Thing the Second: today I dyed my mother’s hair purple. AWESOME.

Photographic evidence of The Things:

…I’m really tired, and will now proceed to go to bed.

This makes me extremely happy. I was always uneasy with the television being the focal point of the living room, and having it there always encouraged me to just switch it on instead of picking up a book. By having a looming, stacked-full bookcase behind it, your eye is now drawn away from the gogglebox to the books! Since doing this, I have already found myself reading an awful lot more often, as I’m seeing the books that I have yet to read (one of the shelves!) right in front of me all the time, allowing me to be tempted by them in a way I couldn’t be when they were out of sight, and out of mind.

We’ve also got rid of all the stuff that was stacked in front of the patio doors, allowing light into the room again, and moved the coffee table to be a side table, giving me room to practice yoga. I’ve also moved out iPod dock (a large standing thing) to be tucked behind the sofa, so that I can have background music on while I’m reading but the apparatus is unobtrusive (it used to be in our bedroom, but never got used).

Having the living room tidy is making both of us feel more relaxed and peaceful, and were so glad we took the time to sort it out!

In other news, I got a new shirt yesterday and I absolutely love it! What do you think? It’s so hard to find affordable clothes that I like and are vegan I also got a pair of amazing jeans – I’ll be sure to post a photo of me wearing them soon! This shirt is awesome. It’s light and can be layered, and suits both my day-job style and my personal style. Definitely a winner!

So we’ve started – we’re getting rid. Over the next few weeks, we’ll start decluttering our environment. We’ll be selling off old games, donating stuff to charity, and buying another bookcase to hold all the books that currently have no home.

We are naturally untidy people, but we’ve grown a lot over the past few years and want our home to reflect that. I want to move a few pieces of furniture around, and introduce a couple of easy-to-care-for plants into our living room (even if “easy to care for” ends up meaning “artificial”!).

What we hope to end up with is a peaceful, calm environment. I have become a big fan of white surfaces – tables, bookcases etc – that let the books and items on them speak for themselves, and let their colours shine through.

I also want to move the coffee table to give myself a small open area to practice yoga and meditation, something I haven’t done in years that I hope will help with the anxieties caused by my bipolarity.

When I was younger, I used to say that I liked having a lot of stuff around. My “things” we’re my identity – without them, I didn’t know who I was. I was very much like the hypothetical person in the fabulous George Carlin’s routine about stuff. Now I’m older, more confidence and security in my identity has led me to have much less attachment to my “things” – they’re just stuff now, not an integral part of my identity. I would still know who I am now even if you stripped all of my possessions away. I used to clutch to them, but now I don’t need to anymore. The only thing I’ll never get rid of is my books – once I’ve read a book, it becomes part of my soul! I couldn’t part with them, and for now I don’t have too many that I need to. Books are the only thing that I won’t think twice about keeping.

Of course I don’t mean that we’re getting rid of everything – not by a long stretch – but when you have as much stuff as we do, it’s easy to get rid of a lot of it and still have loads left. We definitely need less stuff.

By Thursday, everything will be clean and tidy. Some stuff will already be sorted to be taken to charity shops or recycled. On Saturday, we’re popping to IKEA for the bookcase. I would also like a new fruit bowl, for the living room, and a couple of small plants. By the weekend I hope to be well on our way to our new, less-cluttered, more peaceful habitat. I’ll be sure to post pictures as we get stuff in place!

What’s your habitat like? How have you decluttered your life? I want to know!

It’s making me start to feel festive, though, which is good because I’ve been slow on the baby cheeses uptake this year… Now I’ve got my tiny tinsel tree on the mantelpiece (so el cato doesn’t destroy it) and my spiced apple candle too, so that’s also helping.

I hope it’s snow instead soon. I love the white stuff!

Actually, I’m disorganised about breakfast as well.

And, like, dinner.

I plan my meals. We do a weekly shop that should, theoretically, contain enough food for a week. It’s not that I don’t eat, it’s just that I never seem to eat what I’ve actually bought. Sometimes I manage to wake up in time to eat porridge, or at least cereal. But a lot of the time I don’t, so I waste money on a soya latte from an evil company on my way into work so that I’m not starving by lunchtime.

Lunch time. When I’ve often totally forgotten to make my sandwiches – yummy and healthy avocado, hummus, tomato and spinach on chia seed bread – in the morning rush, so instead eat a plain baked potato with beans from the canteen, the only thing that I can eat here, spending money on boring food that I already spent on yummy food that I left at home.

