British Style Bloggers

Blog of the Month Poll #6 - March 2010

Amy C Thompson — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:44:06 +0000

Hello hello :)

Another Blog of the Month poll for you all. We'd love lots and lots of votes, please, because Rachel and I are feeling a little down at the moment, and votes make us smiley :) We'll even give you a column from Joshy tomorrow, if it helps... *Smiles imploringly*

So, these are your nominees this month -

Second Hand Shopper - a very inspirational body image-type post
Tea And Tweed - some adorably gorgeous perfume in a pretty pretty post
Fashion Looks North - a new blog with street style from the North of England

As usual, you have until the end of the month to make your vote count... although "the end of the month" may be a bit earlier this month, due to exciting Body Image Season type stuff :)

Lots of love,

xxx Amy, Rachel & the team

Changing Faces

Florrie — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:17:20 +0000

'You might be standing in the queue to pay at the supermarket when you suddenly notice that someone is staring intently at your child and nudging their companion. You might be walking down the street when someone just comes right up and asks about your child’s appearance. Young children are incredibly curious, they look intently at things and ask very straightforward questions. Some people are genuinely concerned. Others may be familiar with your child’s condition and may want to offer a friendly word. This sort of casual encounter is often difficult for parents because it is unexpected and it can often feel very intrusive. Many parents we speak with tell us that they often feel completely unprepared to deal with this sort of curiosity and it can leave them feeling angry, upset and powerless'

These are the sad but true words from the Changing Faces website offered to the parents of children with facial disfigurments. Looking different from everyone else brings with it a body image battle. On the whole we all want to be different but ironically also wish to conform and be part of a group, and I can only guess at the struggle people with facial disfigurments have. Naive children are always prone to stating what they see and don't understand which must make the early life of these children difficult but what is terrible is when adults cause problems.

Changing Faces is a wonderul charity that challenges our attitudes and educate from an early age, their Face Equality campaign 'is about being treated fairly and equally irrespective of facial appearance. It is about creating a society in which everyone is valued for the unique contribution that they can make to society.

The campaign aims to:

Raise awareness of our unconscious beliefs about disfigurement that can result in prejudice and discrimination
Encourage people, organisations and the government to tackle such beliefs and attitudes and make a commitment to face equality
Help everyone learn new ways of thinking and behaving towards people with disfigurements'

They have recently chosen four children to front their campaign in which they are presented as just normal people. For a wide variety of reasons people may look different from you or I but they did not ask for it and should not be made to feel ashamed.

This morning 'This Life', a programme on the BBC featured the inspirational children, Harry, Max, Lucas and Lauren, and the episode can be found on iplayer. I wish I could tell them 'Good for you.'

Links:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rfmyc/My_Life_Billboard_Kids/

http://www.changingfaces.org.uk/

http://intrinsicallyflorrie.blogspot.com/

BSB in Style Sample!

Amy C Thompson — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:58:46 +0000

British Style Bloggers is featured in this issue of Style Sample Magazine - apparently we're fashionable news! Awesome!

Florrie and myself are also involved in the trend feature, so make sure you check it out, HERE!

LoveLoveLove

- A -

PS - if you're interested in writing for BSB, email amy@britishstylebloggers.org.uk with a body image pitch sharpish! ;) Plenty if column space to fill this month!

The Camera Never Lies

Amy C Thompson — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:04:28 +0000

Guest post by Claire Nelson

Image: HERE

You know the deal. Your friends upload their photos from your latest get-together, and you eagerly start looking through them. But admit it - you are also scanning them to check how good (or bad) you look. We all do it. It’s part of our fascination with our appearance. Call it vanity, call in insecurity (and sometimes those two things are one and the same), we are fascinated with the way we look.

A familiar example: my absolutely gorgeous friend is a chronic Facebook-photo-untagger. Very few photos seem to get through her ruthless screening process. Not just those understandably unflattering photographs (there always seems to be one taken while you’re gurning mid-sentence), but perfectly nice, normal photos. I can see a great photo of my friend, and she will notice a squinty eye. (De-tag!)
Needless to say, my friend is one of a million women who do the same thing. Why do we do this to ourselves? And who exactly are we trying to hide our flaws from anyway?

Self-image is a complex thing. It’s less about how we actually look, and more about how we see ourselves; and this can be the whole problem. Our own worst critics, we will focus on aspects and areas of our appearance that nobody else even notices. Women can be almost blind to their best traits, such is the extreme focus on their so-called flaws. What we don’t often realise is that we see ourselves far less than anybody else, so our self-image is often obscured.

I have learned this lesson myself. Last summer I was lucky enough to have my photo taken by the renowned photographer Rankin, for his exhibition of real people. Of course, I blindly overlooked the word “real” and decided that this was my opportunity to be captured looking gorgeous and glamorous, a la Kate Moss. I went in there with dreams of big hair and lots of make-up.
However, the stylists went against the big hair –they left it as it was, and gave me minimal makeup. I was forced to go out there and be real.

I tried to compensate for my lack of makeover by trying to wrestle my best “look” into the lens of the camera. Yet the first set of shots didn’t look right... I was too stiff, too posed. In the end Rankin chose one photo which really stood out. It was me laughing, and I had to agree it was the best photo of them all, even though my crooked overbite was prominent, and my large nose crinkled in glee. My two most sensitive hang-ups brought to life!
Getting my prints back, I felt a little pang of disappointment that I had not been transformed into an amazing version of myself, and that in fact, I just looked like.... me. The real me. With my flaws right there for all to see.

Everybody else saw that it was a fabulous photo, and I realised that of course, this is how they see me all the time. I may not be used to seeing myself from that angle, but everyone else was. They thought the photo was beautiful because I looked confident and happy. This was a revelation to me. My own view of myself was skewed, and not necessarily kind.

We all have our hang-ups. But what we ought to be doing, instead of focusing on them, is accepting them. They’re there. That’s us. That’s how we look. It can be such a liberating feeling to accept that, and realise that actually, we’re really attractive people. I’ve had my share of male admirers, and clearly they don’t see the nose and the teeth - they see me laughing, pulling faces, shaking that lovely hair of mine. In the same way friends and family liked my Rankin portrait because they’re used to the nose and the teeth, and when they see that photo they just see me.

I am hanging that photo on my wall so that I can learn to see me too, and so I can be reminded to see past my hang-ups. I will also keep tagging my gorgeous friend in our Facebook photos, in the hope that more of them stay that way. We all have a different image of ourselves in our heads to what everyone else sees, so we should try to see ourselves as others do. Let’s stop listening to the opinions of our own worst critic – after all, what do they know? They never see the whole picture.

Blog Of The Month Application form #6

polkadotstripes — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:18:07 +0000

To be the blog of the month [March] please post a comment below with a URL to the post that you wish to submit, along with a short sentence describing that post.

NB: please make sure that there is a "contact" button on your blog, so that you can be alerted, if you win. If there is not, please post a contact email address below.

More information about Blog of the month can be found HERE.

Rachel