I went out shopping a couple of weeks ago. This is not something I do very often, because I hate it. There are rarely any clothes I like, the changing rooms are terrible and I always feel fat.
I blame media for this. I know deep inside that I'm not fat and my friends call me a skinny bitch (probably because I can eat lots of junk without actually gaining much weight). I love my body down to the waist. But I always see that stomach. Because no matter what people say - I have one. And according to myself it's big.
This makes it hard to find a pair of jeans. I'm short and my hips and stomach are a size bigger than my legs. It's more than once I have been on the edge of crying because I wouldn't fit in a pair of size 34 or sometimes even 36 (size small) jeans. Because that's the size for the rest of my clothes. Every time I try a pair of jeans I tell myself that I have to lose weight, that I should start running and eat less crap. But I never do, because a day or two later I realize that I am silly and shouldn't hate my body because I am nowhere fat and then I go buy that big bag of candy again.
But then it happens again. I get dressed or I look down on my stomach while showering and I see how big it is - I see a fat person.
I'm not going to deny that I have problems with my self-esteem. Sometimes I am happy with my body, but sometimes (most of the time) I am not.
Just like lots of girls I want this tiny waist and a flat stomach. Can you really blame us? From birth we are fed with images of how a female is supposed to look. Young girls play with Barbie dolls and how exactly do they look? Super skinny and big boobs. Later on we perhaps start reading magazines or watch TV. The models are really fit or just very skinny. Some of them even look like they suffer from anorexia. Same goes on television. They show programs such as Top Model and if a girl is too "fat" - nope, she doesn't get to be there. I've heard at least once that people laughed at a girl for being too big. And it goes on and on. Every day I see advertisements and articles such as "How to lose 2 kg every week" or "This is the sexiest body in the world."
It is not weird that I feel bad about my body. I should not have to do this, I should not have to cry because I hate it. I should not have to throw up the candy I've eaten because I'm feeling so bad about it. No, I'm not bulimic, but I do get thoughts I should not have sometimes - don't we all?
Often I read about people thinking that people with problems like these are ridiculous and that they only have themselves to blame. Which is wrong. A lot of people are insecure, especially teenagers since they are trying to figure out who they are and are very easy to influence. Media knows this and they are using it in order to make us feel even more insecure in order to make more money. And they succeed. Of course they do, otherwise I wouldn't be sitting here, working on this post for the third night in three weeks or so.
I am not saying we should have any laws regulating what media are allowed to print and not. But we, the people, have to do something about it. Have you heard of the 14 years old girl who created a petition where she asked the magazine Seventeen to print one "unaltered -- real -- photo spread per month". The petition got over 84,000 signatures and Seventeen actually agreed to it! This is huge and shows that people actually have the power. Without the people they wouldn't be making any money, right? So we have to tell the magazines that we want to see non-edited models. We have to tell the magazines that we don't want to read about the latest diet. We have to stop watching series which make us feel bad.
Because every person has the right to feel good about her or his body, without having to go on a diet. And with this post I want you to pay attention to a similar petition, with Teen Vogue as recipient and I encourage you to sign it. Currently it has 9,579 signatures and it would be great if it could reach the same amount as the Seventeen one! You can find it here.
I want to add that I have nothing against people who look different than I do. (Well to be honest I have a problem with actual fat people. I don't know why, but it doesn't bother me until I have to sit next to one on a plane or something similar. Have you even done it? Then you might understand what I'm talking about.)
If people are skinny or petite by nature that is fine. If a person is eating healthy and exercising that is fine. In fact it is actually great. This does however not mean that media should force it into our brains that we are fat and need to lose weight - when we don't even have to.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Monday, June 4, 2012
IRC
IRC has been a part of my life since I was 12. At first I was in a pretty private swedish channel on EFnet, under the nick behind if I remember correctly (after the song Behind These Hazel Eyes, lol. I loved that song as a kid). I took a break after a couple of months but went back - now as Em|. A nick I still use whenever I am on IRC. At the age of 12-13 I got my first haters - yay! But I guess I deserved them. I was mature for a 13 years old girl, but if you compare my maturity to the one of a 20 years old person, you quickly see why they found me annoying. I was an easy target aswell, being an insecure teenage girl. Now when I look back at it I understand that they were trolling - 75% of the time. The rest of the time they were serious, and I know this because a friend told me they had plans on refusing me entry to an event which I had paid for. Which I still find completely unacceptable since I in no ways was dangerous.
A year later or something I met my first boy friend online. It only lasted for two months but I still consider him a great friend - although we haven't seen eachother for half a year. I started hanging out in international channels (probably #last.fm @ QuakeNet being the biggest. I'm still friends with some of the people actually, they're awesome!).
Then December 2010 came. We all know what that means, don't we? Operation Payback. At first I didn't give a fuck, or perhaps I didn't know about it. I think I remember my friend mentioning something about downing some site and me thinking he was retarded - probably because I didn't know why he/they did it. Anyways, a couple of days later I read in the news that my very good friend Awinee (I'm sure some of you have heard of him, he's been trolling around on twitter quite a bit. Or was, I don't know anymore actually) had been arrested. I became furious. And when I'm furious I don't think clearly. I went on the AnonOps IRC and downloaded LOIC (Yeah, I'm not proud of it, okay?!). But obviously I did nothing more than download LOIC, because I'm a nice girl.
