This morning I was watching Ellen (I love Ellen, don’t you? She’s so lovely. More on her later), and I saw this SUPER CUTE little girl on with her dad. They had gotten Ellen’s attention when a YouTube video of them singing together attracted more than 3 million views. It has now had almost 7 million, which is totally understandable given how lovely they are.
Here is the original video:
This makes my heart smile. Which leads me on to my next point. Ellen. I love her. I love her dancing, I love her show, I love her sparkly blue eyes, and I really love this video of her wedding.
This blog has been included in the longlist for the “Personal Blog” category in the Irish Blog Awards 2011. I think what this means is that someone nominated me, which was very kind of whoever that person is. I am very happy, and grateful to everyone who takes the time to check this out. I’m also looking forward to checking out all the other blogs on the list – which may take some time!
Right, I’m going to take a moment to revel in the fact that I just successfully used a screwdriver and fixed our fridge’s door and then I’ve got lots to post! LOL hehe luv ya TTYL etc. xxxooooxxoxoxo
P.S. I don’t know who that kid is but I’d like to squash his little face. In an affectionate way, not a violent way.
It started with Sophie Dahl. She exploded into the world of fashion and broke the mold. She was young and beautiful, like most models, and the granddaughter of children’s author Roald Dahl; however, the reason most of us got to know her was because she was a size 14. And a model. She was a plus-size model, not restricted to mail order catalogues for women who can’t fit into “normal” sizes. I loved her. If she could be beautiful, then maybe I could! Then she lost weight.
I felt betrayed, I really did. I felt personally aggrieved and I felt that she had turned her back on me. My whole life I had believed that I would never be attractive unless I was thin. Her success as a model made me doubt myself. (Only doubt myself now, it would take more than one beacon of light to drag me out of the pit of self-loathing I had dug for myself with the help of school bullies and well, pretty much every image of beauty I’d ever been shown). Her weight loss and subsequent mainstream success as a “normal” model disappointed me, and I wasn’t the only one. There was a reasonable backlash.
The same thing is happening now with Crystal Renn. She started her modelling career at 14, suffered with anorexia, became a plus size model and wrote a book about it (Hungry: A Young Model’s Story of Appetite, Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves).
It’s not surprise that she was lauded as the perfect plus size beacon of light for this generation. Since then, she’s lost some weight and is somewhere in between the 95lbs she was during her anorexia and what she feels is her natural size “more like 175lbs”. And there is backlash. In this video she addresses her feelings on the matter (3:04):
Obviously, Crystal Renn and Sophie Dahl should not be vilified for their sizes any more than I should be vilified for mine. Their bodies are just that, their bodies. The real issue here is that there are so few images of beauty that are “plus-sized” that when we lose one it’s a big deal! If the mainstream media could diversify a little, then there wouldn’t be so much pressure on the one or two people who manage to get publicly labelled beautiful despite being “plus-sized”.
P.S. I am kind of tempted to stick in Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” here. 😉
First of all, sorry about the lack of posts, I was in Berlin and away from the world of internet.
Now to business. Full disclosure, I’ve never been a huge fan of Lady Gaga’s. I don’t buy into her crap and crazy outfits, but like the rest of the world I am curious to see how she follows up her debut. “Born This Way”, the first single from the album of the same name was heard around the world for the first time today, and it has me confused. For a long time people have made comparisons between Gaga and Madonna. The crazy outfits, the rebellious attitude, the pop songs…one has to wonder if she is intentionally playing on the comparison with this song. It is SO Madonna, I’m actually finding it hard to get my head around it. You can listen to it here.
Now listen to this:
Are ya with me?
UPDATE: Someone has very cleverly put the songs together in this handy youtube video.
There really are no words to describe this. All I’ll say is you MUST watch it. And don’t give up after 2 minutes. I’m feeling all kinds of emotions. Joy, shame, embarrassment, jubilation…all from watching this video.
Louise McSharry 