Aren't We All Like This in a Car

Something to make you smile today.

In Your Room

It takes a bare room, stripped of everything, to understand what it contained. Rooms are not just containers but they are containers to live in. They hold you as you experience each day differently and even as everything changes, they remain the same. They remain something that you can return to and maybe part of the charm of these four walls is just that; the fact that they are a constant and a familiarity.

I remember the first time that you let me in your room. It was mid week and had no real remarkable features about it until that late afternoon. Upon entering, I knew that the things in that room were not shared with just anybody, that you have a way of filtering yourself down for others. Nothing about that room was filtered and neither were you. It reflected quirks and intimacies and was an environment conducive to truth.
That was four months ago and that room only ever encouraged truth, or maybe we both did, something did.

A lot happened in that room and seeing it removed of all personality, stripped of everything that we had become accustomed to was, in a way, heartbreaking. It is the people that make a room but it felt as if the bareness of the room, ready for the next person, somehow took away the power of those events when in reality the furniture had nothing to do with any of it.
Those four walls held powerful words that had been spoken, kept us safe when we didn't feel like leaving our world, saw the beginning of us and saw a change in us that would put on hold the way that we had come to know, it saw us both grow into ourselves and each other, but most of all, it let us be who we wanted to be and in that fully furnished room, we were stripped of all reserves.

Creatures Such As We

"For small creatures such as we
  the vastness is bearable only through love"

 - Carl Sagan

Stephanie in the Water

Stephanie in the Water follows the six times female ASP (Association of Surfing Professionals) world tour winner, Stephanie Gilmore in her attempt to reclaim her world title after losing it to Carissa Moore in 2012, a year that began with a personal attack in her home. Directed by Ava Warbrick, Stephanie in the Water is a documentary that demonstrates Gilmore’s constant struggle between being respected as a female surfer and the problems that arise by being such a huge part of a male dominated industry.

Although a documentation of Steph Gilmore and her efforts in 2012 to regain her world title, Stephanie in the Water also plays very much to the issues surrounding women in surfing, both overtly and subtly. The choice to have a female team of documentary makers was definitely a good one, with New York visual artist and filmmaker Ava Warbrick making her directorial debut. The film definitely has artistic elements engrained within it from the start and makes for an extremely enjoyable watch, both visually and in charting Gilmore’s journey.
It seems as if the choice to use a female director was a conscious one, put in place to avoid the inevitable elements of masculinity that are a dominating feature of the surfing world, but this documentary luckily manages to avoid most of them. There are however, some scenes that demonstrate just how sexualised women in the industry are, with scenes of the surfers having their makeup done and walking the red carpet at the Surfer Poll Awards, in which the scene seemed somewhat disjointed with the message that the film was trying to portray. It becomes obvious that Warbrick is presenting Gilmore as the champion that she is, whilst mainly avoiding the obvious gender issues that surround Gilmore, because no matter how many times the world tour trophy is etched with her name, her status as a woman in surfing will always be the driving force behind everything that she does and the female world champion being a part of that. It is undeniable that Gilmore is the reason that surfing has come so far from the even more oppressive society that it used to be.

However, as the most powerful woman in surfing, one would think that Gilmore has managed to escape the gender related comments and this is, for the most part, true. Although the surfing society respects her as a woman and understands the immensity of her talent, comments still filter through the documentary that demonstrate the effect to which women are still being compared to male surfers on a regular basis. This becomes evident from the very beginning of the documentary with Gilmore being interviewed on an Australian news show and on which the female presenter comments that Steph performs a lot of “blokes moves”, when in reality, as Gilmore goes on to correct her, is just being aggressive and powerful in the water whilst trying to remain feminine. It is comments such as these that split the surfers from the outsiders and it seems absurd for a woman to compare the six times female champion to a male surfer, when the two styles of surfing could not be more different. Perhaps Warbrick chose to open the film with a statement such as this to create a dialogue between the successes that women’s surfing has seen whilst simultaneously battling against gender issues.

I think it is fair to say that Warbrick presents the world of women’s surfing in a very realistic way. Sexualised images of women are present even in Stephanie in the Water, which is odd, considering it is working to humanise Gilmore in a way that separates her and her teammates from their bikini clad magazine alter-ego’s, but the contradiction actually works in demonstrating the parallels of female surfing in a visual way throughout. 