Then I get home and it wasn’t a nutritionally balanced day so I’m tired and hungry so instead of making dinner I buy chips, or just do pasta and eat chocolate while it’s cooking. Which makes me lethargic so I don’t go for a run, instead just slobbing about the house all evening.

I guess I’m just not a morning person. Get the morning right, and the rest of my food-day runs like clockwork. Get it wrong, and everything goes to hell in a handcart.

I guess you could say it’s one of my main daily hurdles…

The thing is, everyone has challenges like these. I know that. And sometimes I really, really like being a night owl. But a lot of the time in the mornings I really wish I wasn’t.

I try my best. I really do. Some days, I make it. I turn the light on half an hour before I wake up, which sometimes helps to penetrate the sleep-fug. I am very organised with my food, and plan to avoid food waste (a huuuuge issue in this country), but then it all goes to shit because of my lack of morning organisation.

I’m thinking I might need to prep stuff the night before. Would an avocado sandwich keep overnight, or would it go gross? I’m guessing the latter. But I could make some sort of sandwiches… and have my breakfast basically ready. Then the day could go smoooothly. That would be nice.

I manage with my snacks because I put them in my bag the night before (satsumas, almonds and dried fruit are what’s happening at the mo).

In the absence of being able to make a sandwich keep overnight, maybe it’s worth the little extra money to get something like an Innocent Veg Pot. Something healthy that I can just throw in my bag and go…

Can anyone think of another option? Anyone else have The Morning Issue? How do you deal with it?

So I did it. On Thursday 29th November I took the plunge and spent the evening starting them off using the twist & rip method. Tomorrow, they will be a week old.

I’m already in love. During my (ridiculously extensive) research on lock creation and maintenance, I discovered just how spiritual people find having dreads. I knew that they are spiritual to those who practice Rastafarianism, but not that a plethora of other, non-religious people with locks also felt so spiritual about them. This, of course, got me even more excited. It just felt right.

I decided to go for a combination of twist & rip and natural methods. I have started them off with the former, and now am letting them do their own thing, with a little separating and palm-rolling to keep them in check. I am not using any waxes or crocheting. They’re looking good so far, if a little fluffy! I can’t wait for a few months’ time when they settle down and really start to look the business.

(Interlude! Got concerns about cultural appropriation? So do I! It’s awful and it needs to stop. However, this isn’t it. Locks have been worn the world over for millennia, including by caucasian races such as the Celts and Vikings. Locks are what happens to all hair types when you stop brushing; some hair types take longer than others, but it all locks up eventually. They massively predate Rastafarianism, and have a global history.This woman is amazing, and this awesome woman will tell you some stuff, too.)

For those of you who don’t know, I have a professional day job. I am a student and a writer, but as we all do I need to pay the bills. This is how I’ve been wearing my hair for work, to make it look neat! As you can see I’ve left my fringe out. It just felt like the right stylistic choice for me. I also means I don’t have to tie it all back off my face, which makes me look a bit like an egg.

I love it.

Since starting my locks, I already feel more confident and more comfortable in my own skin. It’s like I’ve taken the next step in being true to myself. I was always very aware of society’s misconceptions about locks, but in the end, it’s my body. I’ve written before about how growing my body hair made me feel like I was shaking off society’s hold on me, reclaiming my body as my own. This feels like that too. My hair feels right like this; I feel right like this. I have this new sense of me-ness that tingles all the way down to my toes, that I don’t think I’ve ever felt before.

Though there is a lot out there on the internet about how to start and maintain dreads, there’s not a lot written about this feeling, though there is enough for me to know that it is not unique to me. I can’t explain it, can’t put my finger on it; they just make people feel more whole. Maybe that old thing about your spiritual energy being released through the top of your head and dreads keeping it in is true. I can’t think of any other explanation!

Another way that they help me feel freed from the shackles of societal expectation is by simply being non-conformist. I’ve always had a rebellious streak, but these days it’s much more about railing against our consumerist and selfish society. I will freely admit that I can be a selfish person, and that I’m working on it. I’m in no way perfect, but my locks journey is aligning with my own personal journey to being a free-er, happier, less selfish human being.

They have come at the right time in my life. I am also starting to learn patience, to not worry about things I can’t change, and to instead focus on the positive changes that I can make in the world. Locks are a lesson in patience; it will take 3-6 months for them to settle in, a year before they really look like proper dreads, and three years before they hit the ‘sweet spot’ where they don’t really require maintenance anymore. Knowing this is helping me to be more patient and less stressed about other areas in my life. I can almost feel my blood pressure lowering.

