Ugly Society

Hey Earthbugs,

Today I want to touch on recent on goings in the media and the uproar they’ve cause. If you have Twitter you may have seen the entertainment (I say that in the loosest term as I wouldn’t particularly call dragging women down to be entertainment, but we’ll continue) magazine “Now magazine” branding Stacey Solomon as “boring”, “desperate” and “cheap”. This has come to light because Stacey fought back against the horrible words that were written about her, this was a front-page story and surrounding the images of her were other headlines that read “I wanted a bum like Kim – 85k surgery” and “revenge bodies”.

For me, when I think of Stacey Solomon I think of an amazing woman who works hard to share body positivity an obvious example would be her recent Instagram post of her in a bikini with the caption “Loving my extra fold over tummy lines this year”, a woman who shares positivity in everything she does and keeps it real. She’s the kind of person you want to be best friends with, a woman in the public eye who keeps everything as real as she can whilst still being a good mum. As someone who does so much to help empower other women, it seems baffling how magazines can write those horrible words about someone, whether they’re a celebrity or not, whether they’re a grown woman or a young teenager words hurt.

I hate how all anyone focuses on nowadays is how people look when there’s so many other topics we could focus on that benefit us all, that can help us learn about new things, things that encourage intelligent conversation as oppose to “ooh have you seen what Stacey wore last night?” or whatever. We are all individuals and are so different from one another, why does it matter to you if someone has put on a bit of weight? Why does it matter if someone has lost weight? Or, whether they’ve dyed their hair? Got their nails done? Posted this photo online? Wore this dress? Has this as a hobby? It doesn’t matter. There’s a lot more we can do in the world to spread a positive message instead of hiding behind magazines like this who can happily publish awful words about people.

Whilst searching the internet for some examples I could use in this blog post I found quite a few instances where headlines focused on women’s images for example: “Newly single Cheryl shows off stunning figure in revealing snap”, yes Cheryl is beautiful and we all post selfies online etc. etc. but why on earth is this the headline for an article? Or, that “Meghan Markle flashes legs in stunning mini blazer dress ensemble as she joins Prince Harry for a charity performance of Hamilton in London” warrants a full headline, I’m a fan of Meghan Markle and was gutted that I was working when it was the Royal Wedding but I personally think in this headline the big deal should have been about the charity performance, instead of the fact that Meghan wore a dress in which you can see her legs. Shock horror, women have legs.

Many people this summer tuned in every night to watch Love Island, now I don’t watch it but I did see all the updates via Twitter (you really couldn’t miss them) and I did develop some favourites, even I was rooting for Dani and Jack. What I was surprised to see though was the amount of horrible tweets I scrolled past each night, I understand that everyone has opinions but I really don’t see the need to publish them for everyone to see. Never mind the fact that the people they were tweeting about will have eventually left the villa and the tweets are just waiting for them to be read and to taunt them. Let’s just also brush on the whole Love Island experience itself as the producers sat and let Dani think the absolute worst when the boys left to go to the other villa, I understand that it is an entertainment show but surely there has to be some line when the entertainment involves a young woman being purposefully upset when Jack had actually done nothing wrong and in fact melted the nation’s hearts by sleeping outside. This also came just after the Love Island producers said that the islanders mental health was top of their priorities after it was announced that former Love Island star Sophie Gradon had committed suicide, and we can’t explicitly say that we know why she thought the only way out was to end her life but I think we could bet that the torrent of online abuse she received probably didn’t help.

Bullying on any level is wrong, and it’s so easy nowadays to type a comment and think nothing of it what with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and any other network there is being so readily available. I think we should all stop when we’re typing something and consider how we would feel if we were to read that about ourselves. An action as simple as this could prevent so many horrible things being out there on the internet, and in the world itself.

Let’s learn from heart breaking endings like Sophie Gradon and the hurtful words that were published about Stacey Solomon and start being a bit kinder to everyone. I was driving to work yesterday and heard on the radio a statistic that had been published that morning saying that one in four 14-year old girls have self-harmed, this was researched by Children’s Society, and it found that girls are unhappier than boys at school. That statistic is awful and heart breaking, I feel like the amount of pressure on young people increases all the time. Exam stress gets worse and sets in earlier, there’s still the constant pressure of not feeling good enough compared to others, whether you have the right clothes…all the stuff that now seems so irrelevant but as a 14-year old was very important.

Instead of tearing people down, making them feel as though they are worthless and looking at life in such a negative way, I think we all start celebrating our differences and being kinder to everyone. It really does cost nothing to be kind, so let’s all start doing it! If we don’t start now it might be too late for other people, and I don’t want to see that happen.

Thank you for taking your time to read my little rant/proposition to be nice to everyone,

Until next time,

Lia x