Gilmore is granted her sixty minutes of screen time in which she tries to fight the ever-present female surfer stereotype, but slow motion images of her legs and behind as she elegantly surfs a wave and a topless shot of her changing in her garage will blatantly receive attention for the wrong reasons.
As the best female surfer she notes how a question that she hears too much is, “what’s next? What’s more?” and it is important to indicate that world title male surfers are not being asked the same question, suggesting that the standard of female surfing is always being compared to the male standard.
Saying this, a statement that carries a particular poignancy comes from Gilmore’s board shaper, Darren Handley. Knowing many of the top male and female surfers, he says how Steph is “…not like Kelly [Slater, eleven times ASP male world tour winner], she doesn’t go there to have fun or get a bit of prize money. She goes to win” and it is a comment such as this that is potentially the first of its kind, giving a female surfer the dominance over a male surfer and emphasising her desire to win and progress which is often overlooked for women. It is Handley’s observation that truly shows the strength of women’s surfing in a time where it is all about the men.

It can be said that in creating Stephanie in the Water, Warbrick has exposed the world of female underdogs to the mainstream media and along with her heartfelt and powerful representations of Gilmore both in and out of the water, not only have she and Steph made an attempt at revolutionising the female surfing world, but she has also unconsciously demonstrated, with images and phrases that constantly trickle through the hour, just how difficult it is to avoid women’s sexualisation in surfing no matter how brilliant the surfing talent is.

2014

Being two weeks into 2015, I feel that I've had enough time to reflect on the year that has just passed and its status as a peak in my life has really sunk in. It was by no means an easy or continually upbeat year. If any, it was the opposite.

I fought and cried and breathed and laughed and learnt how to live on my own and bought a skateboard and met 11 famous people and went to concerts and bought aeroplane and train tickets and took taxi's and translated French and discovered things that would make me question the one thing that I thought I was sure of.
I bought magazines and books and hats, inked my skin with two tattoos, I put drunk people to bed, got concussion and nearly broke my leg and met people who are more similar to me than I thought and I changed jobs and learnt what loyalty really is. I lost myself but then I returned and I fell in love with myself. I put up posters and panicked that my passport wouldn't arrive in time for holiday and finished a night with mascara on my shirt and bought lipstick and shirts and a scooter.

I have a feeling that in a couple of years when I look back, that 2014 will always stand out as the year that started the making of me.

I have a good feeling about 2015 too, hopefully I will be able to repeat the sentence above when this year draws to a close.

Change Your Own Game

The last four months have been a game changer for me. They have been genuinely fantastic.
As somebody who spent a year being so unhappy, I can't tell you how important it is to make yourself happy. If you don't like the way that something is, change it and you will feel like a weight has been lifted. I have learnt that taking control of my own life is what leads to happiness and that way, you will learn to not only value yourself but also that it is the only way forward. Once you get a taste of it, you won't put up with anything toxic again and that is the way that it should be. Create the life that you want and make it so good that it keeps you awake at night, because you're too damn happy to sleep.

I have surrounded myself with people that only lift me up and as a single pringle, I am enjoying it. Sure I get days when it gets me a bit down and I know how nice it would be to have somebody, but I have come to realise that I don't need anybody to complete me. I complete me. Somebody should make you better. You shouldn't become reliant on somebody to complete you because you are all you need, you are completed, somebody else is just there to make things that bit better.

I'm enjoying being by myself and when the time is right, somebody will come along. You can't force love, love happens on its own and when *huge cliche coming up* you least expect it (it sounds stupid, but that's really how it works). All of the good relationships happen organically (whether that's friendship or romance) and if you have to force it, then it ain't right. When it's the right person they will text you back, they will make an effort to see you and most of all, you won't have to guess where you stand with them because you will know, so don't force anything and don't make yourself unhappy trying to find it, because it will find you. 

So for now, enjoy being by yourself and if you have somebody, then lucky you, congrats, nice one, keep going! But if you don't then just love yourself. That's not an easy ask and that takes time, but that too, will happen, so for the meantime, work on

loving yourself like you're not waiting for somebody else to do it

and

instead of looking for the light, become it instead.

It's Not Just Another One

It may just be Monday but it's not just another Monday. It's a day that has never been lived by you or by anybody else and it will be what you decide it will be. Possibilities and chances are waiting for you to take them and whether that is the chance of starting an essay a day earlier than you were planning or texting an old friend or trying a new sport or finding a new song that you love or relaxing in that bubble bath that you've been craving for the last week, it doesn't matter what it is and it doesn't matter how tiny it is, but you can take on this day like there's nothing stopping you. If you only do one little thing that makes today a bit different, nice one.

So if you've already done Monday or you're partly through it or you're just waking up to it, maybe it won't be so bad afterall.