Better off Red...

This is me. I am a natural red head. And proud.

But it hasn't always been that way.

I spent my childhood blissfully unaware of the fact that I was a little bit different. I wore My Little Pony dresses, played with cuddly toys and barbie dolls, and drew pictures of myself with my family; my hair always coloured with a bold red crayon. I busted with excitement at the prospect of playing Ariel and Ginger spice in family performances and plays at christmas. Pippy Long Stocking was one of my favourite movies. Yoram Gross' (the creator of Blinky Bill) famous red haired adventurer  Dot was on high rotation on our VCR player.  I took great delight in dressing up as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz during book week at school, and generally had a natural gravitation towards anything involving red heads. I loved my hair and was happy.

Yoram Gross films' Dot and the Kangaroo, 1977

It wasn't until I got to high school that I quickly discovered, (or so I was told) that I was completely abnormal. My parents debated sending me to the co-ed Catholic school in Sydney's West, where my older brother had generally had a good experience. I was also accepted to a catholic girls school in Kingsgrove, 40 minutes from where I lived, but out of fear of travelling alone, and a desire to go to high school with people I already knew, regrettably, I chose the former. It was a sporty, predominantly anglo  co-ed school. The girls seemed gloriously tanned and blonde, dominating at netball and swimming carnivals and all of the sporting events. The boys weren't all that much chop. Most of them boring and immature, which was what I generally thought of most boys.  Within months I had begun to compare myself to the other girls, heart-broken that I was relegated to the bottom of the food chain with the 'nerds', 'weirdos' and 'uglies', who were the butt of  everyone's jokes.  There was only one other red head in my grade, a tall, gorgeous girl. I suppose both of us had never fully understood our point of difference until we were hurled into this  strange sort of Aryan environment.

What ensued was two years of continuous bullying and taunts. 'Ranga' 'Red haired- rat-rooter' 'matchstick' and 'fanta pubes' were just a sample of the horrible nicknames I was given. Everywhere I went, the canteen,the toilet, the quadrangle, the classroom, the teasing was constant.  I would come home from school every day in tears, sometimes I would cry so much that I'd be physically sick. My mother wrote letters to the Catholic education office, the Principal, and the year co ordinator , all to no avail. In the end the school suggested that it would be better for me to leave if I was so unhappy. So I left. coloured my hair blonde and began my new life at the school I should have gone to in the first place. The teasing had a long lasting legacy on my self esteem. It took me 8 long years to finally accept myself and go back to my original red colour. It has only been in the last year that I have finally started to enjoy being a red head and grown to love myself the way I am. Every day I am complimented by women who tell me my hair is beautiful and the envy of so many. I have grown to admire and love famous red heads again, and now I wouldn't change a thing for the world. My hair is a unique and special part of me.

So here are some famous red heads that I admire..

My favourite red head- even if it's not natural. 

Rachel McAdams in the Notebook:

 The moment I decided I wanted my red hair back!!!

Amy Adams

Victoria's Secret model, Cintia Dicker

Model Coco Rocha

Isla Fisher

Judy Garland

Ashlee Simpson- one of many people who longed to have red hair!!I personally think this suited her the best ;)

So there they are- the iconic red heads that make me proud to be red.

On a final note, there is an extremely problematic bullying culture in this country. I am very much not alone in my experience- there are thousands of children who go to school everyday and come home feeling worthless and depressed because of the nasty, humiliating taunts of others. The point of my sharing this is that I want young people to understand that school is not the end of the world- and it is not the best place to decide if you should accept yourself or not. It can be excruciatingly hard to fit in, and even more so to ignore people when they put you down and tease you. If I listened to everything that other people said, I would believe that I was a freak with strange hair, a big nose, pasty skin, and chicken legs. And you know what, for a while I'm sad to say I did believe that. But now I listen to the people who boost me, the hundreds of women who stop me when I'm shopping or at work to tell me how stunning my skin and hair are, and that no matter how much you tried you could never get my colour from a bottle. I believe now that I am blessed to be different; I am who I am, and I'm better off red.

It's also a little easier for my friends to spot me in a crowd ;)

love xx

Tales From the Green Eyed Monster: The perils of having what others want

It'a always bugged me that girls can never seem to be happy for other girls. And now that I've been an adult for some years, it's safe to say women are the same.