Basically, this is up there as one of the better choices I’ve made in my life. My locks match up with who I am and who I am growing into in life, and I can’t wait to see where they take me!

Here’s an example!

Shiny, huh?

Anyhoo, I hope you like them. That’s all I have to say for today, but there’ll be a videoblog coming up soon!

Don’t run away screaming! WAIT, COME BACK!

Phew! Thanks. Please, stick with me.

It was, for me, the culmination of a lot of thought I had given over the preceding months to how I felt about my body, and my sense of ownership over it. I didn’t like how my armpits looked shaven; to paraphrase the amazing Caitlin Moran, ‘Not every armpit is going to look good bald, that’s like saying that every man would look good bald. It’s just not going to work!’.

I hated the itchy re-growth, both there and on my bikini line. I never even wear a sodding bikini. Die-hard baldness fans will here cry, ‘But you should just try waxing! You don’t get itchiness with that!’ I have no desire to try waxing. My dear friend with no concept of how much money 23-year-old admin monkeys earn said, ‘Why not just get laser hair removal? Now I have barely any hair at all!’

My problems with this attitude are numerous, but I’m going to try and explain my thoughts here without getting too… angry about it. I’ve summarised them into 3 main points for you, because I’m nice like that and know you don’t want to be here all day.

I apologise if this is a bit rant-y in places, but this is an issue that matters a great deal to me. I’ll be back to my usual, PMA and awesomeness self by point 3, but the first 2 points need to be said. Kindly bear with me.

1) It’s MY body, not yours, society!

I grew up, like pretty much every young woman in this country, feeling that I had to remove my body hair – not to be exceptionally beautiful or a member of an elite, cool, hairless club, but to be normal. To not be a ‘hairy freak’. I have distinct memories of a girl in my year at school being vilified at the age of thirteen for not shaving her armpits. She immediately caved, and is now, among my friends, one of hairlessness’s biggest advocates.

It came to me that I do not, in fact, like how my armpits look bald, nor my vulva for that matter. I prefer how they look hairy. I just do. Therefore, since it’s my body, I’m not going to shave my hair anymore. Aesthetically, I prefer it this way, both in those isolated areas and in the wider context of how it looks on my body as a whole.

Since growing my armpit hair, I have been met with support from a lot of my awesome friends in real life and on the internet. I have also been met with horror, from women I considered to be very liberated, including exclamations of, ‘Eww! Don’t get them near me!’ and, ‘No offense, but I’m not going to hug you anymore. Just in case it touches me. I hope you understand!’.

I shit ye not.

Seriously… What??!

How, in this day and age, when a huge portion of society are bringing up their daughters to believe that the battle is won, we’re not in any kind of societal shackles anymore, can we still react this way to women who choose to let their bodies just be natural, without removing their body hair? Why have we let marketing executives convince us that body hair is ‘dirty’, instead of there to protect us? That it’s ‘unhygienic’?

If you want to remove your body hair, it’s your body, go ahead. I would ask you to accept these two things:

Firstly, that I am not dirty, or unhygienic, and that body hair serves a purpose, and that it’s perfectly fucking okay for me to be hairy, and that by accusing me of these things and reacting negatively to my hair you are perpetuating misogynistic myths and the concept that a woman’s body is not her own to do what she wants with, but rather something that should be subject to others’ opinions and society’s control.

Secondly that, in spite of whether you agree with the end result or not, you have been conditioned by society to think that ‘hairless’ is the only acceptable way to be. Research it. Educate yourself, I beg of you. If you still feel the same way, that’s totally fine; but please, make an effort to understand what you’re dealing with.

Please – I’m not asking you to change your mind, I’m asking you to work out why you feel the way you do and to delve a little deeper to understand not only your own psyche, but the ways in which that has been subconsciously influenced from your birth by society and people who want to make money off your body hatred (again, that’s a whole other article in itself, one that I promise to do some time).

This also feeds into number 2.

2) It’s MY body, not yours, dudes!

[TRIGGER WARNING]

To clarify; I’m not talking about the ‘good guys’ here. I’m not talking about my own partner, who is extremely supportive of my right to have my body however the fuck I want. I’m not talking about guys like him, who do not participate in ‘banter’ that’s a cover for rape culture (again, that’s a whole other blog post in itself).

I’m talking about the ‘men’ that think that their thoughts on how I should have my body should matter to me one jot, and who are told by society, as outlined in point 1, that they are right to do so, because I’m a freaky hairy weirdo who needs to be brought into line and JUST BE FUCKING NORMAL. ‘Men’ who get very angry when anyone questions the misogynistic status-quo, because either to take that away would be to take away their sense of having power over women, or to take that way would be to make them question themselves and realise how utterly wrong and awful they have been to their fellow human beings for a large chunk of their lives, or both.