And I was stuck. I made new friends and I absolutely loved the place, how could so many people online co-operate in such a way for a specific cause? It truly amazed me. Just like many others though, I stopped going there after a while. Operation Payback was over and it wasn't the first nor the last time I took a break from IRC. After the HBGary and WBC incidents I went back on IRC, just like many other. Not long after I went back on IRC I met the most amazing boy ever. I can still remember our first conversation. I remember the long nights on skype with cam (okay fine we were on cam pretty much 24/7 except from when we had school) and blablabla. You probably know how it is being in love. A month and a half later I finally got to meet him IRL. I couldn't stop shaking, I had to sit down because of it. It's been more than a year since and I'm still ridiculously in love with him. Even though we've caused drama on some places where people don't want drama (Sorry voxanon). Shit happens, mistakes are made but everything turned out well anyways.
Of course a lot of things happened after I met him: I freaked out last summer when people got v& so I took a long break and didn't go back on IRC and Twitter until December I think. I wasn't very fond of AnonOps anymore though, it was too many faggots and too few people actually worth talking to unless you wanted to hear "faggot, gay, lolwhore" all day long.
And then I found Voxanon! Some people are old to me, some are new. I find the server to be so much better than AnonOps - the opers are actually competent and I trust them much more than I trust the AnonOps opers - probably because half of them proved to be retards anyways. That's not the entire truth though, these guys strive for the network not to end up like AnonOps (and lots of other shitty networks). They care about privacy and truth be told I feel safer there. (Not as if I give a fuck since I had a crazy bitch period in March where I doxed myself completely) And do you wanna know the best thing? 90% of the people connected aren't trolls or feds! Probably just 10% or something. It's actually possible to have a real conversation.
Voxanon has been under attack quite often lately. By other Anons. Suddenly freedom of speech doesn't apply any longer. It's only freedom of speech as long as you want it to be. It's obvious that these people are butthurt (which you can see on the messages the bots spammed), but that gives them no right to down a network some people actually like.
So a pro-tip: If you have any problems with one person, don't go with collective punishment. Grow up, take it like a man (or woman) and TALK with the person instead. Don't take out all your hate on us. We don't deserve it. And don't talk about freedom of speech if you act like you're 12 either.
I love IRC and I love Voxanon and childish behavior such as this frustrates me.
And that's it for this time people! There will be a lot of grammatical (and perhaps spelling) errors, but when I'm upset I just write and I never seem to find the mistakes before I publish it. So I apologize, I will eventually find the errors later!
TL;DR: My IRC history, Voxanon, attacks, me scolding the attackers.
A year later or something I met my first boy friend online. It only lasted for two months but I still consider him a great friend - although we haven't seen eachother for half a year. I started hanging out in international channels (probably #last.fm @ QuakeNet being the biggest. I'm still friends with some of the people actually, they're awesome!).
Then December 2010 came. We all know what that means, don't we? Operation Payback. At first I didn't give a fuck, or perhaps I didn't know about it. I think I remember my friend mentioning something about downing some site and me thinking he was retarded - probably because I didn't know why he/they did it. Anyways, a couple of days later I read in the news that my very good friend Awinee (I'm sure some of you have heard of him, he's been trolling around on twitter quite a bit. Or was, I don't know anymore actually) had been arrested. I became furious. And when I'm furious I don't think clearly. I went on the AnonOps IRC and downloaded LOIC (Yeah, I'm not proud of it, okay?!). But obviously I did nothing more than download LOIC, because I'm a nice girl.
And I was stuck. I made new friends and I absolutely loved the place, how could so many people online co-operate in such a way for a specific cause? It truly amazed me. Just like many others though, I stopped going there after a while. Operation Payback was over and it wasn't the first nor the last time I took a break from IRC. After the HBGary and WBC incidents I went back on IRC, just like many other. Not long after I went back on IRC I met the most amazing boy ever. I can still remember our first conversation. I remember the long nights on skype with cam (okay fine we were on cam pretty much 24/7 except from when we had school) and blablabla. You probably know how it is being in love. A month and a half later I finally got to meet him IRL. I couldn't stop shaking, I had to sit down because of it. It's been more than a year since and I'm still ridiculously in love with him. Even though we've caused drama on some places where people don't want drama (Sorry voxanon). Shit happens, mistakes are made but everything turned out well anyways.
Of course a lot of things happened after I met him: I freaked out last summer when people got v& so I took a long break and didn't go back on IRC and Twitter until December I think. I wasn't very fond of AnonOps anymore though, it was too many faggots and too few people actually worth talking to unless you wanted to hear "faggot, gay, lolwhore" all day long.
And then I found Voxanon! Some people are old to me, some are new. I find the server to be so much better than AnonOps - the opers are actually competent and I trust them much more than I trust the AnonOps opers - probably because half of them proved to be retards anyways. That's not the entire truth though, these guys strive for the network not to end up like AnonOps (and lots of other shitty networks). They care about privacy and truth be told I feel safer there. (Not as if I give a fuck since I had a crazy bitch period in March where I doxed myself completely) And do you wanna know the best thing? 90% of the people connected aren't trolls or feds! Probably just 10% or something. It's actually possible to have a real conversation.
Voxanon has been under attack quite often lately. By other Anons. Suddenly freedom of speech doesn't apply any longer. It's only freedom of speech as long as you want it to be. It's obvious that these people are butthurt (which you can see on the messages the bots spammed), but that gives them no right to down a network some people actually like.
So a pro-tip: If you have any problems with one person, don't go with collective punishment. Grow up, take it like a man (or woman) and TALK with the person instead. Don't take out all your hate on us. We don't deserve it. And don't talk about freedom of speech if you act like you're 12 either.
I love IRC and I love Voxanon and childish behavior such as this frustrates me.
And that's it for this time people! There will be a lot of grammatical (and perhaps spelling) errors, but when I'm upset I just write and I never seem to find the mistakes before I publish it. So I apologize, I will eventually find the errors later!
TL;DR: My IRC history, Voxanon, attacks, me scolding the attackers.
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