thought I came off as... confused. It depends. I can be shy and quiet and need to take my time around things, but for the most part I'm pretty confident. It's a combination of being Northern, trying to be Beyonce, and practice in handling people. I'll happily talk to strangers, make a complaint, tell jokes to the bus driver, follow my instinct, etc, but I don't mind taking a back seat occasionally :)
My first rave; a review (
http://www.everysecondsong.com/2012/09/my-first-rave-review.html)
I think this is my favourite blog post because it was such an incredible night. I am the LAST person you'd expect to find at a French rave in the forest, and the experience was so utterly new to me that all my incredulousness, my ridiculousness (who takes a book to a rave, for god's sake?) and my excitement really comes across. It reminds me of a really fun night, and is probably by favourite travel post too.
Buy my mum a house so she can stop bloody moving every year. Buy myself a round the world plane ticket, and spend my time volunteering and writing across the globe. Help out important causes to me, and make sure my family's future was secure happy and fun :)
