Thursday Murmurings
Double pikes, Facetune & being terrible at things
Happy Thursday peeps!
Kicking it off this week by taking a moment to just be in awe of the incredible Simone Biles. She’s now the first woman to land a Yurchenko double pike in competition. Don’t know what that is? Watch the video, then scrape your jaw off the floor. This woman is an absolute power house of an athlete. This quote from USA Today says it best:
“Appreciate her now. While you still have the chance. Because someday, we'll all understand just how otherworldly she is, and wish we had one more chance to witness it.”
This piece about how we should really talk about ‘anti-ageing’ as ‘anti-exposure’ is such a great and necessary read. Super interesting.
Ahh I love this piece about what exercise does for your brain - if you enjoy geeky talk about neurotransmitters and cognitive function, you should dive right in.
This article about the mental benefits of being terrible at something really caught my eye. I love this passage about practice:
“To practice regularly, even when you seem to be getting nowhere, might at first seem onerous,” writes Leonard. “But the day eventually comes when practice becomes a treasured part of your life. You settle into it as if into your favorite easy chair. It will be there for you tomorrow. It will never go away.”
I’ve owned roller skates for years and left them sitting in my wardrobe untouched, I finally got them out last weekend, dusted them off and committed to learning how the hell to use them. I’ve accepted that I’m just gonna be trash at it for a while and I actually really enjoy this process of practicing, being methodical about it, continuing to show up despite falling on your ass over and over. My dream of grooving at a roller disco will come true one day!
You know when you read something and you’re like wow, I’m way old and out of the loop on this one? Yeah, that was me reading this article about selfies, Facetune and plastic surgery. My jaw was on the floor for parts of this. It’s not like we aren’t aware that people alter images of themselves before posting them online, but I was genuinely unaware of the extent to which that happens. I may adjust the lighting in my pics before posting, but apparently there are legions of women in their early 20s who are adjusting their whole face and body before posting anything online, to the extent they are dreading people seeing them in real life. There are entirely too many quotes I could pull from this that made my head spin but this one is a doozy:
“If I’m not coming to Kylie Jenner-level of perfection on a photo, literally what is the point of posting it?” - Harmonie Christian, 22-year-old Facetune user.
I mean, MY GOD! What the hell are we doing?! Many of these girls downloaded the Facetune app in their teens and are addicted to it to the point they’re taking Facetuned pictures of themselves to plastic surgeons and saying ‘make me look like this.’ It’s a really frikkin’ sad state of affairs. I feel desperately forlorn for these young women that they feel this pressure. I don’t have solutions other than those of us who stand confidently in the naturalness of our beauty show up, and do so mightily.
In Monday’s issue of The Murmuration, I featured Jamie Klingler and her story of quitting drinking. One of the many things Jamie has achieved during this pandemic, is the formation of #ReclaimTheStreets - an organisation highlighting violence against women and girls, formed in light of the murder of Sarah Everard in London a few months back. Jamie helped to organise a peaceful vigil in honour of Sarah. Organising such a thing during Covid times obviously had its difficulties. Police proclaimed that the gathering would be illegal and it was cancelled. People still chose to go and pay their respects to Sarah. The police showed up and (perhaps not sensing the irony here) were violent towards many of the women there.
Now #ReclaimTheStreets is taking the Met Police to court to challenge their plans to clamp down on people’s right to protest. To do this, they need to raise £20,000 for the legal proceedings.
This sums it up perfectly:
#ReclaimTheseStreets’ legal case is still live and it remains vitally important. If the Police cannot be held accountable for suppressing an organized, safe, peaceful vigil on the issue of violence against women and girls in the immediate aftermath of a murder where a police officer is the suspected perpetrator, then when can there be accountability? And what meaningful protest rights are there for anyone?
You can donate to this very worthy cause and help speak truth to power here.
On next Monday’s edition of The Murmuration, I’ll be talking about anger and how, as women we can often feel uncomfortable expressing it.
I’ve noticed I’ll rarely let myself get past mild frustration. If I feel anger building, I give myself a time out and try to look at things objectively. This inevitably results in me overriding those feelings and concluding that whatever it is that I’m angry about probably isn’t that big a deal anyway and moreover, it was probably my fault, so I should just swallow it. I keep my mouth shut and it passes.
Except it doesn’t. That little fire of resentment starts to burn in your stomach and it never quite goes away, no matter how much you try to convince yourself.
Go ahead and subscribe to the Monday issue and explore this topic with me. $5 per month or $50 for the year.
Until next week, smile at strangers, spread good vibes, be nice to people.