It's something I've always noticed and always wanted to write about, so today I'm going to start. There are a couple of things in the news lately that have tossed pretty-girl bashing into the spotlight.

Example one: Megan Gale's twitter incident in the cafe. Another thing I think I'm fairly safe in saying is that Megan Gale is beautiful. And yes, there will be those who disagree, hark: beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder. But come on, no one can say that she isn't attractive. She didn't get voted sexiest woman alive solely because she's a nice person, which I'm sure she is. So why did that young girl in the cafe make nasty comments about Megan? Because she was jealous. There. I said it. Forget 'she's entitled to her opinion and other people should respect it', she's jealous, and that's the long and the short of it. She said those nasty things because she couldn't stand looking at Megan's picture. And what do the insecure do when faced with something they wish they had? They knock it. She put Megan down because it made her feel better to tell herself that she wasn't all that much chop. It bugs a lot of people to see how beautiful and successful she is.  I for one, don't get it. Yes, I'd like a slightly nicer shaped nose, perhaps a few million to spend, and I certainly wouldn't mind being likened to an Amazonian goddess. But tough luck. Not everyone is dealt a perfect hand, and we are all beautiful and unique in our own right, even if we don't look a certain way or have a certain amount of success or money. I look at Megan and think she is lovely; I acknowledge her beauty and I think she's an intelligent, classy women. She is involved i a lot of charity work and always conducts herself gracefully in the public eye. I think that we should look to people like her as a role model. I' happy for her and I think she does Australia proud.

Megan Gale tweeted about her run in with the green-eyed monster

Example two: Kate Middleton's weight loss pre-wedding. Don't even get me started on the way the world has latched onto the term 'commoner'. It's hideous, and I could write a whole other diatribe based on why I think that term is nasty and unnecessary. Back to the weight. It was obvious that in the lead up to the wedding Kate Middleton had lost some weight. There was talk of how she was on this ridiculous 'Dukan diet' and desperately trying to shed a few extra pounds before the wedding. As expected the media had a hayday with this. What the entire world seemingly failed to take into account was that Kate was already slim; she had a lovely figure and certainly didn't seem as though she needed to 'lose weight', like the media was carrying on about. And I'm sure herself and William probably agreed. I'd say she lost weight quite dramatically because she was under the most enormous amount of pressure you could imagine. The entire world was looking at her and judging as she got ready for her wedding. She was rushing around, probably nervous as all hell, and trying to organise herself for the big day. I can only imagine how stressed and exhausted she must have become in the lead up to the wedding. So I don't think I'm exactly going out a limb when I say, perhaps this might be why she lost some weight? The world is so obsessed with dieting and weight loss that we'll use just about anything to plug a ridiculous new fad diet. At anyone's expense.

Kate Middleton days before HER wedding

Example three: An experience I had just yesterday. I was unfortunate enough to be on a train around 3.30 which soon filled with horrifically loud, smokey smelling teens from the local high school. Three young girls (whom I had just watched frantically suck the last drags out of a cigarette before getting on the train) plonked themselves in front of me with a copy of the MX daily paper. Inside was a picture of the top 10 from Maxim magazine's hottest 100 women, with Rosie Hutington- Whitely topping this year's poll-much to the horror of these three school girls. I listened in shock as they picked apart every part of her- 'she has stupid far-apart eyes like a hammer head shark', 'her nose is all flat like Usher' and 'she doesn't even have a very good body; she just looks like you're average slut'. Wow. I was dumbfounded by the comments. No matter which way you look at it, she is phenomenally beautiful. There is no denying that. And so the green eyed monster had struck again.

Rosie Huntington Whiteley: making 'hammer head sharks' and 'Usher's nose' a winning combo.

Yes, they were teenage girls, and admittedly it is a time in your life that sucks in many ways. The opposite sex are cripplingly immature and unrealistically demanding. Teenage boys with their zoo magazines and posters of half naked beauties on the wall force their impossible standards of beauty on young girls from a very early age, and so at 14, we begin shaving our legs, colouring our hair, watching our weight and slathering on fake tan in a hopeless bid to resemble Megan fox, so that you'll get the guy and fulfil his airbrushed dreams.