I am also taking about my rapist. His abuse of me spanned two years. I’m not going to go into details because it’s not necessary here and I don’t want to upset people, but as rape is far from an uncommon experience, it is extremely relevant to this whole debate and modern-day feminism as a movement. Here’s the gist that’s relevant to this article specifically:

He treated my body as something he had more right to than I did, something that was just there for him to use, rather than something that belonged to me – and I’m pretty sure that’s a feeling most women who’ve been raped could identify with. I don’t want anyone to get sidetracked here by feeling sorry for me; it was a long time ago, and I have worked through it mostly now, and I am so, so happy with my life, even though unfortunately that’s never going to be the case for a lot of women who have been through similar experiences. I, personally, am ok. I’m better than ok, I’m actually great. But I wasn’t until I worked through this whole mess of feelings that came from it, and shaving had it’s part to play in that.

Shaving ended up being symptomatic for me. It took me a long time to pin down this feeling and work through it. Every time I shaved, or did anything to my body that wasn’t true to my feelings about what I wanted to be doing, I felt like I was letting myself down. Like I was letting scared little teenaged me down. Why, when he had taken away so much of my sense of autonomy over myself and my ownership of my body, was I continuing to do that to myself, to let societal pressure do exactly the same thing to me?

That’s it. Why the hell was I doing that?

I couldn’t see any reason to keep doing that to myself, so I stopped. This has led, in no small part, to number 3.

3) I feel POWERFUL this way.

I feel, now, like I have total control over my own body, and comfortable in the knowledge that nobody else is having any say whatsoever in what I do with it. This has made me more confident. My partner has noticed this. Last month I met up with the woman who was my best friend through secondary school, who knew me during what happened in point 2, and she was staggered by the difference in me.

I go through life knowing that I am being 100% true to myself. This makes me feel calm. It makes it easier to chase down my dreams. It means I have more faith in myself. I still get unsure sometimes, but now I am surrounded by an amazing group of friends, both male and female, who boost me up whenever I doubt myself. I have ten times more friends, real friends, now than I ever did when I was trying to fit in and be what society wanted me to be (and I’m not just talking about shaving, I’m talking about the myriad of other way society tells women what to do and how to be and that if they deviate form this they’re wrong, wrong, wrong. Society can fuck right off). They love me for who I really am in a way that nobody loved me when I wasn’t being myself (apart from my family, natch, and my partner, who saw through that to the real me underneath and fell in love with that. I know how lucky I am). Doubting yourself and not being true to yourself and what you want means that you’re letting others wield power over you. Don’t let them do that!

My body is mine. It can do amazing things. I used to neglect it, back when I didn’t love it. Back when I felt alienated from it. I even deliberately damaged it. It didn’t feel really mine in the way that my mind and my soul did; it was, as Marya Hornbacher puts it, just ‘inexplicably attached to my head’.

Now, it feels like mine. Now, nobody else has any influence over it other than me. As such, it no longer feels unruly; I no longer feel the desperate sense of clutching at any type of control over it that led me to develop an eating disorder when I was seventeen and have a messed up relationship with food until oh, last year, when I read the amazing Susie Orbach’s ‘Fat Is A Feminist Issue’. Now, I’m working with it, rather than against it. As such, it can now run. It can roller skate. It can do amazing and cool shit. It’s awesome. For the first time in living memory, I like my body. Most days, I love it, at least for a little while.

Stopping shaving was a huge part of this for me, and I’m told that plenty of other women have experienced this awesome sense of autonomy over their own bodies when they’ve stopped shaving, too. It’s not just me!

So…

…that’s my thoughts on this, condensed into a nutshell, or at least as much of a nutshell as nearly 2000 words can be. The friends that took issue with my hairiness have, on the whole, gotten used to it by now. I haven’t hidden it away, I’ve worn vest tops, it’s been summer. Now, they’re not really fazed by it any more.

This ‘getting people used to’ hairiness on women was one of the aims of Armpits4August, and it has been a great success for far, with them more than tripling their fundraising goal for Verity, the PCOS charity, over the course of the month. I am keeping mine; I was going to anyway. I hope that at least some of the hundreds of women who took part in Armpits4August this year will decide to keep their newfound fur. I hope that they, like I, will find it empowering, that they will like it, and screw what anybody else thinks.

My friend Emily is keeping hers, and has dyed it green. And, quite frankly: That’s damn cool.