thoughts

I feel frustrated about how women feel they have to portray themselves. Recently I read all the responses to a ‘get to know me’ questionnaire for a play. The cast was probably 90% female, and all the answers were so self-depreciating. Are you a revenger or a tragedy? Everyone said tragedy. It's not just in drama. Far too often do I hear women in all fields describe themselves as being a constant ‘hot mess’. We make our work seem not important, and emphasise how our lives are terrible and never perfect. What does this say about us, to let all these amazing and talented people think that about themselves? These are our friends and sisters and girlfriends and WHATEVER – just people! The way that women are conditioned to never think THAT highly of themselves in terms of their talents and abilities, it’s just so depressing and frustrating to me. This extends further than ‘talents’ in the sense of academic knowledge or tangible skills, but it’s also about how we see ourselve...

I relapsed into smoking recently. Well, relapsing makes it sound like a disease. My control of five months crumbled under two weeks of intense emotional pressure. And it's been less than 24 hours after the end of my last pack, and I'm sitting here contemplating how to justify easing back into a smoke free life instead of just going back to not smoking like I was three weeks ago. I first tried smoking when I was in high school. It was on holiday with some kids a few years older than me that I'd been friends with for a few years. They offered me a rollie, and being the badass that I was I accepted. I’d already tried drinking with them the year before, so why not smoking this year. I was open to life. This turned into me being someone who smoked as part of my identity. I may have not been popular at school, but at least I could cultivate a mystique about myself that gave me social status beyond my middling normalcy. I wasn’t 'gross' by smoking on the regular, ...