And yes, it sucks. I'm 23 now and I remember it as though it were yesterday. Even as recently as a year ago, I felt it when I flicked through my boyfriends Ralph magazines and thought to myself 'how am I ever going to live up to this?' But I never girl-bashed because of it. Instead I talked to myself, and told myself that I had to focus on what I had and make the best of what my mumma gave me. Where would putting myself and others down get me? Big fat nowhere. I embraced my features and have always tried to make the most of them. I accept that I am never going to be a Victoria's secret model, but I'm happy for those who are. And that genuinely makes me feel better. It makes me feel confident and classy. In my experience, life is too short for jealousy, and it feels better to be happy for others than it does to put them down.
You should never punish someone for the way they look- beautiful or not beautiful.

So in the wise word's of Ani Difranco:

            God help you if you are an ugly girl

          because too pretty is also your doom

             cos' everyone harbours a secured hatred

         for the prettiest girl in the room

xxx

Street style lust

So I'm going into Harper's Bazaar to do some interning tomorrow. Only thing is, I'm totally stumped for what to wear. It's one of the world's biggest fashion magazines and although I like to think that I have good taste in clothes and I'm not too bad at putting an outfit together, it's Harpers. And the very thought of being in those lifts at Park street with those amazing women conjures up images of The Devil Wears Prada. So I turned to my old 'Inspiration' folder, which is made up of hundreds of pictures from street style blogs. It was mostly put together in my last year of uni:2009, the year that I spent single, alone with my cats and my fashion magazines. So here are the pictures that still make my favourites list.

love x

Shoe lust:Colour block and Marni

These are the shoes that I wish I had bought, or can't afford-

Marni Sandals. 

I first saw these on Rume Neely's blog, fashiontoast. Sadly, they are sold old out everywhere in store and online. Ebay is my only hope- but you'd be mad to sell these. Mad.

ASOS Block heeled sandal.

These are gorgeous, but I have a feeling they may not suit my legs. I could take the risk, but it's an expensive little exercise if they don't fit or suit me, the shipping is rather costly.

Chloe wedge heels

 Old but beautiful nonetheless. When i worked at Sportsgirl I had a lovely friend Julia who purchased a similar pair. I remember going with her and listening to her philosophy on lay-by and high fashion items. If only I'd thought like her. If you're out there, you're a smart girl Jules!

Fendi sandals 

$700(thats about $500 out of my price range). Enough said.

BIEBER FEVER

The real Justin Bieber

A Wanna-bieber kissing YOUR daughter

Walking through Pitt Street Mall in Sydney yesterday, I noticed something rather unnerving. Yes, I'm aware that Justin Bieber is in town...I find myself squirming and feeling rather nauseous when I see images of young girls screaming and crying at the sight of him. And look, he's cute. In a sort of little girl-boy way. But have these girls not heard him speak? Considering he's come from such 'humble beginnings', he appears to be a little white boy, but has a strange, sort of hybrid African-American accent. I also find it weird watching children..and that's essentially what they are, singing about love and sex. People blame magazines, and beauty pageants, and music videos, and everything under the sun for the premature sexualisation of girls. Yes, fair enough, and I couldn't agree more.
But I'm also blaming Bieber.

When I was 16, I did have pictures of Paul Walker and Josh Hartnett strewn all over my walls. And some years before that there were the Backstreet boys, who also sang about love and lust and whatever else. But I never took it too seriously. I liked them, but I didn't beg my mum at the age of 13 to let me go to the concert and cry hysterically when they came on stage. I also found myself laughing at them a bit and occasionally thinking eeewww. I believe it was a healthy interest. There are few acts that would get that kind of excitable reaction from me now, even at the ripe old age of 23. Except perhaps Radiohead.

Anyway. People might be thinking, what's wrong with loving something or having a celebrity crush? I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I do think theres something wrong with 16 year olds having serious relationships, and I've noticed a hell of a lot more of it since our mate Justin emerged. And some Bieber fans are considerably younger than that. They are at the age where they should still think boys stink and have germs. But they don't; they want their own Bieber, they want a boyfriend, and the male teenagers in this country are catching on. The unnerving site that I saw yesterday, was not only 3 teenage boys who exactly resembled Bieber, but teenage boys absolutely surrounded by girls that were far too young to be hanging out with boys. At the train station, One of the Wannabiebers (which I have aptly named them for the sake of this post) was even wearing the same scarf, had the same haircut and even the same Bieber Nike shoes. But what was more disturbing, was that he was kissing and had his hand all over a girl who was definitely not a day older than 14. And at 14, you should still be at home reading Harry Potter books. Not hanging around a train station with a wannabieber at 6.30pm.

So I'll leave you with this thought...is Bieber fever a healthy obsession? Or is it encouraging your daughters and younger sisters to go crazy and allow someone's underage son to grope them at a train station in the dark? Obviously he isn't solely responsible. He is simply the Shirley Temple of our age (and similarly feminine, might I add). But I think mums need to be a little more worried about the words he's serenading teenage girls with. 

Jennifer Hawkins for Siren

So upon browsing Siren's website to pick what I'd like from the new winter collection, I came across the new JLH for Siren range. Not sure what the L stands for, but I'm going to go with 'Louise' as it seems to be Australia's most popular female middle name. Anyhoo, these are my picks from the collection. Chunky heeled sandals and suede pumps are making a big impact this season, and after abandoning all hopes of ever getting that pair from Zara, I may just have to settle for these-

Angle, $199.95

Golden Slipper

So My sister and my lovely friend Courtney decided we would go to the Golden Slipper for a bit of a laugh. Usually we would get very dressed up for race day, gloves, classic dresses to the knee, demure fascinators/ hats. But on this occasion we thought we'd slack off a bit. and it was a very fun day. Admittedly we had a bit of a giggle at some of the more shocking outfits. My boyfriend and I had just read an article in this month's Shop till You Drop, all about how to 'de-bogan' your man and the classic signs to look out for. These included items such as printed Ed Hardy t-shirts, white dress shoes, oversized designer sunnies, and pastel suits. I feel awful for saying this, but that's quite literally the entire catalogue of men's outfits that were on show at Rosehill. I could tell that many of the girls were thinking the same. I know the three of us just couldn't wait to get home to our lovely boyfriends!

ZARA opening at Westfield Sydney

So I braved the crowds on Wednesday morning, with what I now know was a delusional hope of getting my hands on a few of the pieces I'd been eyeing off on the UK website. So here they are:

Firstly, the perfect block colour, chunky- heeled platform sandal. I had envisaged wearing these with full skirts, black peg leg trousers and generally any outfit that I could think to put them with. I have been a huge fan of block colour and neon brights, but being a red head, I feel I'm somewhat limited to accessories in these hues. Anything else might be just a bit too much.

The trench.
The perfect short-lengthed trench coat in a beautiful burberry-esque shade of beige. To die for.

And finally, these gorgeous, chunky -heeled leather platform ankle boots. They are the perfect winter essential.
I'd also hoped to get my hands on a couple of blazers, and perhaps some of the beautifully tailored trousers that they are so famous for. I very foolishly believed that if I arrived at 9am (with the store due to open at 9.30) and jumped into the line, I might have a chance. Little did I know the store had actually opened at 9.00, and 600 odd VIP's had been privy to an exciting opening night celebration the night before. After lining up for what seemed like an eternity, and was in fact and hour, I was in. The chaos that ensued was a shock to the system. I had imagined that it might be similar to the boxing day sales in a department store, but it was so, so much worse. Not only were all of the XS sizes completely sold out, the shoes were all gone too. Apparently size 37 is the new size 38- they always go first. I finally got my hands on a pair of trousers that seemed nice, only to have the snatched way by a terrifying girl who was about 6 feet taller than me and bearing the expression of a furious lion protecting its young. I quickly let go and backed off, rather than copping an elbow to the face or a violent shove. Onward with a few boring, last ditch- effort pieces in hand; utterly disheartened, I struggled on to the fitting rooms. Another 50 minute wait, and Surprise surprise, the few things I tried on looked completely wrong. Sweating, stressed and eager to breath clean air, I made my way through the crowd, which was similar to that which you would find in a packed nightclub. I hadn't even bothered to tie the laces on my boots- I rolled my sleeves up and fled the scene.

I then stumbled across into the new Mid City Centre,  where I found myself in love all over again. $189.95 later, and I am the proud owner of these gorgeous shoes from Wittner. Surprisingly comfortable, I gave them a whirl at dinner last night and my feet still felt perfect when I got home. Definitely a winner!!

 So, when asked will I return to Zara, The answer is yes. I am a glutton for punishment, but more importantly, I WANT THOSE SHOES!